World of Warcraft trial accounts have certain restrictions in place to prevent people from abusing these accounts. The accounts have a limit on the number of tells they can send other players - once that limit is reached, the player must wait before they can send more. Also, trial accounts do not have priority when waiting in realm login queues. Therefore, players using trial accounts may actually go up in the queue. We are sorry for the inconvenience, but these restrictions are necessary.

 "Still in the process of being made. It hasn't been forgotten, it is in the works, but it's not yet ready to be live."

We're still in the process of refining our changes to the Paladin talent trees. In the interest of keeping you informed of these developments, here are the latest changes, which will be updated on the Test Realm soon:

Blessing of Kings, the former 31 point talent in Retribution, has been shifted to the 11 point talent in the Protection tree.

Blessing of Sanctuary, the former 11 point talent in Protection, has been shifted to the 21 point talent in the same tree.

Holy Shield, the former 21 point talent in Protection, has been shifted to the 31 point talent in the same tree and has had its mana cost slightly reduced.

Repentance, the former 31 point talent in Protection, has been shifted to the 31 point talent in the Retribution tree.

Please be aware that, as developer and player alike continue to test patch 1.9, further changes will be made if deemed necessary.

Before you ask why numbers weren't buffed during the shift, please understand that talent trees aren't necessarily designed to get much stronger as you get deeper into the tree, but rather unlock more options along the same basic line. Other class trees are designed in precisely the same way.

The developers will continue to evaluate the situation and make changes should they find something lacking, never fear.

Blizzard Entertainment held an official BlizzCon Costume Contest on Friday, October 28th, co-sponsored by Intel and Alienware. Check out the results in our picture gallery!

Making items is one of the most rewarding aspects of choosing a profession. The ability to take raw resources and use what knowledge you've gained to create potions or armor, or to enchant a sword to give it that fiery glow is something worth pursuing. Sure, it's not a bad way to increase the influx of gold either.

All the skills ramp up quickly at first, but as you gain higher levels, your progress slows to a more steady pace. As long as you continue to make items of appropriate levels, you'll continue to level up. Having a guild to supply you with gold or resources is a great way to whip through the early levels, but don't think that it's necessary. Even on your own, given the right career choices, you'll be able to become an artisan in your chosen field...

What are you currently working on at the moment in the expansion?

Shane Dabiri: As lead producer on the World of Warcraft team, I'm currently undertaking the exciting task of dividing and focusing our resources on the development of both the expansion set and on the continuing content development for the current game. This should help us streamline our efforts for 2006...

To continue to alleviate the queues on some of the most populated realms we move on to the eighth phase of migration. This phase starts Monday, December 12th and will last until and including Friday, December 16th. Note, however, that we reserve the right to close down or redirect any migration at any time based on the population of the involved realms. Please keep an eye on this thread for updates about the eighth migration phase.

To not increase the load on the database during peak playing hours the migration will be open only between 03:00 and 15:00 CET (GMT/UTC +1) each day. We might choose to not allow migration on Wednesdays, due to the additional load when a huge amount of players log in after the maintenance.

The following migration between English realms is part of this phase:

Deathwing �> Talnivarr (new realm)
Stormscale �> Talnivarr (new realm)
Bladefist �> Emeriss (new realm)
Kor'gall �> Emeriss (new realm)

Amongst the corruption of Felwood, one tribe of furbolgs has escaped the taint which has ravaged their homeland: the Timbermaw furbolgs. Those adventurers, who seek out Timbermaw Hold and prove themselves to be friends of this shamanistic tribe, can learn from them the ways of crafting powerful armor and the secrets of their healing talismans.

Take a peek at the new Timbermaw Hold faction changes coming in our next content update "The Gates of Ahn'Qiraj" and see which rewards dedicated adventurers can gain by helping the furbolgs of Timbermaw Hold.

-Shaman Guide to Grinding

Millions of players worldwide enjoy the MMORPG World of Warcraft (WoW), but as with any game, some of them cheat. Blizzard's award-winning juggernaut is full of magic, but some characters have learned to cast spells that are a little more potent than your average fireball.

The following realm-to-realm transfers will become available Monday, December 12, at 3:00 AM PST:

Skullcrusher > Spirestone
Hellscream > Staghelm

These transfers will be available at the normal time, 3:00AM-3:00PM PST, until December 16, at 3:00PM.

Realm-to-realm character transfers are offered in order to alleviate queue times and overpopulation. If you're not satisfied with your realm's performance, moving to a realm with a lower population can make your play experience more enjoyable. Please plan accordingly and take advantage of this opportunity!

You've asked for the philosophy and reasoning behind the Paladin changes; after speaking with the developers, I've returned with some notes on why the talent trees were changed.

Now, each tree has an overall theme for what it's meant to accomplish: Protection is the defensive tree, upping survivability and defense; Retribution is the damage tree, increasing the Paladin's capacity to dish out DPS; and Holy is the "holy magic" tree, increasing both healing and damage spells. Now, these are the overall ideas behind the trees, but they aren't completely specialized towards these goals -- creating a tree that's completely specialized in one direction causes players to be pigeonholed even further, which is something the designers want to avoid. As such, there are some diverse elements in each tree, such as Blessing of Kings in the Retribution tree. (A similar effect is seen in the Druid talent trees, with both beneficial feral and casting abilities spread throughout.) With a hybrid-like class such as the Paladin, it's important to promote that diversity rather than shun it for over-specialization.

Our goal is to get a new build up on the PTR by the end of the day. This build will bring the intended tuning of the zones much closer to where they should be. We've also fixed a lot of bugs, re-designed some encounters and added some new art (mostly spell effects etc.).

The build going up will also address the Lord Kri server crash that was occurring.

Please keep in mind that we are still tuning and bug fixing. You won't see major design overhauls at this point but we're going to continue to adjust the difficulty of the encounters until we feel like things are close to our intended goals.