It looks like Blizzard is going to help shamans, rogues and druids get in on the AoE (area of effect damage, or hitting many mobs at once) fun to make them more useful in dungeons. Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has acknowledged that many players are using AoE abilities to clear dungeons, and they're going to leave that tactic alone for now unless it gets too out of hand in heroics and raids.

Shaman – we are removing the threat component from Fire Nova Totem and Magma Totem and increasing the damage from Magma Totem.

Rogue – we are removing the cooldown from Fan of Knives and adjusting the damage calculation slightly to make daggers more useful for this ability.

Druid – we are adding Swipe (Cat) as a baseline ability.

These changes are coming in the next minor content update. Read the full post here or below.

I was playing on Llane when it went down without explanation around 12:30 p.m. EST. It looks like it wasn't just my realm. According to this announcement, 36 servers in the Vindication and Ruin battlegroups are currently down with no notice of when they might come back up.

We're aware that players are currently unable to log in to the following realms and we're in the process of investigating. We will provide further updates when they are available.

The full list of affected servers is after the jump.

UPDATE:  Around 3:44 p.m. EST, Bornakk posted that the issues have been resolved and the servers are currently being brought back online and should be playable soon.

Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has been discussing a lot of paladin changes lately, so he's consolidated them all into one list on the O-Boards. Here's one of the changes that stood out to me:

All paladins receive a single-target taunt (name TBD) as a base ability.

Can't go wrong with that. The full list can be found here or after the jump. They'll all be coming in the next minor content patch.

Season two of The Guild kicks off tomorrow, but there's one major change. The web show will now be brought to you by Xbox Live and Microsoft and sponsored by Sprint! Here's some details straight from Felicia "Codex" Day (her full post can be found here or after the jump):

For those who know and love our indie production, you know it’s been tough to keep the cameras rolling. ... For Season 2 we decided to look for a production partner to help us release episodes quicker and be able to pay our cast and crew in advance.

For those with Xbox Live, you will be able to download Season 2 episodes every week starting tomorrow, Tuesday, November 25th for free in HD quality on the Video Marketplace. For those only on the web, episodes will be streaming on MSN Video in a world-wide release, subtitled in 8 different languages across the world. You will also be able to download episodes in the Zune Marketplace for your mobile viewing pleasures.

The Guild crew will retain ownership and creative control, so you can expect more of the same from them in the 12 new episodes coming your way, all for free. We're big fans of the show, as shown in our interview with the cast at BlizzCon, so we'll definitely be watching tomorrow's season premiere.

Happy fourth anniversary, World of Warcraft! Allakhazam users Baron von tarv and Jordster were kind enough to remind us in in our general forum to log on today, Nov. 23, to earn the achievement [WoW's 4th Anniversary] and pick up your Baby Blizzard Bear companion in the mail. Here's a little snippet of the letter from the dev team you'll find in your mailbox:

We wanted to send you something to say thanks for sharing this game with us. Sure, the 4th anniversary present is traditionally "flowers" ... but in WoW, it's "bear."

I know I'll be cycling through all my characters to get these gifts. On behalf of everyone at Allakhazam, I'd just like to thank Blizzard for four fun years, and here's to many more!

We've known for a year that William Shatner is a tauren shaman. Well, it turns out Ozzy Osbourne is an undead warlock. It's Ozzy vs. Arthas for the title of Prince of Darkness!

This is one of two new TV commercials created by Blizzard to advertise Wrath of the Lich King. The second stars Steve Van Zandt of The Sopranos and Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band. Honestly, they should have cut the Zandt commercial and just added an extra 30 seconds to the Ozzy one.

Allakhazam user Shamibell has started a thread in our general forum about the Ozzy commercial if you'd like to add to the discussion.

You know Todd McFarlane, right? He's probably most known as the creator of Spawn and the guy who makes a ton of great toys. Well, Azeroth Advisor is holding a really cool contest in which four entrants will win the opportunity to have McFarlane draw one of their WoW characters!

For those who don't know, Azeroth Advisor is a free electronic newsletter that is customized to your character's current level and class based on information from the Armory. You get a newsletter for every one of your characters each week or each level, whichever comes first.

Participating in the contest is simple. All you need to do is subscribe to the newsletter. The full rules can be found here or below. The contest ends on Dec. 31.

According to a post on the WoW Europe forums by Vaneck, the warlock summoning spell will be having an overhaul. Instead of requiring an individual shard for each summon you'll summon something similar to the meeting stones which will last 5 minutes. This will be coming before the next major content patch that will have the raid instance Ulduar (3.1). The original post can be found here.

We all knew Wrath of the Lich King did well, but Blizzard has confirmed it by officially announcing today that the expansion sold over 2.8 million copies in its first 24 hours of availability to become the fastest-selling PC game of all time. Of course, it's only competition was The Burning Crusade's 2.4 million copies in January 2007, so Blizzard was going to hold onto the title no matter what.

"We're grateful for the incredible support that players around the world have continued to show for World of Warcraft," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “Wrath of the Lich King contains some of the best content we’ve created for the game so far, and we look forward to seeing even more players log in to experience it in the days ahead."

The full press release can be found after the jump.

UPDATE 11/21: Ghostcrawler has continued his discussion of the feral changes in this thread.

Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has posted an update regarding feral druid changes that are coming in the next patch. To sum it up, bonus armor on items will not receive the bear armor multiplier and weapons in the game will no longer improve feral attack power. An improvement in the Survival of the Fittest talent should basically compensate for your current armor bonus, and here's his take on feral weapons:

We are no longer going to have weapons in the game which improve feral attack power. Instead, your attack power will scale based on the dps of the item. Practically speaking this means almost no change for any gear you currently use -- you should not see your dps change. What it does mean is that we can create the occasional dps staff that could be used by druids or hunters (or very undergeared warriors), and that Ferals may occasionaly use two-handed dps maces.

GC's full post can be found here or below.