The annual Feast of Winter Veil celebration has started today. As always, there's a ton of events, quests and items to enjoy as Greatfather Winter visits Ironforge and Orgrimmar. Whether you want to fight some bosses or just run around /kissing revelers under the mistletoe, there's something for everyone.

Unlike previous years, you can spend some extra time attempting to complete the Winter Veil achievements. Allakhazam poster LockeColeMA has written a quick guide to them if you need some help. Also, gift-giving will start on Dec. 25 under the trees in Ironforge and Orgrimmar. The event ends Jan. 2, so enjoy it while it lasts.

You can discuss the festivities in our general forum. GodOfMoo has already started a thread regarding the event, so check it out. Also, some members of the Allakhazam community have created their own "12 Days of Winter Veil" song. It starts off with a "murloc drinking some tea" and mentions drinkin' dwarves and drake mounts. You can read the full thing here or after the jump.

Hunters are getting all sorts of changes, which have been listed in both a previous news post and in our hunter forum. One of those changes is an overhaul to Deterrence, which "allows you to deflect 100% of incoming melee or spell damage for 5 seconds, but prevents you from attacking while active. You still must be facing the attacker to deflect the damage."  That directional limitation may be removed after testing.

Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has written a lengthy post explaining the team's reasoning behind the new Deterrence. He explains it's meant primarily as an Arena tool and will be a reason to have a "great visual in there of the hunter just parrying stuff right and left." You can read his full post here or below.

Also, there's going to be some buffs to Arcane Shot and Explosive Shot put up on the PTR. Arcane will have its mana cost lowered, while Explosive will get a substantial damage increase while no longer dealing AoE damage.

Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street recently outlined some elemental shaman changes that will be coming in the minor content patch to give them "a little more damage scaling in later tiers of gear." You can read all about that in our previous post.

Well, Ghostcrawler said the dev team was worried that even after these changes, elemental shaman damage may still be too low. To address this, here's some more changes that might make it to the PTR for testing (note: GC mentions the Elemental Mastery overhaul could be a slight PvP nerf in certain situations):

Elemental Oath -- In addition to existing effects, now increases spell damage done by the Shaman by 5/10% while Elemental Focus Clearcasting is active.

Elemental Mastery -- Overhauled. Now increases the Shaman’s critical strike chance by 20% for 30 seconds. Cooldown remains 3 minutes.

Glyph of Lightning Bolt -- No longer affects cost. Now increases damage by 4%.

I'm taking my time leveling as I work through the Wrath of the Lich King content. I am thoroughly enjoying the in-depth quest chains, which contain so much lore that sometimes I feel like I'm watching a movie or reading a novel instead of playing a game.

Yesterday I completed part of an absolutely amazing quest chain (in my humble opinion) in Dragonblight, and I'm not even to the epic conclusion of it yet. You may want to avoid these quest links if you don't want any spoilers, but without giving anything away, the chain starts with the quest Into Hostile Territory (at least for Alliance) and continues from there. Once I hit the quest Return to Angrathar, I enjoyed a feature brand new to WoW with WotLK: in-game cinematics. And oddly enough, Blizzard posted the cinematic on its official Web site yesterday, as well.

The cinematic, entitled "The Wrath Gate," can be viewed or downloaded here. Warning: it contains story spoilers! Don't watch it unless you've completed the quest or don't mind having the story ruined. Either way, it will be there for you to watch or re-watch at your leisure. So, how does everyone feel about the addition of in-game cinematics?

Ever wanted to work on Allakhazam? Are you a strong writer with knowledge about what makes the gaming industry tick? We're hiring!

The Editorial team is hiring two part-time editors to help improve the overall quality of our content. If you're interested in finding out more about the requirements, check our job opening page.

According to CCTV.com there is a new restaurant that just opened in Beijing. Not just any restaurant mind you, it's a World of Warcraft themed establishment. The owner hopes to create an atmosphere that fans of the game will find comfortable. I suppose it makes sense to reward a hard day at the gold farming sweatshop with a delicious meal that offers nostalgic reflections about the work day. I wonder if you can pay for your meal with in-game gold.

The restaurant's entrance is a real-life re-creation of the opening animation from the game, The World of Warcraft. The dining area is called the Hall of Snow Storms." Here, an immense plasma screen displays action from the game. There's a towering tree at the center of the dining "portal," creating a pleasing ambiance for leisurely diners. Most patrons are fans of the multi-player game.

The video that CCTV published in conjuncture with the news article is a must see. What do you guys think about this? Let us know in our forums.

Many of us have been playing World of Warcraft for years, and staring at the same character, perpetually stuck with the same features, can get boring. The barbershop offered a nice change of pace, but what about those players who designed their toon on a whim and hate how the character looks, or just want to try something new?

Well, Blizzard has listened. Now for $15, you can change it all. Even your gender and name!

Available at the Account Management page for a flat fee of $15, Character Re-Customization covers all available cosmetic options for a single character and includes an optional name change to go with your new look. For more information, see the FAQ -- or log in to the Character Re-Customization page now to begin the process of reinventing the new you!

Basically the only things you can't change are your race and class. The full FAQ can be found below.

Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has certainly been busy providing us with changes coming to numerous classes. He outlined a nerf to hunter PvE damage yesterday and listed upcoming Death Knight changes today. Well, that's not all! Mages are getting some changes, too.

The buffs here are designed primarily to make Arcane more competitive with Fire / Frostfire builds in PvE. Because they could end up buffing Arcane in PvP, we are prepared to adjust the damage of say Arcane Barrage if needed, but we want to see these in action on the PTR first.

Ghostcrawler also said today they don't want mages taking a drastic lead in in PvE damage with the hunter nerfs. Read the full list of mage changes here or below.

We reported last week on some possible Death Knight changes Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street outlined on the O-Boards. Well, he's just listed today 22 upcoming changes that should be available to test on the PTR before they go live.

Our reason for most of these changes should be obvious, but some common themes are:
-- Making tanking still rely on cooldowns, but rely on them a little less.
-- Make Blood a more attractive spec, and particularly for tanking.
-- Chill out some of the defensive capabilities all DKs have in PvP.
-- Avoid having to use Death and Decay as an out-of-combat runic power generator.

Read the full list here or after the jump.

I think it's fair to say that we're all excited at the prospect of dual speccing. The thought of switching between healing and DPS on my druid on the fly (or as close to "on the fly" as the system entails) is a great thought, indeed.

We've known for awhile, at least since our interview with Jeffrey “Tigole” Kaplan at the official Wrath of the Lich King release, that the dual spec feature will probably "be (released) in patch 3.1 that will be the first major content patch after Wrath of the Lich King is live."

Blizzard's Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street recently suggested the same time frame, but he also added another interesting bit of information: "It will be trivial to do in town. You will also be able to do it out of towns, but not as trivially."

It's impossible to tell exactly what that means at this stage, but it seems from his comment that it won't be as simple as changing stances with the click of a button out of town. You can read his full post here or below, which also touches once again on the "easy" level of WotLK. He says Ulduar will be more difficult for guilds who like a challenge.