It’s the weekend again, and that means it’s time for another Arcane Brilliance , the weekly mage column that would like to continue its ongoing series of “Pictures of things you’re hitting that warlock in the face with.” In today’s installment, we’ll be hitting that warlock with a large chunk of ice.

The Classifieds brings you weekly updates on guild happenings, raid progression rankings, player milestones and more. Have guild news or a Random Act of Uberness to share? E-mail TheClassifieds@wow.com

Welcome to another edition of Arcane Brilliance , the weekly mage column that would like to say to all of the warlocks who sneak in here each week, skulking about in the shadows, wearing dark clothing and eyeliner and hating their dads, and then like to crow in the comments section about how I’ve inadvertently provided them with a warlock guide of some type because warlocks generally use the same gear as mages: Thanks for the pageviews! So last week we talked about trinkets . Specifically, the kinds of trinkets a new level 80 mage might want to keep his eyes peeled for

Here at WoW.com we’re on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW -related links from around the blogosphere. Is there a story out there we ought to link or a blog we ought to follow

WoW In An Hour has written an absolutely fantastic guide on Paladin Tanking .

JLM Pacific Epoch reported last week that an agreement has been reached regarding NetEase and that punishment will be announced this month. The two government agencies fighting over whether or not NetEase engaged in illegal activities have agreed that by charging fees before full approval, NetEase is guilty of acting against regulations. The disagreement began when the General Administration of Press and Publications halted their review of the game in November 2009, but were opposed by the Ministry of Culture in their decision.

Ghostcrawler, when not directly occupied with the pack of idiots harassing him on the Damage Dealing forums , stopped by the Healing forums this past month to share some information on how healing is likely to change in Cataclysm . Of particular interest is Blizzard’s changing design philosophy with respect to what makes healing challenging

Matthew Rossi over at Wow.com’s Totem Talk got started on the itemization for Shamans in Ice Crown Citadel. He’s outlined a few key points for us Enhancers as well as all Shamans, no doubt setting up for some more in-depth item discussion. My focus here today is much more laser, uhm, focused on just: weapons, weapons, and more weapons

First off, I’d like to welcome everyone to the new Big Hit Box, and thank Stoney for setting it up- it looks awesome! Second, I’d like to apologize, as I haven’t posted anything in a month, but things have been kind of crazy for me.

As you probably noticed if you watched along with us, yesterday’s developer chat (with Blizzard’s J. Allen Brack and Tom Chilton taking questions from Twitter and answering them on the forums) was a little light to say the least.

I like this post over at Tank Like a Girl that raises the question of just when your guild should make the big step to move on up the raiding ranks. Just last night, my very casual guild headed into Ulduar for the first time, and even though we’d never been in there before (we’ve been doing Naxx, OS, and EoE with some regularity, though when I say we’re casual, I mean we’re really casual), I think we did it at exactly the right time.

I like this post over at Tank Like a Girl that raises the question of just when your guild should make the big step to move on up the raiding ranks. Just last night, my very casual guild headed into Ulduar for the first time, and even though we’d never been in there before (we’ve been doing Naxx, OS, and EoE with some regularity, though when I say we’re casual, I mean we’re really casual), I think we did it at exactly the right time. We made it up to Kologarn — enough to know that we didn’t go in too early (and come out empty-handed, unable to down any bosses) or too late (and breeze through the place)

There’ll be a new way to activate hard modes in Icecrown, according to Bornakk .

GuildOx sends an email to tell us that they’ve set up 10-man strict ratings on their guild progression website. They’ve always offered 10-man ratings, though a lot of guilds run both 10- and 25-man content, and it’s not quite legit to stack the “10-man only” guilds up against the guilds who occasionally do 25-man content (and thus have chances at better gear, no matter how much of a difference it makes ). Hence, enter the “10-man strict” ratings — these are guilds who have not run any 25-man content, according to a set of criteria that GuildOx has put together?

Updated with more details, 10:30 AM.

MMOsite.com has nabbed some pictures of the return to the Chinese World of Warcraft . As you know if you’ve been paying attention, the game has been offline over there for a few months now, but the game just recently got approved to go back online, and so they’re in the middle of a “partial relaunch” (which I believe is taking the form of a closed beta) and the servers are crowding up again. As you can see, there’s a stampede ( much like ours ) going on in Thunder Bluff — looks like players are happy to be online again.

Disclaimer: Everything I can find about this issue points to it being an intended change, but I can’t find an official word on it – or even on the fact that his health has been lowered and the Animus spawns after fewer vapors. The fact that his health has been nerfed and the Animus spawns sooner (which I doubt is accidental – you don’t nerf a boss’ HP by 25% by accident) says to me that the clearcasting nerf is deliberate, but I can’t find actual confirmation, so I’ve edited the post to more speculative, and to add this disclaimer that we still haven’t had official word on it

Karl, writing over on the WoW Livejournal , has an interesting set of thoughts about hard modes and just how they work with raiders’ morale. Hard modes are designed to give raiders something extra — if you’ve conquered the normal modes of raids like Ulduar, hard modes are put in there by Blizzard to offer you some extra risk for a corresponding reward. But as they’ve become more and more routine, some raids are taking on the hard modes even before they’ve cleared the whole instance, leading up to a night of wiping on early hard modes, and then wiping on later progression

In a rather surprising development, Eyonix posted earlier today that Blizzard has no plans int he forseeable future to remove the iron and rusted proto-drakes for completing the Ulduar raid hard-mode achievements. This comes as yet another (although welcome) reversal on their policy of making old content obsolete when gear gets better

Blizzard simply can’t make up their minds about this, can they? The Rusted and Ironbound Proto-Drakes, which are rewarded for completing Glory of the Ulduar Raider on Normal and Heroic , were slated for removal at an unspecified time in the future after patch 3.2 ’s launch