Even the dungeons are getting into the spirit of the holiday season — as proven by this screenshot from Nexmors of <The Elites> on Nagrand (EU). So… what? How? Why? Well, I think I’ll just let Nexmors explain:

“When encountering Svala Sorrowgrave she bugged after the speech which meant no fighting could commence so we decided to take advantage of this by taking a festive screenshot.”

And, really, a nice cool, dark dungeon? It’s bound to be the perfect place to keep your snowmen safely frozen. Why we don’t see more snowmen dungeon crawling year ’round is quite the mystery.

Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!

Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, Val’kyr on mounts, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran. Older screenshots can be found here.

We talked a few weeks ago about the ability bonuses exclusive to each profession. The idea behind this, of course, is that the majority of these bonuses are relatively equal to one another. If you’re a master of your profession, you can expect to receive about 80 Attack Power or 47 Spell Power. You could also pick up an additional 60 Stamina if you’re an Enchanter or a Miner.

These are the most common bonuses available to all the professions. However, there are a lot more stats in the game than just Spell Power, Attack Power, and Stamina. (Although, it’s a fairly reasonable argument that these are three “sexiest” stats in the game, since they tend to be the centerpiece of many e-peen arguments.)

Especially when you’re coming up in the ranks as a new character, there are other stats that are even more important. For example, Hit Rating is frequently regarded as a must have stat. If you’re not at the appropriate hit cap for your class, you can never achieve your maximum damage.

This is one of the ways Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting really shine. These two stats have the ability to laser-focus manage exactly how your crafting bonus will buff your character. Let’s take a look behind the cut and start breaking down these two crafting abilities.

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Winterschill of Kirin Tor sent in this screenshot of the new leper gnome boss Krick in the Pit of Saron. Krick seems too terrified to be much of an effective fighter without his giant mount. This may be why there aren’t a whole lot of gnome bosses in this game. Or maybe Krick is upset because he looks like the end result of an unholy Saturday night liaison between a bottle of vodka and the random character generator.

Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!

Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, Val’kyr on mounts, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran. Older screenshots can be found here.

The story of the Culling of Stratholme is cool, the first time you do it. However after about the hundreth time it gets to be a bit much. And thanks to the random heroic dungeon finder, I practically have Arthas‘ speech memorized now; he and I yell in sync at the end of each run “To the ends of the earth!”

Be honest, I know you do, too.

What has to be the most requested feature of this dungeon — the ability to skip the long and repetitive story — isn’t coming anytime soon. When there was some discussion about this in the general forms earlier this week, Eyonix appeared and enlightened us as to Blizzard’s thoughts on the matter:

We agree, but unfortunately with the current tech/flagging that exists in regards to this — it’s just not possible for the game to recognize this sort of thing and allow for a bypass. It’s always a possibility for the future though.

So for the time being we’ll have to live with this, but at least Blizzard is on the same page with us all. And if the Trial of the Champion and Halls of Reflection instances tells us anything, it’s that Blizzard won’t be building dungeons without the ability to skip the story in the future — at least we hope so.

Zach is a Battlegrounds freak. Even if he doesn’t raid or quest or sell things at the auction house, he’ll make sure to get a small dose of Battlegrounds PvP to brighten up his day. You should, too. They’re like vitamins. Bloody, face-melting, honor-gaining, sword-clashing vitamins.

This little thing called patch 3.3 came out some time back, maybe you’d heard. I had planned it to be my return from an unintentionally self-imposed hiatus from hardcore play, considering that all the tools would now be in place to allow all players of all gear levels to catch up the the penultimate level of content. It was a good plan, except that a few things here and there kept me from jumping right into it when the Fall of the Lich King went live.

The new Dungeon Finder system is getting rave reviews from everyone who’s tried it. I think it’s an awesome tool — quite possibly one of the best things to happen to the game. The coolest thing about it for me is that the concept stemmed from the Battlegrounds! That’s right… the Battlegroup-wide grouping system is inspired by the way Battlegrounds get players from various realms from way back since Patch 1.12 in 2006. Who’d have thunk it, right? The rest of the PvE population getting something good — something really, really good — from the PvP aspect of the game.

Blizzard has been cleverly trying to sprinkle PvP elements into the PvE side of the game, such as the Princess Delrissa encounter in Magisters’ Terrace, and its more recent, scaled-up version, the Faction Champions in the Trial of the Crusader. If the message isn’t already clear, Blizzard is trying to make you like PvP. At any rate, this whole new PUG craze is a happy byproduct of the cross-realm Battleground system. The only difference is, in Battlegrounds, group composition isn’t as important.

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With so many sites and stores promoting commercialism and spending, it’s always refreshing to see fansites run contests that are in the true spirit of the season — altruism (and ad traffic, of course). In this case, WoW-Achievements.com is getting into the Winter Veil spirit with their Twelve Days of Grunty contest!

From December 13th to December 25th, the site is presenting one new WoW trivia question each day. A winner is chosen randomly from those who answer correctly, and each day a Grunty the Murloc Marine pet is awarded. No registration is necessary, and the questions are easily answerable with a quick Google search. If you didn’t get to go to BlizzCon ‘09, or if you didn’t order the livestream from DirecTV, this might be your only shot at getting Grunty in your digital stocking, save asking Santa. And I don’t think Santa does the whole eBay thing.

If you know of other sites running holiday contests, please let us know so we can make sure everybody gets a chance to cash in on the season of giving!

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

• WoW in an Hour really enjoys doing the new raid weekly quest — nice raid rewards, under an hour of play.
• Chill of the Grave has some great suggestions for Death Knight gear to be found in the new 5-mans.
• HTFTMFW takes you through quick strategies for the first four bosses in Icecrown.
• Starnaglethron has a declaration of love for the Dungeon Finder (which most of you would probably echo).
• And finally, Pike has some bad news for you Glyph of Bestial Wrath addicts. There’s a new glyph in town and he’ll up your DPS.

Many people, including myself, are having troubles logging in. The error we are getting is that the login server is busy and to please try again later. As the message states above, Blizzard will inform us at 1pm PST of any further details.

Those of you who are able to get in, we salute you! The rest of us will wish we were in-game, starting our Feast of Winter Veil activities.

We’ll keep you up to date of any further developments.

Update 2:29pm: I and many others are now able to login. No official update at this time. Also, authenticators had nothing to do with it.