Scattered Shots is for Hunters. David Bowers is caught in a Freezing Trap this week, so Daniel Whitcomb -- who did not set the trap, he swears to the Light -- is substituting for him.

You hear it pretty much all the time if you've ever slightly dipped into the world of Hunters. If you want to play in the big leagues, conventional wisdom says you're pretty much stuck with a select handful of pet types (also known as pet families): Ravagers, Cats, and Raptors for PvE, Scorpids for PvP.

But do you know why those pet families are so desired? What it really comes down to is Hunter roles and abilities.

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As the first guild to have killed M'uru, SK-Gaming has now released their video of the fight. You can see it above (if it's working; there seem to be some server issues on their end), or go to their site to download it in full-res glory. There are two different points of view: a BM hunter, and an enhancement shaman. I haven't been able to watch it yet because it's been down, but I'm sure it's an exciting fight.

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Last Sunday, It came from the Blog gathered to run the Orgrimmar Children's Week quests together. Some weren't level 10 yet, but ran with us anyway. Because many of us didn't have the flightpaths (and because it was more fun) we ran together from objective to objective.

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LFG Armory is a new site that's aiming to beat the official Armory at its own game. Blizzard's site, as complete as it is, is still occasionally buggy and slow, and LFG Armory is looking to give players an alternative. And it works fairly well -- while the FAQ claims that data may be a little behind (due to caching of Blizzard's information), both the guild and player profile pages look pretty good and load quickly (and if the site can stay up after we link to them here, that'll be a real sign that it's a stable server).

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Ok, I'll be honest. I'm pretty fine with how we handle money now. Sure, back in Everquest, I needed to go deposit my money in my bank, because due to the encumbrance system, if I had kept all my platinum coins on me, I would have been glued to the spot, unable to walk. But in WoW, there's no encumbrance, and our coins take up no inventory space.

Still, I've seen a lot of people ask to be able to deposit money in the bank, so, being an equal time type of guy, I thought I'd sit back and try to figure out what the advantages would be.

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I have to admit, sometimes I dread it when new video card drivers come out. It always seems like something about them goes wrong, and one of my favorite games refuses to work well with them, and I end up having to roll back to some old drivers just to play what I want to play again. That said, sometimes they also work well, and your graphics run smoother, and life is good. As Alex said to me earlier, Azeroth is a whole lot prettier when it's at 90 fps instead of 10 fps.

But seriously, to the point. Here's a heads up to all our Nvidia card users who like living on the edge as far as upgrading goes. Nvidia has just released new beta drivers for their graphics cards. We repeat: these are beta drivers, so only install if you know what you're doing.

Here's the links:

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Blizzard has posted that the commercial for the Toyota truck that used WoW as a setting has won a People's Choice Webby award for online commercial. It was beaten out for the actual award by those Mac vs. PC online ads that spanned across some of the most popular websites online, but in the voting, the people decided that "I am the lawgivaaa!" was a little more exciting and creative. And as big a fan as I am of John Hodgman (and I am a big fan), I have to agree.

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With Wrath of the Lich King and the return of the Scourge to the spotlight, an old friend comes back along with them. The Nerubians! We haven't seen much of them in the World of Warcraft yet beyond being undead lackies, they have a long, quite interesting backstory. We saw a little more in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, but their story goes even deeper. In the big picture of Warcraft, their ancestors predate all but the Trolls, and maybe even them.

In the beginning there were the Silithid. Insectoid horrors that crawled forth from the Well of Eternity just happened to grab the interest of the Old Gods. The most notable of them so far being C'Thun. C'Thun crafted avatars of war from the Silithid, twisting them into humanoid soldiers. These avatars became known as the Aqir. The Aqir are best described as 'evil' though that is always in the eye of the beholder.

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The term "boxing" takes on a different meaning in Blizzard's World of Warcraft. It basically describes the act of controlling several characters from multiple accounts or instances of the game and simultaneously doing the same action.

While this may seem like an amusing way to play WoW, some people find this kind of practice an act of gameplay abuse, especially when exercised in PvP or Battlegrounds. WoW Europe forum poster Noroimuja gave a lengthy explanation why boxing should be banned from the game.

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Well Fed Buff serves up tasty dishes to boost your HP, stats and appetite – with that special WoW twist, of course.

The cool thing about food and drink in the World of Warcraft are all the little real-world and lore references you'll find tucked into the items: Cuergo's Gold and Cuergo's Gold with Worm (from one of the funnest puzzle quests in the game) never fail to bring a smile to my face when I encounter them in game. So it amazed me a bit when I realized I'd never noticed Moonbrook Riot Taffy, because I'm a huge fan of yummy noshes that kids can help make at home.

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Totem Talk is the column for Shamans. Matthew Rossi has been rediscovering his restoration roots this week, so of course he's decided to write a column all about the offensive aspects of the shaman class. There's something seriously wrong with that boy.

Damage dealing. The next few columns will discuss just how shamans go about putting the hurt on people: this series (The Arsenal) is about totems, shocks and the two lightning bolt spells, the offensive arsenal of the shaman class. As you first start out playing a shaman, you quickly learn that there are a variety of ways to output damage as a shaman: offensive totems, instant-cast but short range shocks, and longer rage lightning bolt and chain lightning spells with a casting time. As time passes and you settle into either a melee role using weapons or a caster role (meaning that you don't want to be anywhere near the things you're killing) you'll change the way you use these abilities. There are effectively two 'play styles' for the shaman, which we'll call 'elemental' and 'enhancement' for the specs that make the optimum use of these styles: a restoration shaman can act like an elemental or an enhancement shaman as he or she chooses, but even in equivalent gear she'll of course be less effective at dealing damage than they are, since the restoration spec is optimized for healing.

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Here in the US, you can't really arrest someone for selling gold in-game -- it's against Blizzard's Terms of Service, so they can ban you from the game or even file suit against you, but it's not actually illegal. But in China, under communism, things are apparently a little different. Two gold farmers have actually been arrested by the government for "unfair revenue distribution" -- apparently the two had a disagreement about how to distribute the over $200,000 they had made from selling gold in World of Warcraft.

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SK-Gaming vs M'uru Movie
SK-Gaming released the movie of their fight against M'uru.                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

Size - 431Mb
Runtime - 9 Minutes
Resolution - 1680x1050      Tracklist
Grendel - One Eight Zero (Life Cried Remix)     
It's a Dream - DJ Dean (Unspecified Remix)Points of view
Valandu
Morphling

Raid Composition

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Over the next couple of days, we're going to dig deep into the archives of WoW machinima, thanks to our dear readers. I never thought I'd end up featuring anything with Kelly Clarkson music in the background, but this movie is in the same vein as Here Without You. Those that were around for that tearjerker may not be as impressed with Because of You, but it's still powerful nonetheless.

Where the former involved a man taking revenge for his woman, the latter has it the opposite way. Dating back to October 2006, this little story is about a lady that will go to the depths of hell to avenge her fallen man. This seems to be a popular format for machinima, as it's been repeated in almost every serious plotline movie out there in the last few years. However, if you're a big sap and enjoyed the movie like I did, check out the higher quality version.

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Greetings fellow travelers of time and space! Welcome to the first official posting of Barrens Chat, a soon to be weekly implement of random craziness. Although I know I'm not the first comic strip, and likely I wont be the last to grace these glorious virtual pages, I invite you to take a romp with me, Megan, as I drag forth those silly comments people make that they hope no one noticed, and glorify them with fancy colors, and ever-changing art.

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Our good friends at Joystiq are passing out the cigars today -- the newest site in the Joystiq network (which WoW Insider is a part of, within Weblogs, Inc., which is a division of AOL) is called Big Download, is in beta, and is open right now for your browsing and file grabbing pleasure. We'll direct you to the most important part of the site, the World of Warcraft page, where you can grab Blizzard's latest patch and trailer at your convenience (in case you haven't gotten them yet), but the site's got lots of other good stuff, too, including that sweet looking Mirror's Edge gameplay video everyone's going gaga over, and even full MMO clients like Dream of Mirror Online and EVE Online.

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Supremus has acquired a new target! Unlike our last victim of the Black Temple, Spellweave, of Kul Tiras-EU, is not standing around waiting to get smushed. But how fast can those little gnome legs take her from that giant abyssal? Especially wearing a pink tabard? That clashes ridiculously with the headpiece and shoulders? The effect is that of a stick of cotton candy dipped in rat skulls.

You have only two hours left to participate in AA's latest user submission challenge: Grand Theft Azeroth! Send us pics of you (or your friends, we're not picky) committing your most nefarious deeds in the style of the GTA series. Mount-jackings, thefts, murders, muggings, cruelty to animals and critters, picking up blood elf ladies of the night, punting gnomes -- let your wicked side out. Send your screenshots to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com by noon EST on TODAY, Thursday, May 8, and please use the phrase "GTA" somewhere in your e-mail title.

Do you have any unusual World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We'd love to see it on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!

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Every Thursday, Shelbi Roach of The Bronze Kettle guides you in creating WoW-inspired crafts using real world mats with World of WarCrafts.

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Rogues in Blizzard's World of Warcraft are probably the embodiment of everything creepy (pun intended) and sneaky. This is perhaps best seen in WoW player Opex's fan art, the subject of which is a rogue troll of the same name.

It was Blizzard blue poster Slorkuz endorsed Opex's artwork on the European World of Warcraft forums, and with good reason: the picture seems to bring out the stealthy ferocity that rogues are known for. The scar that runs across the rogue's face, the tusks, the smirk and the gleaming red eyes rife with malice - all of these factors help set the dark, sinister tone of the artwork.

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M'uru kill movie by SK-Gaming

SK-Gaming just released the footage from their world first M'uru kill with two different point of views, Valandu and Morphling. Ventrilo is included from about 6% to 0%, Nerdscreams!

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It's no fun to be constantly redirected. Just ask World of Warcraft player Soraneaptide. The player posted a complaint on Blizzard's forums regarding the company's store. According to Soraneaptide, the Blizzard store has too many redirects and seems to bounce back to itself.

Furthermore, Soraneaptide can't seem to open an entry for a detail view of the Blizzard store. Neither does the player have access to Blizzard.com or links to a webmaster.

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I like starmixx's idea from WoW LJ: whenever she's driven nuts by something in game, she just steps away and does some baking. To tell the truth, I've gotten pretty good at avoiding my ingame annoyances -- I don't really PuG all that much anymore, and I mostly avoid group quests (or just stay patient enough until someone I know can help me finish them). But sooner or later, we're all going to hit our heads up against something that happens in game, and then it's a good time to walk away and... do what?

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M'uru World 3rd kill by Premonition - Loot table updated
Premonition got the world 3rd kill on M'uru, the loot table has been updated with their loot. Congratulations to them.

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How far will your World of Warcraft guild go just to expand your roster? That's a question we'd like to ask Resistance is Futile after seeing the most elaborate guild recruitment video we've come across. We know people take Blizzard's phenomenal MMORPG seriously, but this video can't make guild members any more proud.

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We hope you can still remember the Blizzard v MDY Industries case years back. It's about the use of the WoWGlider bot program within World of Warcraft meriting Blizzard's assertion of its copyright privileges. As of writing, the two sides are still stuck in a stalemate, both filing motions to claim victory without trial.

Closely monitoring the conflict is the interest group Public Knowledge. Just recently, they filed "friend of the court" arguments for the federal court handling the Blizzard v MDY Industries case to have a say on the subject.

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