Amanna has mentioned an awesome little tool for tanking Druids with a great name: Rawr. It's a completely separate application for Windows (sorry Mac users) that will pull down your gear from the Armory, and help you not only see your tanking strengths and weaknesses, but help you choose upgrades, both in terms of gear and gems on it.

Astrylian of Kilrogg put it all together, and it looks like a really amazing tool for bears. Unfortunately, no other classes or Druid specs are supported yet (Astrylian says cats are next on the list), but if you're a bear who's been trying to make some good gear choices lately, this could be just what you need. Rawr is still in beta and available as a free download on the Druid wiki.

Reader Tyler sent this image our way without any information on its specific location, so we're on our own for this one. However, there's only one place in Azeroth with quite that look -- the Tanaris desert. But where did this little plane come from? Who piloted it and who crashed it? It's one of those little details in the Azerothian landscape that has no story behind it -- it's just there.

Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth or Outland that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing a copy to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com, with as much or as little detail as you'd like to share with the world!

Everyone is having so much fun with their Headless Horseman brooms these days during the Hallow's End event in WoW, but with an incorrect tooltip and heaps of confusion (including our own) about just how long they'll last, most players aren't quite sure just how much fun they're going to have.

Bornakk clears up some of the confusion (which he also had a hand in creating), saying that "the items with a duration on them won't all vanish on November first, you just won't be able to get any new ones." So now here is the factual summary of the official words on blizzard regarding your beloved broom mounts:

1. They last for 14 days, not just for one ride.
2. They last for 14 days of played game time on the character that possesses them, not 14 days of real time, and extending beyond the Hallow's End event for however long you keep them on an unplayed character.

Just think about how those of you who were patient and saved up your brooms on an alt can try and sell them later on when Hallow's End is over, but people still wish they could ride in witchy (or Quidditchy) style. Do you think they'll be worth something?

After writing last week about getting started with roleplaying, it became clear that a number of people want to try roleplaying, but are having trouble finding the actual roleplayers, even on RP servers. Some players have even said that "RP is dead!" Those who still don't think RP is dead often complain that it's certainly not as alive as it used to be. You might even say that RP is undead in some places, which is a wholly unspeakable extreme.

So today I'd like to ask you, where does the rumor mill tell you to find the best place to roleplay? Does your server rock the house with roleplayers everywhere you look? Have you heard your friend's girlfriend talk about how one time she overheard of her cousin's roommate's elder step-sister's 7-11 store clerk say where the RP really gets immersive? Or do you think it's not a matter of servers at all? Do you have to just team up with the best RP guilds around? If so, how do you find these guilds? Server forums?

I have in mind that I'll go check out some RP servers to research this topic for myself as well. I'm pretty sure my home server (Scarlet Crusade) isn't the best. There, it seems a lot of the old roleplayers went off to do other things, or got involved in other activities and got too busy to roleplay. In any case, with your help and some additional research, perhaps we can come up with practical suggestions for how to track them roleplayers down and actually play the roles!

This week on Ask WoW Insider, we've got an interesting question about how to get along with PuGs in game. As you might already know, in patch 2.3, players will be able to see everyone else's spec simply via the Inspect screen without leaving the game. This information has already been available on the Armory, but in 2.3, it'll be just one click away. And that's got reader Mylittleponykiller worried:

Hello. I play an MS warrior, currently specced for PvP, but I also tank for pugs in non-Heroics and offtank in Karazhan when needed. I do a fine job, and often on the journey from 1-69.99 I was mistaken for Prot when I tanked instances (as Fury). However, in 2.3 I know that I will get kicked out of/not invited to PuGs if I am not Prot. I have spent hundreds of gold and many hours getting geared to tank and to DPS, and now it seems half of that might just go to waste. What can I do to prevent this from happening or at least prove myself as a tank to PuGs (even though I have over and over again)?

Interesting question. First of all, readers, would you kick a warrior out of the group if he was there to tank and not specced Prot? When you have the ability to see someone's spec at a click, will you use that information to determine what other players can and can't do in your groups?

And if so, what can those other players do to "prove" that they can tank, or main heal, or do DPS? If you are going to make judgments based solely on spec, what can "offspecs" (haven't heard that word in a while!) like Mlpk do to "prove" that they can fill their roles?

We all get frustrated with the Blizzard developers at one time or another. Sometimes we even post messages on the forums, rant in chat to our guild mates, heck, we might even blog about it ourselves. But as Fate pointed out recently on Apathy Inc., there's a few things you should consider when spewing your venom at the creators of WoW.

As an example Fate shares with the readers an experimental talent tree for Wrath (and a very nice job, I should say), and references this as just one very complicated aspect of the design of the game. Analyzing every angle of a spec may go very well, until you open it up to the players and realize what you thought was balanced really is no where close. Things go from bad to worse, and the players begin to complain, and complain, and then they, you know, complain. Trying to keep everyone happy is really a thankless job, and this is only one tiny aspect of the game. It doesn't take into account building boss battles, creating loot tables, designing armor and weapons, or anything else that makes this Massively Multiplayer game so very massive.

I haven't considered exactly how much work really goes into building this game, keeping it running, pushing through new content and keeping it balanced at the same time as not completely ruining the old content. Fate has put it all into perspective for me. Although I'm not much of a ranter or a railer when it comes to the Blizzard devs, I certainly from this point on will give them the benefit of the doubt.

In all of the different items we've done here on Phat Loot Phriday, we've never once featured a thrown weapon. Time to fix that.

Name: Serpentshrine Shuriken
Type: Epic Thrown
Damage/Speed: 97-146 / 1.40 (86.8 DPS)
Abilties:

• +14 Stamina, which doesn't seem like a lot, but don't forget, this is on a thrown weapon. That's a whopping +14 Stamina you can't get anywhere else.
• Improves hit rating by 12 and critical strike rating by 20.
• And while thrown weapons used to be used only for pulling or tagging cowardly mobs, the Rogue ability Deadly Throw has changed the game. You can get some nice crits in (using this or any other high level thrown items) if you've worked up a good number of combo points on a target running away from you. Put on the HWL or Gladiator's gloves and this also becomes a spell interrupt, so you want as nice a thrown weapon as you can find.

How to Get It: The Shuriken drops from trash mobs in Serpentshrine Cavern, at a rate of about 1%, so it's not super easy to come by. I'd really say the weapon is meant for Rogues, too, but I could see how fury Warriors and other classes would have an interest in it, so you might have to win a competitive roll on it, too. But spend a lot of time in SSC, be a little lucky, and you can probably pick it up without too much trouble.

Getting Rid of It: Disenchants to a Void Crystal, and I bet that's where most of these things have ended up, because odds are that anyone who could really use it in PvP has already picked up the PvP version anyway. Maybe there's a reason we've never done a thrown weapon... Sells to vendors for 3g 63s 68c.

One of the features of patch 2.3 that I'm very much anticipating is the hastened leveling curve for characters between level 20 and 60. In addition to the XP required per level being reduced by 20%, loot from leveling dungeons improving, and "many" outdoor elites being made non-elite (not including Hogger, thankfully), the patch notes list that "the amount of experience granted by quests has been increased between levels 30 and 60". Which is nice, but the math lover in me wants (nay, demands) to know precisely how much the increase is.

Fortunately, Tekkub is on it. He's compiling a spreadsheet with quest XP changes over at Google Docs, and he needs your help to collect more data. If you want to help, you'll need a character on the PTR in the affected level range (30–60), and you'll need to go do some quests and note down how much XP you get from them. Then just email Tekkub (his email address is on the spreadsheet) with your data, and the collective information base of the WoW population will be increased! Ah, science. Personally I'm not seeing much of a pattern on the spreadsheet yet, but I'm sure there is one, and we will figure it eventually.

Amanda M. had a tiny mention of this in her big Engineering post earlier, but I felt it deserved another mention. Our friend Boubouille at MMO Champion has discovered that there are new toy models coming for Engineers in 2.3: a rocket chicken (yes, really), a paper gyrocopter and a paper zepplin, and this crazy model above, a dragon kite.

Now, I don't mean to rain on Engineers' parades-- they definitely deserve all the love they're getting, and I can't wait to see all the cool stuff they're making out there on the realms. But here's the thing: wasn't the whole problem with Engineering that they were stuck making toys instead of useful items? The Epic Mount is awesome, but is anyone else surprised to see that an "Engineering revamp" includes papercraft toys? This is just more Mechanical Squirrels, which is what Engineers were disappointed with in the first place.

An unweighted Companion Cube would be hilarious (Portal has my game of the year vote right now, until I get to check out Mass Effect). But I thought the whole point of beefing up Engineering was to get past these pets. Will letting them do some papercraft really bring the profession up to speed?

Update: Or maybe they're not all for Engineers. The Rocket Chicken certain seems like Engineering, but there's speculation floating around, according to our illustrious commenter Kyle, that these are rewards from the new Upper Deck loot cards.

WoW tends to be a night time activity for most people, many of whom find that it's surprisingly easy to move from one objective to another and lose track of time until the wee hours of the morning. Some people I know sometimes stay up most of the night playing WoW, only to get an hour or two of sleep before whatever they have to do the next day. They're young and they say they make up that sleep at other times, but still, no one would argue that this sort of situation is ideal.

A recent study reported by CNN says they're not alone. People who play MMORPGs tend to sleep less and spend more time playing than players of other computer games. It may seem obvious, since MMOs are by nature somewhat of a time-sink, but there is undeniably something more to it; any activity can potentially be a time-sink, after all -- so what is it about MMOs that makes people actually sink time?

The answer is up for debate, of course, but one important factor is that WoW's community of players gives the accomplishments within the game a context of reality. The game's goals, dangling in front of us like carrots, would be nearly meaningless if we could only appreciate them in a single-player context, but with a whole realm of other players working alongside us to get them too, they can feel very important. If the choice is between a few hours having dreams you won't remember, or getting a little closer to riding an impressive dragon mount, then certainly sleep can seem boring and useless by comparison.

Warriors, turn and face the community! Once again Schwick has compiled a list of what the EU forums put forth as the issues of a specific class, this time our buddies in plate without mana, the warriors. You've seen what the community had to say about druids, about rogues, priests and hunters. What do they want to see changed for warriors? Here are a few highlights.

Block value
Currently Block values aren't affecting Warriors that much. An idea to make this stat more desirable could be to enhance the Threat levels of Sunder Armor and Devastate based upon Block values. This would also help with the aggro generation on mobs/bosses.

I can't really say I disagree with this one. I'd like to see more done with block.

Improved Mortal Strike
While Mortal Strike is nice, this talent doesn't help much. Most Warriors agree that the reduced cooldown and more damage don't have much affect. Removing this with something more useful might help.

I see a lot of warriors saying this, but while I get the logic that speccing that deep into the tree loses you fury talents like flurry, I still find myself agreeing with WarriorPWNS when he argues for Imp MS. The talent could maybe use a little buff, but it's hardly useless.

If you're keep to see what the posters had to say (including what seems to me to be a lamentable focus on gutting fury of all its good PvP talents in exchange for, well, nothing) then take a look here, s'il vous plaît.

I was standing under Moen's Nozzle of Inspiration a while ago. No, that's not an in-game item, I'm talking about my shower head. Ever since I got back from my mini-vacation this week I've just been completely blank about what to write about. There were a few topics rolling around in my head, but no stories. Suddenly, the rabbit joke appeared and everything came into focus.

You've all heard the rabbit joke. A guy is traveling down the road when he accidentally sends a rabbit to its permanent death. He pulls over to verify if the rabbit is indeed dead, and as he's standing there staring at the rabbit cadaver, a mysterious passerby stops and asks what's happening. The saddened man explains that he didn't mean to kill the rabbit, and points to the dead animal on the ground. The mysterious passerby goes to their vehicle and returns with an aerosol can. He picks up the rabbit, sprays the rabbit, and in a moment reminiscent of the Mr. Jingles scene from The Green Mile, the rabbit springs to life. The happy varmint leaves the two onlookers, travels down the road, waves, travels a little further, waves, and continues doing this until it disappears out of sight. The two relieved strangers part company leaving our original rabbit killer standing confused on the side of the road wondering what was sprayed on the rabbit. He picks up the can to read it. "Hare spray. Revitalizes hare, and gives it a permanent wave."

Well. Some people are mighty worried about what Blizzard is intending to spray on some previously nerfed rogues, and I would be one of them. I was personally so sickened by the Subtlety talent tree (that served me well from levels one to seventy) that I recently respec'ed to a common Assassination/Combat blend. While mere words can't explain how deeply amusing it is to watch something die when you're not even hitting it, I really miss the "WHAMMO" effect I used to have in the subtlety tree. It looks though, from changes on the PTR to the subtlety tree that subtlety may not be a lost art form after all. Eliah applied more than adequate emphasis to the changes in the Cheat Death talent the other day, but Doomilias over at A View From Behind has experienced the changes first-hand and even as a rogue says the changes are overpowered. He believes there is no way that Cheat Death is going to go to the live servers with a 33/66/100% spread. He thinks that a 100% immunity to killing blows coupled with a brief period of invincibility and a short cooldown is a recipe for disaster. Doomilias thinks that this "new and improved" Cheat Death is going to breed an entire nation of roguetards that will flood battlegrounds like an army of ants. What do you rogues think? I don't know what the rest of you think, but I think I'm going to copy to the PTR and spec back to subtlety and give this new stuff a try!

For those of us who are both Mac users and WoW fans, there are two very important types of software release: a new patch for WoW and a new version of Mac OS X. Patch 2.3 may not be out yet (although we can always hope for next Tuesday), but Mac OS X 10.5, AKA Leopard, is released today! This is no place for a comprehensive review of the OS refresh (you'll have to head over to TUAW for that), but I would like to talk a bit about how 10.5 and WoW interact.

To put it bluntly, it's exactly the same. On my MacBook Pro, I'm not perceiving any difference between 10.5 and 10.4. The good side of that is that there are no crashes, stability issues, incompatibilities, or anything like that (at least not that anyone's come across yet). The bad side is that I'm not seeing any performance increase, which is a bit of a disappointment, since 10.5 apparently comes with a new version of OpenGL. There have been mumblings in the WoW Mac Tech Support forum that this update might help some people for a little while now, but at least for me, that does not seem to be the case. It still plays fine, certainly no worse than it did under 10.4. And the "stuttering" issue reported by players with the NVIDIA 8600 graphics card is, according to multiple forum reports, gone.

October is winding to a close soon, but we have time for one more episode of the WoW Insider Show this month. Live every Saturday on WoW Radio, all you have to do to listen is point your browser to WoW Radio at 3:30 PM EST or 8:30 PM GMT tomorrow. You're also welcome to add your voice to the conversation by joining us in IRC on irc.wowirc.com in channel #wowradio. And if you have something to say -- but can't make the live show, feel free to e-mail your comments or questions to theshow@wowinsider.com!

I'll be hosting tomorrow's show along with Arturis, our in-house artist as well as WoW Radio's Turpster. We'll be discussing this weeks hot topics, including the controversy surrounding paid name changes, the current issues facing Tanks, the lowering of reputation requirements for Heroic keys, and much more. Join us for an hour of lively discussion and quite possibly inappropriate humor.

It would be an understatement to say that engineering as a profession has been sorely lacking for quite some time. Although there are those among us who have remained optimistic (and a touch crazy), the upcoming changes in patch 2.3 will do wonders to lift the spirits of browbeaten inventors everywhere.

Yet, the forums are still rife with creative new ideas for the direction of the profession, as well as glaring issues that have yet to be addressed. Today I will be summarizing some of the more ingenius and workable proposals for the future of engineering, highlighting some of the changes that Blizzard has promised to make, and bringing some much-needed attention to the problems that still plague this profession. Even if you aren't an engineer yourself, many of the suggestions for craftable goodies make for an interesting read.