I am a terrible leveler. I started playing back in January 2007, and in all that time have managed to produce a single 70. Admittedly, I think she's a very good 70 and she stays busy, but you would think that nearly 1 1/2 years would be a sufficient period of time to level another class to the endgame. Guess not.

Lately I've been trying to fix this and have gone back to leveling a few alts. While talking to a friend last night about his propensity for leveling alts at the approximate speed of an SR-71, it occurred to me that I have two warriors, only one of whom has leveled quickly. The other just can't seem to fill up the XP bar. Obviously there's no class difference to cite as a possible reason, so I started thinking about what affects the leveling speed of an alt, and why I've got so many unsuccessful ones littering the character selection screen:

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World of Warcraft's forums are getting a few changes on May 21, according to an announcement made by Blizzard poster Drysc. Most of the changes will be minor - the biggest change being the recruitment forum being split between the Alliance and Horde factions.

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So Leafshine has a problem: She's got way too much stuff to disenchant. Her friends have been sending her things to disenchant for quite some time, letting her keep the ingredients. But now there's two things different: They're sending her droves of level 70 items, and they want the materials back.

If you've played the level 70 game and done the Shattered Sun Offensive dailies, you probably know where this is going. On a good day, doing the complete Outland daily circle, I can come out with somewhere around 10 disenchant-worthy items between regular drops and Shattered Sun Supplies. Leafshine says she can sometimes spend up to 10 minutes working on Disenchanting, and I can believe it. Every time I process a batch of greens on my disenchanter, not only does it take some time to get through with them, then I have to process multiple piles of reagents, and figure if I'm going to store them, sell them, or use them to make a tailoring blue which I will then disenchant into a shard.

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MMO-Champion has just posted what appears to be the patch notes for the WoTLK Friends and Family Alpha. This is an unconfirmed leak, but everything on them would appear to check out as legitimate. They're pretty barebones, but there's some intriguing information to be found:

• Death Knights are playable, although the starting quests and talents are not complete.
• Spells and Talents past 70 are available for the Druid, Mage, Priest, Shaman, Warlock, and Warrior classes
• You can head to Northrend via Menethil Harbor and Theramore for the Alliance, or Undercity and Ogrimmar for the Horde
• The Howling Fjord, Borean Tundra, Grizzly Hills, and Dragonblight are the zones currently open for testing.
• Utgarde Keep, Utgarde Pinnacle, The Nexus, and Drak'tharon Keep are currently available for testing.

If they already have talents for quite a few classes past 70, it would seem to suggest that they are further along on the expansion then we think. Hopefully, if these patch notes ring true, we'll hear about those talents soon. You can read the full Patch notes behind the jump.

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Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau, everyone can get in on the action and get mad purpz. Today, we take a look at why endgame guilds die.

This week, world-first guild Death and Taxes made an announcement which floored most of the raiding community: The End. Death and Taxes is no more. For a long time, raiders and non-raiders alike have been following the adventures of those guilds with the time and dedication to be competing for firsts. Seeing a household name disband, and not for April Fool's, is particularly poignant because it brings the message home that even the loftiest raid guilds are human too, subject to the same problems and drama as any other guild out there.

There have been multiple reasons given for the disbanding of D'n'T -- what's most interesting about these is that many people have commented on the same things happening in their guild, or in guilds they know about. Were the problems introduced by The Burning Crusade and other Blizzard-based changes, such as paid character transfer? Or are they fundamentally the result of high expectations, raiding downtime and the ensuing attrition over two years? Let's take a look at some of the problems facing endgame guilds' longevity, and perhaps an insight into how to avoid the same fate.

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It seems Wrath of the Lich King finally entered into the Friends & Family Alpha phase, and the patch notes have been leaked.


World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King: Friends and Family Alpha

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WotLK Friend & Family Alpha Starting - Patch Notes
Looks like the Friend & Family Alpha started, the first patch notes have been "leaked".

Any screenshot of the alpha files on MMO-Champion will be deleted and users will be banned for ever from the forums, the files are under a strict NDA. Anyone posting about the way to get these files will be banned as well.

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The Worldwide Invitational is more than just Blizzard strutting their stuff. They also have a few contests to let you strut your stuff. The latest announcement is... a Fan Art contest!

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Arcane Brilliance comes to you every week from the top of Archmage Xylem's tower in Ashzara. Yes, in between sending wave after wave of power-hungry Mages to kill Morphaz over and over and over again, the Archmage finds the time to put quill to scroll and conjure forth a weekly Mage column for WoW Insider. Just kidding, it's actually just some guy at a computer who writes these, and all Xylem does in between giving quests to unwary adventurers is walk from the bottom of his tower to the top and back again. It's a boring life to be sure, but all I do between typing paragraphs is walk from the computer to the fridge and back again, so who am I to judge?

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I'm a lore nerd. Plain and simple. Nerdy nerd nerd. Thus, my kryptonite is questions such as, "Who is Aran's son?" and "Why are Blood Elves in Mount Hyjal anyway?" These questions make me weep and wish Know Your Lore was more than just weekly.

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Drysc has posted that on May 21st, the official forums will undergo a few changes. While most of them are minor, one is a little more meaty.

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The weekend has finally arrived, so I decided to dig something silly out of the archives for you. This one is over a year old! "You're Pitiful" is Weird Al's take on the James Blunt song "You're Beautiful." In World of Warcraft, Drane translates the song into the subtle cries for help by a pathetic gnome.

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DPS Record: 6000 Dps

Our long time readers might remember the old Decimator DPS video (WoW Classic) that showed the possibilities in PvE with the pre TBC itemization, it's not brand new but in the same vein a german guild pRophecy (Destromath EU) released a DPS movie featuring a Rage Winterchill kill in 2.5 minutes, with a warrior point of view (Irae) who reached 6000 dps overall with a peak at 9k dps. This all happened pre 2.4 and after the haste nerf (i know that there is a dual warglaive rogue with 7k dps, but that was filmed before the haste nerf).

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Hybrid Theory returns after a month long hiatus. We could tell you a long and boring story about how Alex's computer suffered a horrible death during his relocation from Wisconsin to Michigan, but we won't. Just picture the battle scene from Braveheart, except replace the English with a PC. It was basically the same thing.

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Kil'jaeden weapon drops preview
With M'uru out of the picture, we're left with 5 weapons from the old and always-reliable sunwell loot leak. We can assume that all these weapons drop from Kil'jaeden and it's probably a good time to make full size screenshots of them. Even if the stats on the original screenshot was accurate, they could have been changed in the last weeks and it might be slightly different in 2.4.2. However it didn't happen yet for any of the item from this screenshot.

• Thori'dal, the Stars' Fury (Bow) (Video)
• Apolyon, the Soul-render (2H Sword)
• Golden Staff of the Sin'dorei (Staff)
• Sunflare (Dagger)
• Crux of the Apocalypse (Dagger)
  
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