Cata Pre-order now available.

Limited to one copy per customer. Gamestop limits you to 2 copies. One Day shipping from Amazon runs $10 and unlike Gamestop is likely to be tax free. Cost at Gamestop was $100.40 for me. Cost at Amazon was $89.97 with 1 day shipping. If you are patient you can get it with free shipping and likely get it the next day of release as I did with Starcraft II. Hoping to attend the event this year at Fry's if nothing prevents Vince from attending. If so I may actually have 2 copies of this for once.

Amazon Link

Wrath Gate changed with Xpac

Seems that the battle for Undercity will be removed from the game come the xpac. Best to hurry up and get to it on my alts!

Valnoth:

It's not bugged. The quest ends at the cinematic now.

Source.

New Cata Collector Edition Pet?

So reading up on some of the new data mined discoveries this pet was found. Interesting that we get a mini Neltharion as well as his daughter. I wonder if for the anniversary pet this year we get a mini Nefarian.

A Pony!

Wow. Well speculation is over and I was mistaken in presuming that the Celestial Steed would be a drop off Algalon which is listed as the final boss in VOA. Instead any player can purchase this mount for $25 from the blizzard store. From what I read there were high queues for folks waiting to purchase items from the Blizzard store and now there is a report that the mount generated $2 million dollars for Blizzard in just 4 hours!

I do want the mount but due to a recent mugging attempt I endured I will have to wait for my funds to be able to regenerate.

I understand players are upset that this mount is available for sale. However many arguements don't hold water as to why this mount should not be obtainable for cash. One I heard was the "I already pay $15 a month.... " which is utter fail. Players pay a lease for an account every month. Smart players can end up paying $13 instead of $15 to boot. Paying a subscription does not give one the right to "free" items from a store. Just like the pets, the mount is nice but optional. You don't need it to play. So if a player does not like the concept of paying for this mount, they don't have to buy it. It's like the Ipad arguments. No one is forcing anyone to buy an Ipad. The best reason not to get an Ipad, or a Celestial Steed is not wanting one.

Murkimus now available to all eligible account characters!

Joy!! I am very happy to find out that Murkimus is now available to all characters on the eligible accounts that participated on the arena tournament servers. I do have some alts that of course were not able to obtain this pet. However now they can! My one hope though is that the Blizzcon 2008 Bear mount be made available in a similar fashion. However this will be resolved once cross-server mail is implemented.

Bashiok states:

With the release of patch 3.3.3 those who received the Murkimus pet for their participation in the 2009 Arena Tournament will notice that the pet is being changed to apply to the entire World of Warcraft account that was requested to receive the pet. Players who have created characters on this same account since the tournament will see a Murkimus in their in-game mailboxes and all new characters on this account will receive it as well. The in-game mail containing this pet will go out in the near future.

With this change you’ll finally be able to play any of your characters, stand up defiantly, and exclaim “I’m Murkimus!”

edit: Please note that the information given was not accurate in the original message but has been updated to reflect that this is World of Warcraft license specific change, and is not applied to the entire Battle.net account.

Source.

Greed only on Frozen Orbs in 3.3.3

Wryxian, a EU CM, has confirmed that in Patch 3.3.3. players will not be able to roll need on Frozen Orbs. This is great news as some folks wait till the end to roll need on the orb, or someone will forget to roll need when players state that they will roll need on the orb at the end.

Yeah it just takes one person to press Need after everyone's pressed Greed on the Frozen Orbs and you miss out. But the good news is that in patch 3.3.3 this won't be the case anymore -- the roll for Frozen Orbs will be an automatic Greed roll. Rejoice!

Source.

Algalon Listed As Final Boss in VOA.

The EU's WOW site announces that Algalon is the final boss in VOA!

Sites like wow.com and MMO-champ (as of yet) have not determined where the celestial items that have been data mined are supposed to come from, this posting pretty much points to Algalon dropping them. There has been some discussion that Algalon would become more available to other players in Ulduar however placing him on VOA would make more sense and convenience.