The World of Warcraft Launcher applcation today presented the release notes for the WoW 3.1 patch. That pretty much cinches that the 3.1 patch is going live.

One surprise was that all talent points are being reset. Soounds like for all characters. Would have been nice to get a heads up on that so old ones could be snashot as a guide while setting them up again.

Not sure yet how many WoW addons will be disabled due to the new version. Suspect there will be some.

The patch size has apparently undergone a last-minute file size growth from 710 MB to 742 MB. Relatively small increment but the overall size of this patch is pretty staggering.

One can see why Blizzard switched from centralized server download to a distributed peer-to-peer type. The former would have hardly been practical for either economic reasons or technical performance considerations.

Noblegarden holiday in the past has always been a one day long affair on Easter day. Big part of the WoW player population lives outside the USA and Europe now. The hunt for eggs containing low-level foods would have been rather boring for all the level 70 and 80 characters.

So now the Noblegarden holiday is a week long affair. No doubt it will contain a lot more content to hold people's interest.

I have been kind of bored in Northrend after hitting level 80. It has been kind of repetiitious. I enjoy exploring new areas. There are instances I have not been to yet but to some degree you have to work your way up to them by playing some other ones over and over to get there.

The week before the patch came out, I played up an Alliance night elf hunter and human death knight to decent level.

The death night is level 64 now. I had not played him in so long I had forgotten I had an epic sword in his main hand. He is a pretty effetive fighter in PvE. In battlegrounds, being pure Blood talent spec - he does tend to kind of get owned though.

I scored really good gear for my night elf from AH and BG PvP rewards just as it turned level 60. And I included a couple quests that give really good weapons among its initial questing in Outland in the early sixties. It is pretty deadly in PvE.

Like the death knight, I really have not focused on equipping this hunter for battlegrounds. However, it has a couple of pieces from BGs so it was kind of tearing things up sometimes in AV at level 60. No illusions that it would be any kind of a force in BGs while it is level 61-69, however.

I would like to get this pair questing in Northrend on their respective realms as quickly as possible.

All my alliance characters are hurting for bag space so I would probably make upgrading bags a pretty high priority for them both. Caught a lucky break on my original realm last week and equipped my top two characters there each with a 20-slot Frostweave bag. Someone put 3 in the AH for slightly under half the usual price. Too much of a bargain to pass up and I knew that buying two of them would pay for itself quickly as both characterse leveled.

My higest level Alliance warlock is level 57. Very close to dinging level 58. Kind of hoping that Scholomance and Molten Core runs are in his future.

Right now he has a couple of decent pieces of gear but his staff and most of his armor is tragically out of date. It should have been replaced many levels ago. However, I guess I was doing the wrong quests with him, not hitting enough instances, and not doing enough battlegrounds.

Once he has better gear and a few more levels under his belt, something that doing quests in those instances will undoubteldly help - I think he will do great in Outland. My night elf hunter on his realm will probably do even better. So, I plan to have it lead him - leveling up and passnig him down drops and fancy armor kits as they rise.

That hunter is also going to supply him with a steady stream of greens, probably mostly crafted ones, for him to disenchant. I want him crafting bags with his tailoring and enchanting at Outland levels (greater than 300) as quickly as possible.

The WoW 3.1 patch download seems to be at 99 percent now. So I gues I will be able to assess what 3.1 is like and how much I work I have ahead of me with talent points and addons shortly.