To all aboard this miniature locomotive: Your doom is imminent! This track leads not to your destination, but to your unpleasant deaths. I will feast on your bones, and my evil schemes will be nourished by your flesh. It is … ick. What is this? Is this wood? Is this just a toy? Is there any organic life on this train at all? Oh, man. This is almost as bad as that time I ate that catnip mouse. (Thanks to Velakryte of <Scalded Chimps> on Jaedenar for this screenshot.)

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

Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, Val’kyr on mounts, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran. Older screenshots can be found here.

Breakfast Topics & discussion
Do you prefer to travel by boat or scenic gryphon?
Does life imitate WoW, or vice versa?
You knew your group was doomed when….?
How many alts do you have?
Close encounters of the newbie kind.
Suffering through child’s play in WoW.
Easy come, easy go – but where does your gold go?
Help David decide which class to play next!
Blizzard has teamed with J!NX to provide some Blizzard-branded clothing, but… would you wear this stuff?

PvP
Is there just too much honor in cross-realm battlegrounds?

Machinima
Another interesting Chinese advertisement for Warcraft.

Tips & tricks
How to hit level 60 in style!
How to keep yourself up to date with Azeroth’s lore.
How to be a good player.
I think it may be more of an art, but Mike claims there’s a science to /gquitting.

Contests
Latest comic contest honorable mention.

Maintenance & realm status
Blizzard will be compensating players for downtime on some realms – but which realms, we don’t yet know.
Some Sunday night downtime for US players.

Guilds
In this week’s GuildWatch, we learn about the mysterious “order 66.”
EU horde guild Nihilum gets Kel’Thuzad to 1%.
EU horde guild Nihilum brings Kel’Thuzad crashing down for a world first!
Hardcore raiding, one month in.
The guild Risen has assembled the world’s first Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian.

Blizzard news
Rob Pardo talks about Blizzard’s development process at the Austin Game Conference.
Announced at the Austin Game Conference – World of Warcraft has reached 7 million total subscribers.

Other items of interest
If you’ve been on any chat channel at all over the past week, you would have had trouble missing the fact that Steve Irwin has died.
The New York Times talks about Warcraft’s success.
In-game Steve Irwin memorial service.
Phat Loot Phriday presents: Wirt’s Third Leg.

Cancel whatever you have scheduled today.

Make a pot of coffee.

Do some stretches; long bouts of sitting are unhealthy.

Feed the cats. Let the dog out.

Seriously, this list is big. It’s unruly!

P.S. I tried to get you guys a good Long Cat picture but I failed you all. Maybe next time? Yes. Next time.

In a related note, I have a distaste for the new way to search through the icanhascheezburger site.

Ready? Set. Go!

• The Daily Blink: A Word from Our Sponsor. I heartily enjoy this comic. So, I’ll link this one too: Survey Says.
• The Daily Blink: Our Sister Publication and Dude, Like, I Just Totally Dinged.
• New! The Warcraft Hero in: The Hero’s New Cloak.
• Battlemasters: To the ground, baby!
• WoW, eh: Welcome to the Jungle. I wonder if they have fun and games?
• NPC: Big Boned. Also, Binkfield and To Meter, or Not to Meter. Actually, meters have been a hot topic lately, since so many people are using the Dungeon Finder Tool. Check out Christian Belt’s Why I Hate DPS Meters when you get a chance, and for a poignant comment on heal meters, check out Arbolamante’s comment, as well as others, on that article. Yay fat Bink!
• Torment of the Week: Die Responsibly.
• Equinox and Prototype.
• Complex Actions: Children’s Rhymes II: Show and Tell. This isn’t quite the latest, but the newest comics still have no perma-links (hint hint).
• The latest from Guilded Age, which is a comic influenced by WoW, as well as other games.
• Teh Gladiators: An Epic Charge Ends in Tears.
• LFG #323 and #324.
• Daily Quests: A Miner Disappearance. Puns!
• On the Dark Legacy Comics main page, there’s an adorable filler cartoon because Keydar has started physical therapy. I especially enjoy the fact that he took the time to draw a heart. /tear. I can’t snag a perma-link just yet, unfortunately, and by the time you might be reading this, the main page might have something else, because, as so many of you like to cleverly and continuously point out, Sunday Morning Funnies publishes in the morning, while DLC does not.
• Daily Quest: You Two Play Nice. I love the “slow-mo.”
• NoObz: Don’t Change a Winning Team.
• The Adventures of Disgraph T. Dwarf: Ding Dong Lich. Which old Lich? The wicked Lich! (I hope that I haven’t gotten your hopes up for some sort of The Wizard of Oz-themed WoW-related Disgraphian adventure, because you’d be disappointed).
• The Adventures of Disgraph T. Dwarf: The (L)edge of Deception. These two got me laughing hard.
• Cru the Dwarf: Back and to the Left. If that little boy was teasing her because he had a little crush on her, it so backfired.
• Slash AFK: Frost-MORE.
• Experience Points: Resolutions.
• Admit it: you miss Christmas/etc just a little bit, right? Yeah? So here’s one that slipped through the cracks: Action Trip: This Year’s Xmas Dream.
• Awkward Zombie: Dragging Along.
• Monkey Punchers: The Itch.
• More WoW-related goodness from Ebenezer and Snooch.
• Penny-Arcade: The Bright Side.

Well, I told you so. Did you read them all? Did I miss something? Leave your tips in the comments or send them through our tip line.

About a month ago, we had a discussion about the specific character bonuses that come with each profession. Then we jumped into a great deal more detail around Jewelcrafting and Blacksmithing, whose profession bonuses are incredibly customizable when compared to the other professions. These bonuses usually rate the itemization equivalent of 60 attack power. While that’s not a humongous number, it’s certainly a meaningful bump in your character’s potency.

However, the very basic reason to be a particular profession usually has to do with what you can sell in the Auction House. The character bonuses are certainly a huge perk of training a profession, and shouldn’t be ignored by any player looking to cruise endgame content. But the driving reason for many people to pursue these skills had to do with other items which produce cash. Cold, hard, beautiful cash.

Let’s jump behind the cut and talk about the saleable items from each profession. While you might choose your profession based on its character bonuses, it’s still best to know what items will sell on the AH from each.

Gathering Professions: Herbalism, Mining, Skinning

All three gathering professions are very powerful for producing saleable product for the Auction House. Selling the raw materials gathered with these skills will fuel the items required for raiders to punch down Icecrown Citadel, or even casual players who want to make sure their characters are at the pinnacle of their personal progression.

Herbalism’s big-sell item is the Frost Lotus. The Frost Lotus is the cornerstone reagent for creating Flasks of Endless Rage and Flasks of the Frost Wyrm, two of the most popular items on the Auction House. Even Herbalist/Alchemists will probably buy the occasional Frost Lotus stacks if they find themselves without time to farm. Your Frost Lotus should sell fairly quickly from the Auction House, assuming you’ve got them reasonably priced. The down side of the Frost Lotus is that it drops at random from any Northrend herb. It’s hard to farm these on purpose.

The other benefit to Herbalism is that there are two crafting professions which are fed by the skill. Both Alchemists and practitioners of Inscription will need herbs to produce their final product. You’ll not only pick up cash from people who need flasks, but you’ll also sell to people who are trying to advance these skills.

Skinning has always been a reliable gathering skill. If you have some time and the ability to kill mobs, you have the ability to farm leather. It doesn’t feel like there’s quite as many skinnable beasts cruising Northrend endgame as in Burning Crusade, but it’s not all that hard to find lower level skinning opportunities. Skinners also have a few more varieties of leather to collect in Northrend, like the Nerubian Chitin and Jormungar Scales. This variety will probably lead to an ebb and flow in individual cost on your local economy, but it basically means that if someone needs one kind of skinning produce, no other type will do.

Like Herbalism, Skinning has a cornerstone product. The Arctic Fur is used in many precious recipes and is used to actually purchase certain Northrend recipes. Both extant and leveling leatherworkers will need the Arctic Fur, and that creates a constant demand for the material. Like the Frost Lotus, however, you can’t specifically farm for Arctic Fur — it has a random chance to drop from critters you skin. The final real down side for Skinning is that it mostly only fuels Leatherworking, so you’re not going to get a lot of cross-traffic in your product.

Mining is the final gathering profession, and it’s arguably the best of the three for picking up huge amounts of cash. (We should acknowledge right off the bat that the argument depends on your local economy.) This is because the produce from mining is used in three different professions: Blacksmithing, Engineering, and Jewelcrafting.

With three different crafting professions desperate to buy metal ore, you’ll almost never lack for customers. Since the ore creates many of the important gems that players will constantly be replacing with each new gear upgrade, the stuff is indispensable to jewelcrafters. Blacksmiths use smelted bars to create new gem sockets for themselves and their customers. Ultimately, you really just can’t go wrong selling ore on the auction house.

More importantly, miners have an important cooldown. They are the only profession that can create Titansteel, by smelting three eternal elements into some titanium. Titantsteel usually sells on the auction house for a hundred gold over the sum of its parts. That’s because the miner isn’t really selling the metal, per se. They’re selling the use of their cooldown — you can only create Titansteel once every 20 hours.

Even though the gathering professions are usually the most reliable money makers, every profession has something they can sell. Let’s go through the crafting professions, now, and look at the most viable products from each.

Alchemy

We’ve touched on Alchemist’s flasks, but those form the key structure for how Alchemists make money on the Auction House. Flasks of Endless Rage provide a long-term attack power buff, and are sought after by any physical DPSer looking to cruise raids. Flasks of the Frost Wyrm are the spellpower equivalent, which will be sought out by both magical DPS and healers. If a character is hurting for mana, then the Alchemist can provide the Flask of Pure Mojo. The tank flask is the Flask of Stoneblood, giving a valuable bump to hit points.

Blacksmithing

While many blacksmithing products were valuable at the opening of the expansion, most of the weapons and gear are easily leap-frogged by emblem gear. This regrettable condition has left only the Eternal Belt Buckle as the blacksmith’s viable product. Sure, you could still put up a Titansteel Destroyer, but you’ll probably make better cash selling the materials themselves.

Enchanting

Enchanting is the first of two ultimate selling professions. Most new gear will need an Enchanter to give it that extra stat boost, so you’ll constantly be in demand. Even better, Enchanting doubles as a pseudo-gathering profession, since you can cycle unneeded drops into raw materials. Those raw materials can then be sold on the Auction House. You might want to make friends with your local Inscriptionist, though, to obtain the vellum needed to be able to sell enchants on the AH. Still, most Enchanters I know are comfortable pitching their services in their faction’s trade channel.

Engineering

If you’ve got appropriate amount of Ashen Verdict reputation, you can sell arrows and bullets. As long as there are hunters in Wrath, you’ve got cash flow.

Inscription

Just about everything you make from Inscription will sell on the Auction House. However, it probably won’t sell for very much. This is because people don’t swap their glyphs all that often, so they only to need to buy so many. However, Darkmoon Card: Greatness is still worth huge amounts of cash. It’s the best trinket many players will ever see, and they will pay for it appropriately.

Leatherworking

Similar to Blacksmithing, there were a lot of viable products for leatherworkers at the opening of Wrath. Since then, however, they’ve really been mostly restricted to leg kits. The Icescale Leg Armor is the kit for your physical DPS, and will still fetch a healthy price on the AH. The Frosthide Leg Armor is for tanks.

Jewelcrafting

Jewelcrafting is the other of two ultimate selling professions. Every single time a WoW player picks up a new gear item with gem sockets, they’ll have to replace all of the old gems. As long as there’s new gear being made available to players, those players will need gems. You usually want to focus on DPS gems, since there are 15 DPSers for every 7 healers for every 2 tanks. (That’s just a rough estimate — don’t forget the dozens of DPS players who never get to see the inside of a raid.) However, tanks and healers will need their own gems also.

Tailoring

Tailors used to be able to sell bags and gear on the Auction House, but that’s slowed down this late into the expansion. However, tailors still have magic-focused leg kits as a viable products. Brilliant Spellthread and Sapphire Spellthread fly off the shelves as quickly as I can get them on the AH. Also, since it has one of the longest cooldowns in the game, tailors can sell Moonshroud for a tidy sum. After all, you can only make it about once every four days.

Summary

Ultimately, if you choose your profession solely to make money, you’re probably best off sticking with the gathering professions. Since that produce fuels both leveling crafters and existing crafters, your source of customers is much more guaranteed. Still, every profession has something it can sell, so they should all be worthwhile.

Now go make some money!a

• Battlemasters: Let’s Get It On!
• NPC: Boot Camp. NPC: Ommm. NPC: Sleeeepy.
• Torment of the Week: Perfectionists.
• Guilded Age: Page 3 of Chapter 3.
• Cru the Dwarf: Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. I love Cru’s dialogue with himself.
• Teh Gladiators: Fight… to the Death!
• Daily Quests: Ok, Now Play Dead. If you’re a fan of Emergency Kindergarten, then be sure to read the text beneath the comic.
• LFG: #319 and #320.
• Beyond the Tree: Settling dust.
• Dark Legacy Comics: Keydar Can’t Ski. I know that a lot of you were wondering why there was no DLC posted last week, and I am posting it here in case you didn’t catch the link in the comment section. We do wish you well!
• Check out the new wallpaper from Complex Actions.
• NoObz: Season Break.
• Equinox is back with a new Northrend series! Here are the first two: Equinox and a Mess O’ Mounts and Equinox and His Moral Dilemma. Each one is a little mini-series, so click through them.
• Fail Druid fails some more.
• The Adventures of Disgraph T. Dwarf: Disgraph’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve. Congrats on graduating, and looking forward to watching the story arc play out!
• Give a warm welcome back to WoW eh! with The Cold Shoulder. Glad to hear you’re feeling somewhat better Kelly!
• GU Comics: Built In Maturity.

Mike and his friends of the <Borean Kilted Yaksmen> on Thorium Brotherhood ran into a bit of … difficulty during the Trials of the Grand Crusader. This inspired Mike to write a Choose Your Own Adventure-style narrative: “You come upon a door upon which the terrifying image of a skull is floating. Beneath your feet are piled high the bones of those who passed through the door before you. If you Flee, turn to page 156. If you open the door … you know what, just don’t open the door. Are you not seeing all the bones?”

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

Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, Val’kyr on mounts, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran. Older screenshots can be found here.

We’re on the last day of WoW.com’s 12 Days of Winter Veil contests and to keep the swag rolling, we’re giving away a gift certificate that will give you $100 credit for merchandise ordered at Swagdog. We have 2 of those codes to give away and you can enter for a chance to win one of them.

The contest is open to legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec), and everyone who enters must be 18 or older. To enter, leave a comment on this post before 11:59pm ET Sunday, January 3, 2010. Please be sure to use a real email that you check often to enter, so we can contact you should you be the winner. You may enter only once and two winners will be selected randomly. Each winner will get a code for credit at Swagdog.com with a retail value of US$100. Click here to read the official contest rules.

EDIT: Contest closed. Thanks everyone!

After four weeks of repeatedly storming the citadel, the next wing in Icecrown Citadel should be opening soon. Specifically, the Plagueworks should be available on January 5th. At least, that’s what Muradin here said. The screenshot above shows that there are still 28 days remaining even though it was taken this week. I’m not sure if there is a glitch in the Matrix or what. In theory though, we should be breaking through the gates with next week’s raid reset. More bosses available, means extra loot and more Emblems of Frost to pick up.

The bosses

• Festergut (My impressions)
  
• Rotface
• Professor Putricide

Some loot

• Black Bruise (Festergut)
• Trauma (Rotface)
• Tiny Abomination in a Jar (Professor Putricide)

I’m getting impatient. I want to kill Arthas already. Don’t you? But we’ll just have to wait. This will help satisfy our raiding cravings a while longer.

With their constant dabbling in hellfire, shadow magic, and the summoning of demons, it’s fairly clear where warlocks are going to spend their afterlife. And after witnessing this brief preview of the Pearly Gates through a graphical glitch in Howling Fjord, Tiandreyn of <Corporal Punishment> on Grizzly Hills is glad her destiny lies below. “If this is what the heavens look like, this warlock is relieved the Light is not with her,” she wrote. I’m sure the priests are pretty relieved too.

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

Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, Val’kyr on mounts, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran. Older screenshots can be found here.

The Elwynn Extravaganza is today! It came from the Blog will be meeting at Orgrimmar and running to Elwynn Forest for the festivities. Here is the basic info:

• When: Saturday, December 12th, 5pm EST (2pm PST, 3pm Server)
• Where: Meet in front of Orgrimmar on Zangarmarsh (U.S.)
• Who: Any level Horde character
• How: Just send a tell to Robinator or any It came from the Blog Lurker for a guild invite.

Not familiar with the WoW.com guild? Then please read our FAQ. The events are fun and you are all invited. So after you finish listening to the WoW Insider Show, please join us for some in-game fun.

More details are after the break.

There will be three parts to the event:

1. The run to Elwynn: We will be running from Orgrimmar to Elwynn using a path I plotted out for maximum lowbie protection — also, photo opportunities.
2. Hogger Fist Fight: This is not a level 1 Hogger raid. That’s so 2007 (ok that link does not go to a level 1 Hogger raid either, but you know what I mean). All levels are invited to this event, but we will be removing our weapons, and not using spells, so we can punch Hogger and his buddies.
3. Darkmoon Faire fun: We’ll buy frog pets, shoot ourselves out of cannons and even turn in stuff if we’ve been collecting it.

Things to know about the Elwynn Extravaganza:

• We will not be forming an actual raid group. Guildchat is raid chat. I AKA Robinator will be speaking in all caps as Raid Leader. Anyone else speaking in all caps will be gkicked after a warning, because I’m mean like that.
• There will not be summons. Summons are for sissies. Research shows that the run is often the most fun part of the event, anyway. If you don’t want to make the run, you can get to Elwynn ahead of time and meet us there. Or you can just join in on the event in guildchat while you do your own thing.
• Zangarmarsh is a PvE server. This means that unless you flag yourself, the local players cannot attack you. The local guards can and will attack on sight, however, so be careful because the graveyard run is painful — as many of you Human players already know. This is not a PvP event, but we will be holding more Battleground Bonanzas for those of you who are PvP inclined.
• Please log on and get to Orgrimmar early. Lateniks will miss out on the initial screenshots and will probably be left behind.

We hope to see you there!