• Don’t ever tell your tank to “gogogogo.” You may not realize this, but this enrages nearly every tank. Your tank knows his gear level and what that means for his survivability. Encouraging faster and bigger pulls is, in many ways, asking for a wipe. Want to let your tank know that you’re ready to go without doing this? Try “Ready whenever you are.” It’s much more neutral (and less grating) in tone.
• Make sure your gear is repaired and you have plenty of consumables before you queue up. Many players have waited for 10-20 minutes in the queue, and they’re ready to get through the instance and earn their frost badges. Having to wait for you to ‘port back to Dalaran is usually just going to get you kicked from the group.
• If your healer is out of mana, don’t move forward. Not everyone has enough MP5 to survive chain-pulling all of heroic Pit of Saron. If your healer is at 50% mana or below, give them five seconds to drink something.
• If you’re not the tank, don’t pull (unless requested). Attempting to speed up the run by pulling when the rest of your group isn’t ready is passive-aggressive at best and completely childish at worst. If the group isn’t moving quickly enough for you, politely excuse yourself and take the deserter debuff.
• Don’t let random screw-ups get you down. In a group with a really bad group member? Just can’t take another Old Kingdom run? Politely excuse yourself and leave the group. Remember that WoW is supposed to be fun. Your sanity is more important than frost emblems.

I often hear folks – myself included – say that leveling crafting professions is expensive. At higher levels, it often seems like you’re spending a ton of time/money just for a tiny chance at a skill-up. Thankfully, the folks over at WoWconomics have figured out a way to make things smoother:

• Alchemy Leveling Guide
• Blacksmithing Leveling Guide
• Enchanting Leveling Guide
• Engineering Leveling Guide
• Herbalism Leveling Guide
• Inscription Leveling Guide (coming soon)
• Jewelcrafting Leveling Guide
• Leatherworking Leveling Guide
• Mining Leveling Guide
• Mining Leveling Guide with Smelting
• Tailoring Leveling Guide
• Skinning Leveling Guide (coming soon)

The basic idea is very simple. Make as few items as possible which will lose you money. If you find that something makes you more money than you could buy/sell the raw materials for on the Auction House, then make them until the recipe turns grey. Also, don’t forget that if something can be disenchanted that it will probably sell faster and for more gold as enchanting materials.

Don’t hesitate to send stuff over to Hemlock for disenchanting. Now admittedly he’s a grumpy orc, but he’ll still disenchant your stuff and send you the resulting materials at no cost.

Have a tough time judging whether the materials on an item is going to beat the cost you can sell it for on the Auction House? Check out an add-on called LilSparky’s Workshop. It will take the prices you scan in from Auctioneer and display the cost to make and the cost you can sell for right in your tradeskill window. (If you install LilSparky’s Workshop, you’ll have to tell your World of Warcraft client to load out-of-date add-ons, but I promise it will work fine for you.)

And as always, if you have trouble figuring out tradeskills or how to manage the Auction House, ask one of the guild “goblins” (i.e. Besom and Berg) how to get started.

Interested in taking down the ghosts in Karazhan? Miguelon has expressed interest in getting together a group to visit this lore-filled instance, and I think it sounds like a great idea.

Since Karazhan is a level 70 raid/instance, it shouldn't require many of us to make for a successful run. I've personally read reports of very smooth completions with just three level 80 characters, so we shouldn't need much firepower to drop the bosses. If we can get just a handful of level 80s, then we pave the way for some characters in the low 70s to come along, and they might actually benefit greatly from the loot drops.

I'm tentatively looking at Saturday, January 16, as a possible date for the raid.

Interested? Interested but need to go on a different day? Reply in this forum thread or get in touch with Besom in-game.

• Karazhan's WoWwiki Entry
• Karazhan Loot

Have fun out there, and as always, let Besom or one of the other officers know if you think of other fun things like this that we can do as a guild. We want to make your game experience the best that it can possibly be.

Berg and China are currently on a bit of a hiatus due to Real Life Concerns™. They hope to be back in Azeroth some time in January.

Until then, both Besom and Emppu are here to help you with anything you might need. Just ask.

Some Helpful Reminders

• The items in the guild bank are there to be used. If you see a pattern you need, take it. If you see a piece of armor that's an upgrade for you, have at it. If you can't withdraw something, just ask one of the officers for help. And don't just take stuff and sell it on the Auction House. Besom will notice, and she will maul you.
• Our guild now has a Twitter feed. Hopefully this will help keep us all up-to-date with what's going on with our fellow members. If you get an achievement or have an announcement, just pass it along to either Besom or Emppu.
• The guild is only as good as each of us. If you have suggestions please pass them along to one of the officers. We want to make this guild a fun place for everyone.

New colors, same great guild.   I thought it was time for an update to our look.  I like it so much, I might actually wear it now!