This weekend is not half as exciting as last weekend for those of us here at WoW.com, but it is another weekend — and what are weekends for if not gaming? I’m sure by now all of you know the drill of our weekly WRUP features, but in case we have any newbies in the audience: this is the place to see what the WoW.com team is up to this weekend as well as chat about your own in-game agenda. Sound like fun? Then read on to find out what sort of trouble we’re getting into this — and to share any trouble of your own.

• Adam Holisky (@adamholisky): STO, if the beta is up and running.
• Alex Ziebart (@alexziebart): Doing a blitz playthrough of Mass Effect so my save file is just right for Mass Effect 2. My favorite class? Any other week of the year, I would probably give a different answer than the one you’re getting today. Thanks to having ME on the brain, my favorite class is the Vanguard. That chargey thing? Delicious.
• Allison Robert (@AllisonRobert): Leveling my shammy’s jewelcrafting, a 10-man with guildies, and finishing off our Putricide-25 video for the site. Oh, and best/greatest/favorite class is and shall ever be the druid. Anyone claiming otherwise is a lying liar.
• C. Christian Moore (@thearenaguy): I’m powerleveling a paladin to 80 to play holy with it next season in arenas, in addition to all the other fun characters I have. It’s already 60 (got there in under 2 hours, thanks to the recruit a friend levels I’ve been storing) — I’ll just be taking it from 60-80. Dual speccing ret/holy and going as a healer in dungeon finder and as always leveling via AV (gotta love that Alterac Valley). For favorite class, I’m really digging my level 60 retadin.
• Chase Christian (@madsushi): Working with the s/o to get her newly minted 80 rogue in some decent gear, while explaining rotations and various stats to her along the way.
• Christian Belt (@ihatewarlocks): I’m hopelessly addicted to a little tower defense game called Defense Grid: The Awakening. Dunno why… but I can’t stop playing it. And favorite class? Etrian Odyssey’s Landsknecht. Ok, to be honest, I’m really just enamored with the name. I mean, how do you even pronounce that? There’s 5 consonants in a row in the middle of that word! It looks like how you would spell the sound somebody makes when hacking up phlegm in Yiddish or something.
• Daniel Whitcomb (@danielwhitcomb): I’ll actually be working on finishing up my ultimate level 60 Paragon Spacer War Hero Boy Scout Shepard Mass Effect save for Mass Effect 2 since that’s out in less than a week, but I will at least get in my dungeon runs on my druid and death knight for Emblems of Frost as well. My favorite class, I think is the EverQuest shadowknight. WoW death knight comes close, but I think my skeleton pet was cooler than my ghoul, and I miss my fear and life draining spells (Death Strike isn’t quite the same!).
• Dawn Moore: I’ll be grinding out badge gear for my new Alliance priest. My favorite class is either the bard of Dark Age of Camelot for its utility or the disciple of Khaine from Warhammer for combining my two favorite roles: melee DPS and healing. OP battle priest go!
• Elizabeth Wachowski: I’ll probably be leveling my DK and replaying Crisis Core, or possibly watching my boyfriend play 1 vs. 100. My favorite class? Probably the summoner classes in the Final Fantasy games, with the Vanguard of Mass Effect coming in second.
• Eliah Hecht (@eliah): Pilgrimages to my favorite bagel shop and to IKEA, possibly a few randoms in between. My favorite class of all time is the anti-paladin in a Diku-derived MUD I used to play called Afterlife. Death knights come close to capturing the flavor of it, but for some reason I don’t love my DK the same way. Nothing’s like the first time, I guess.
• Fox Van Allen (@foxvanallen): I am abandoning Warcraft to return to my first true love, The Legend of Zelda. The original 1987 NES version. The one that teaches that true healing is done through consuming the hearts of your fallen enemies. As for my favorite class, I’ll say that I’d love to be a summoner. Let Bahamut nuke Putricide into next Thursday while the entire raid waits 2 minutes for an FMV animation to finish.
• Gregg Reece: Tanking either Plagueworks or Crimson Halls. I might even run my resto druid through the dungeon finder a couple times.
• Kelly Aarons (@Cadistra): Now that my wrist surgery date has been 100% confirmed, I’ll be working like mad on additional Byron pages and my Blizzard calendar contest entry. As for favorite class, I’d say it’s a tie between Final Fantasy’s White Mage and Summoner. You get to wear a horn and summon crazy-powerful spirits. Sounds pretty cool to me.
• Lisa Poisso (@emused): We’ll be outside enjoying the balmy, shirt-sleeves weather this weekend… But all this talk of classes and games has got me reminiscing about my EQ bard. Bards: the ultimate PUG class, making broken groups whole and awkward groups sing. Dungeon Finder groups just aren’t open to that sort of thing anymore…
• Matt Low (@matticus): Random heroics and alt ICC runs for me. I’m also busy fending off the flu boss. My WoW time is slowly giving into some Magic: the Gathering time (Shameless plug: Topdeck.me is another blog I started just for it). My favorite class would be the Monk from Guild Wars. Its what started me on the path to where I am now.
• Matthew Rossi (@matthewwrossi): I’m not really feeling much like playing, I may take the weekend off. If I do play, I’ll go do some raiding in ICC10, as we’ve finished up ICC25 for the week. (Blood Queen to 20% and then out of attempts grrrrr.) Oh, and I didn’t bother saying what my favorite class is because, you know, it’s me.
• Michael Gray (@writegray): Having been out of game for about a week, I’ll be digging back into daily dungeons and ICC. My favorite class remains a friar from Dark Age of Camelot.
• Robin Torres (@cosmiclaurel): Toontown, Rockband 2 and some random PUG pally tank leveling. My favorite class is the old EQ bard. Yes, they were extremely buggy, but I just adored the concept behind them and the actual practice of playing instruments during battle.
• Zach Yonzon (@battlemasters): Reviewing a few iPhone apps; playing a league basketball game; a probable trail bike ride; and a tiny bit of WoW time in between, mostly to chat with friends in guild. Played a paladin in AD&D, D&D 3rd Ed., D&D 4th Ed., Diablo 2, and World of Warcraft. I wonder if that indicates a trend.

And so now, readers, it’s your turn — what are you up to in game this weekend? And if you feel so inclined, join in — what’s your favorite character class, in or out of the World of Warcraft?

This week on Phat Loot Phriday we take a look at the single most important piece of loot in the entirety of Icecrown Citadel. Step aside, Shadowmourne. You’re old news. Precious’s Ribbon is best in show today.

Name: Precious’s Ribbon
Type: Shirt
Attributes:

• Pink
• Has no sleeves
• Is the only green quality shirt in the game
• Applies a Best In Show buff to the wearer as long as it is equipped
• Is awesome

How To Get It: This shirt drops off of one single mob in Icecrown Citadel: Precious, one of the two mini-bosses in the Plagueworks wing of the raid zone. Wowhead doesn’t have sufficient data on the item yet to display drop rates, but the official Armory labels it as Very Low with somewhere between a 3% and 14% chance to drop.

Getting Rid of It: I have no idea why you would even consider getting rid of it, but in the event you are afflicted with a temporary bout of insanity, vendoring it will get you 65 silver and 50 copper.

Additional Information: Add Best In Show to your Netflix queue.

The new cross-realm dungeon finder has encouraged some folks who don’t usually get groups to give raiding a try. This pug-led PuG was photographed by tauren druid Brasson, who wrote, “<quiXotic> of Thunderhorn rolled into Ulduar late on Friday night to knock out XT and claim the badges from the weekly quest. Having nearly activated his hard mode, though, and that avoided only because one of the DPS was distracted with killing adds, we decided to steamroll another couple bosses. While crossing over the freshly fallen Kologarn, I noticed that my Summer Flame had gotten caught on top of the bridge – along with everyone else’s pets. Such a screenshot opportunity comes along only rarely, and could not be passed up.”

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.

15 Minutes of Fame is WoW.com’s look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes — from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you’d like to hear more about.

It’s easy to assume that the players behind the avatars around us in game are very much like ourselves. After all, we’re all united in a love of WoW, aren’t we? In practice, there may be a world of difference (both literally and figuratively) between you and that guy topping the charts in your raid or the nattily attired banker rummaging through the mailbox next to you. With something like 11 to 12 million WoW players worldwide, it stands to reason that you’ll run into players who live and play the game from a very different perspective.

From virtual world designers to disabled players, from dancers to authors, 15 Minutes of Fame brings you a sampling of the personalities and passions behind the avatars that shared your screen in 2009. Click into our gallery, below, for a fresh look at the players we profiled over the past year.

Today is the last day of WoW.com’s 12 Days of Winter Veil contests and we’re finishing big with four, count them four, giveaways. First, we’re giving away two BlizzCon 2009 goodie bags, including all original contents. Winners will recieve, among other things, a code for Grunty The Murloc Marine in-game pet, the Noobz Raynor action figure and an official BlizCon 2009 authenticator. You can view the full contents of the goody bag in the gallery below.

The contest is open to legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec), and everyone who enters must be 18 or older. To enter, leave a comment on this post before 11:59pm ET Sunday, January 3, 2010. Please be sure to use a real email that you check often to enter, so we can contact you should you be one of the winners. You may enter only once and two winners will be selected randomly. Each winner will receive 1 BlizzCon 2009 goody bag with a retail value of US$125. Click here to read the official contest rules. EDIT: Contest closed. Thanks everyone!

Nazgűl of <TheHiWay> on Runetotem is still bugging me with his non-standard-character name, but he does know how to take a nice action screenshot. “The poor Scarlet Miner sees only a mining cart, but the shadows never lie,” he writes. “A dread Tauren Death Knight hides in secret, waiting for the right moment to strike.”

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.

A few readers (thanks!) sent us notes pointing out that Blizzard has updated the Mobile Armory app for the iPhone. The new version, 1.1.0, features a streamlined character selection screen, the ability to save and load custom talent builds (though unfortunately it doesn’t look like there’s any way to bring these into the game automatically — you just have to choose points the same way), in-game reputations on character profiles, and a number of other bugfixes and user interface improvements.

The one big feature is that “Find an Upgrade” now works on the mobile app — you can search directly in the app for a gear upgrade for any equipment slot on your character. That’s a nice bonus; it means that while you’re sitting on the bus with your iPhone, you can look through your gear, and figure out what you’re going to be upgrading to in that waist slot the next time your guild heads up into Icecrown. I’d still like to see a little more integration with the game itself (a few MMO companies have hinted that they’re pushing for more integrated iPhone tie-ins), but since the app is called Mobile Armory, and yes, is still free, I can’t complain too much.

After defeating Kil’Jaeden, Bumdee of <Civil Warcraft> on Shattered Hand wanted to take another peek at the restored Sunwell. So once he left the instance, he used Far Sight to look back into the demon lord’s former sanctum. To his surprise, he found Lady Liadrin still kneeling at the Sunwell. Is she paying respect to her former prisoner, M’uru, or is she getting high off the huge amount of arcane residue in the area?

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@gmail.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.

Our friend Medievaldragon let us know that actor Michael McConnohie will be live on the Internet this weekend — he’s going on air over at Blogtalkradio Sunday at 7pm PDT, and apparently he’ll also be talking to fans. McConnohie has done film and television voicework and acting for a while, but for our purposes, he’s probably best known as quite a few of the characters wandering around Northrend and Outland: King Ymiron, Commander Kolurg, Uther the Lightbringer, the Epoc Hunter, and Kel’thuzad. Oh, and he does one more voice in the game: The Lich King (remember that guy?).

I don’t know how much this guy wants to talk about Warcraft, but then again, the group hosting him seems to be pretty geeky (they’ve had folks from Star Trek and Stargate on before), so maybe it’ll be all about McConnohie’s work for Blizzard (and not, say, his stint on General Hospital). If you want to talk to the Lich King himself, you can call in Sunday night at (914) 338-0314. I bet it’ll be quite an experience.