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Ahh the smell of fresh loot in the air, it must be summer. Well, fans of loot cards and the official Trading Card Game, I bet you have your calendar marked. Tomorrow sees the release of the latest - and possibly greatest - TCG expansion Fields of Honor. Yes, you too could have your very own El Pollo Grande, the greatest mount in the entire history of Azeroth. We’ve mentioned this thing was rarer than a spectral tiger’s tooth, right? Indeed our very own Turpster has been raving about his (insert slightly rude giant chicken joke here) all week.

The best part that is the cards were activated in an earlier patch so you can use them as soon as you find one. No more waiting for 3.1.x or even 3.2. Just to recap, the Fields of Honor loot consists of El Pollo Grande, the Ogre Pinata and the groovy Path of Cenarius. You can also take a peek at Upper Deck’s loot card preview page for some really cool screenshots.

But here’s the best part. After the success of our last EU giveaway, Upper Deck International here in the UK have very kindly given us a set of shiny European loot cards. Isn’t that nice of them? We certainly think so! We’re going to give them away during this week’s maintenance so check back then.

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You can’t talk to the enemy in the World of Warcraft. Shouting “KEK” when you’re on your Alliance character doesn’t read as “LOL” to the Horde players, no matter how many times you’ve heard that rumor. You can’t Mind Control the enemy and then babble away in your own tongue (although that did work for one amazing, once-upon-a-time period in a long-ago patch). The truth is, trying to leapfrog the Alliance/Horde language barrier is a bannable offense; you’re just not supposed to talk to the enemy.

That said, there is a way you can make your intentions known to players of the opposite faction: standard, pre-set emotes. The only emotes that work between factions are the ones that are already in place in the game. Creating your own emote by typing “/e yourmessage” only works for players of your own faction; for others, it translates to “X makes some strange gestures” – pretty antagonistic, really, no matter what you’re actually intending to convey.

The emotes you’re looking for are the ones that involve any combination of set text, vocalization or character animation. While that may sound skimpy and potentially disappointing, you’ll actually discover a fairly rich vocabulary.

Want to combine forces with an enemy player at a quest spawn? Look how clearly you can communicate your intentions with emotes.

/greet You greet <Enemy Player> warmly.
/introduce You introduce yourself to <Enemy Player>.
/talk You want to talk things over with <Enemy Player>.
/point You point at <Quest Target>.
/helpme You cry out for help!
/work You work with <Enemy Player>.
/volunteer You look at <Enemy Player> and raise your hand.
/knuckles You crack your knuckles while staring at <Quest Target>.
/ready You let <Enemy Player> know that you are ready!
/followme You motion for <Enemy Player> to follow.

/victory You bask in the glow of victory with <Enemy Player>.
/commend You commend <Enemy Player> on a job well done.
/salute You salute <Enemy Player> with respect.
/thank You thank <Enemy Player>.
/bye You wave goodbye to <Enemy Player>. Farewell!

Obviously, you don’t need to get that long and involved to get your point across. The more emotes you make, however, the better your chance that the other player will realize that your gestures are not random and stop to listen to your message. Whether you come in peace or are seeking a more intimate connection with the object of your destructive affections, standard emotes help you make the statement.

/moon
/grin

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The roller-coaster of “will they or won’t they remove the Ulduar raid drake rewards” seems to have come to a definitive answer. The rusted and ironbound proto-drakes will be removed, but they will give us “about 1 month of warning” so you can make a final push if you really want it. The drakes are rewards for completing Glory of the Ulduar Raider (and the 25-man version).

Bornakk points out the parallel with the Arena mount rewards, and says that this is no accident: these are supposed to be rewards for the “top tier” of raiders, and letting people earn them with more powerful equipment from higher raids would defeat that purpose. Therefore, he says we should expect it to go this way in the future, as it was with the Naxx drakes.

As a side note, he says they may be removed when patch 3.2 comes out or some time after. This suggests to me that they think there’s a decent chance patch 3.2 will come out less than a month from now. If they knew it was going to come out later, they’d just give the one month warning a month before they expected the patch to drop.

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Well wouldja look at that — hidden in the just-released Patch 3.2 notes are a whole slew of UI changes to check out.

• Auto-completion for character names in mail, chat, and pop-up interfaces can now be enabled (and disabled) from the interface options. I believe auto-complete was already in there for mail, but now it’ll be everywhere, and/or you’ll be able to turn it off if you’ve sent things to the wrong place in the past.
• Names are getting a color option according to class, so if “Lolpaladins” is really a Death Knight, you’ll know right away.
• Casting bars near a portrait’s target will show whether the spell is interruptible or not. Some boss casts are not interruptible, so now you’ll know with a glance.
• Druids will be able to see mana bars even while shape-shifted, which probably won’t change gameplay much, but will be nice for bears and kitties.
• Item comparisons (like the ability to check other gear for slots while hovering over that gear) are now available everywhere — hover over an item with Alt pressed to see what’s currently equipped in that slot on your character.
• Macros and scripts can no longer target totems by name — bye bye totem stompers.
• The quest log is getting a small revamp: it’ll be “double-paned for more easily viewing quest information.” We’re not quite sure what that means (you’ll be able to look at two quests at once? It’ll break out the list of accepted quests into its own full-size window?), but we’ll give you a look as soon as we see it on the PTR.
• Vendor prices will now be listed on items even if you’re not at a vendor. This was a pretty common feature already, thanks to Auctioneer, but now it’ll be built into the standard interface.

Keep in mind that these notes are still subject to change — what’s listed here may never make it to the live realms at all. But it seems like there are quite a few changes due in Patch 3.2 are designed to streamline the interface and incorporate a number of elements from common addons.

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Patch 3.2 is currently in development, and not yet on the PTRs. We’ve been told that it will focus on expanding the Argent Tournament that was introduced in patch 3.1, and we’ve also learned that it will feature new Druid form art and a new battleground, Isle of Conquest.

Today Blizzard posted a preview of some of the Argent Tournament updates, and it looks pretty cool. There are going to be two new Tourney-related quest hubs in Icecrown: a Cult of the Damned camp overlooking the Tourney, and a Vrykul outpost on an island to the north. The Black Knight will also be returning; I guess it was only a flesh wound after all.

There are also going to be new dailies and new rewards for players exalted with the Silver Covenant/Sunreavers, as appropriate. Silver Covenant and Sunreaver tabards, their ground and flying mounts, and a Shimmering Wyrmling pet are all mentioned.

Furthermore, those who have earned the Crusader title will get some more dailies, and some exciting rewards, including new heirlooms (!), a banner, a tabard that ports you to the tourney, a squire with a mount, and a Paladin-only charger mount.

New heirlooms, you say? Nice, but I wish they weren’t at the end of five tedious rep grinds. Oh well, time to get to work, I suppose.

Update: Blizz have edited the page to say the new squire will cost 150 Champion Seals to upgrade, will be summonable for 3 minutes every 8 hours, and will perform one of thee services: mail, bank, or vendor.

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Chris Caesar of the Orange County Register got to check out Blizzard’s newest exhibition at the Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach, CA, and as you can see above, is niiiiiice. The exhibition centers around the art of World of Warcraft, and is called “WoW: An Emerging Media Phenomenon,” offering up fourteen different artists’ takes on the wide world of Azeroth. And it comes with swag, apparently: you pay for a certain package to come visit the show, and all the packages, starting at “Lvl 30″ for $15 all the way up to “Lvl 80″ for $125, come with free stuff, from an illustrated “exhibition manual” to free t-shirts and a copy of “The Art of the Trading Card Game.”

The event runs through October 4th, so if you’re planning to spend some extra time wandering around southern California for BlizzCon, we’re sure they’d love to see you (in fact, we wouldn’t put it past them to have scheduled this event specifically around BlizzCon — sneaky art museum types). And finally, they’re also hosting a series of panels from different artists in the exhibit, all discussing how a digital game like World of Warcraft has affected their art. You can check out some of the art in the show over in the Register’s gallery — with art from the TCG, the official game art, and even some student work, it looks like they’ve got a whole bunch of great work on display.

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Last Monday, we did a breakfast topic on things you like in WoW that other people don’t understand. Today, let’s talk about the opposite: things you hate that other people don’t get, or that maybe don’t make any sense at all. You know - that thing that just irks you for no apparent reason.

As an example, I hate partially filling a talent, like going 3/5 in something. Can’t stand it. I’m enough of a min/maxer that I’ll still do it if I think it’ll help my game appreciably, but when leveling (for instance) I’ll go out of my way to avoid doing it.

I don’t like Blacksmithing or Engineering, for some reason. I’ve tried them on several characters, and always ended up dropping them for another gathering skill. And it bothers me to no end that when you log out via /camp there’s no way to skip the 20-second “you’re not in an inn” timer (even at level 80), but there is when you log out via /quit.

So those are some of mine. What are you senselessly bothered by in WoW?

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We here at WoW Insider are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.

• We love us some flow charts. Here’s one telling a Disc Priest when to bubble.
• There are some good interviews that GotFrag did about the upcoming MLG tournament. Ming also provides some good commentary on the tourney.
• Battle.net 2.0 will not cost anything beyond the purchase of StarCraft II or Diablo III. Not WoW news, but we know many of you enjoy these games as well.
• Big Hit Box has some great thoughts on Death Knight glyphing.
• HolyPaladin.net has some tips for the Arena Healing Holy Pally.

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I feel like I say this every time I post a trailer, but I guess I’ll say it again. I’m often nervous about featuring machinima trailers, because while the trailer can be super-duper Sylar-as-Spock-level awesome, it seems like half the time, the trailer never materializes into a movie. However, sometimes trailers look so cool that I can’t help but point them out anyway. Farinar Films has a pretty solid reputation for delivery, though, so take a second to check out The Peasant: Cost of Freedom.

The video looks absolutely gorgeous, and I can’t wait to see the final production. Farinar’s promising a dramatic, character-driven story, without any of the usual Action/Adventure tropes. It’s supposedly much more focused on its protagonists’ inner conflicts, which promises to make “The Peasant” much more interesting than standard fare.

[Via WarcraftMovies.com]

If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.

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We saw a preview of it a little while ago, and now it’s here in beta form: MMOUI Minion, the addon updater from the people behind WoWInterface. It’s written in Java, and runs on Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows, provided you have an up-to-date Java runtime installed. For Mac OS X users, the web site might warn you about your Java version, but if you’ve been keeping up with software updates, you should be fine.

As this is a beta, I won’t be too hard on it, but I wouldn’t recommend using it in its current state. It does show promise, especially with its extensibility (other sites can write plugins to allow Minion to download content from them). I ran into all kinds of problems, from the installer making it difficult to specify a path to the updater maxing out my CPU while idle to it detecting almost all my addons as out-of-date, even ones that aren’t, but again, it’s beta. The whole reason for a beta phase is to get the software out into the wild for wider debugging, so bugs are to be expected.

Overall, I’d say this could develop into something nice, but isn’t quite ready yet. The icon, on the other hand, is totally adorable. If you do want to try it out, you would do well to follow their suggestion of backing up your Interface and WTF folders. I am excited to see what it will look like with more polish.

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