As the saying goes, you have to break some eggs to make an omelet. Well after the day we've had here at QJ Central, I hope everyone's hungry, because we've got breakfast for all ... as long as you don't mind your eggs scrambled.

So what's the dish? As many of you might've known already, QJ.NET keeps growing and coming into its own with each passing day. As we grow, so does our audience (hey, that's you!). For some time now, the site has been dragging its feet, and we practically have to get out and push it to your browsers sometimes. That's no fun for you, and we're tired of having to buy new shoes.

Today we saw the first (of two) changes to our server structure, including a new addition. But like a little boy on Christmas morning, that brand new bike doesn't put itself together, and Santa isn't always the greatest when it comes to reading the French instructions. The short of it is that things didn't go as planned, and we should've taken the proper precautions and made offerings to the server gods... may thine bandwidth bless thee and keep thee free from lag.

Everything seems to be in order now, and hopefully the change in loading speed has been noticed (if you can tell, let us know in the comments - we could use the affirmation right about now). We apologize for the huge, unanticipated outage today, but now that you're surfing the site a bit faster, hopefully you'll forgive us.

And there should be another dramatic boost to speed by the beginning of next week as we make another change to our setup. This will result in a few hours of downtime for DL.QJ.NET, but like Santa, the plan is for us to sneak in while most of you are asleep, so leave out some cookies. Both DL.QJ and the front pages will benefit from this shakeup, but the front pages should remain unaffected as far as downtime is concerned.

Thanks for sticking with us and being patient! Now who's up for some spicy Denver Omelettes?

Everybody hates waiting in line at supermarkets (or anywhere for that matter) especially when you have things to do - slay monsters, do PvP, and such. WoW players have been complaining about server queues since November and they worry that the Burning Crusade's launch would make matters worse. There have been reports of queues at 500+. Minimum.

Blizzard has been working on the issue for a while and efforts have been made to resolve it. They "have repeatedly reduced, removed or regulated realm population".

There have been a surge of players logging in since some people probably got WoW for Christmas or some players are returning for Burning Crusade's launch. Blizzard is offering an quick solution for the population problem in the form of Free Character Transfers for the realms experiencing the queues, the more severe servers first.

Or players can try the lower populated realms for the meantime. Tseric from Blizzard offers a suggestion: Steamwheedle Cartel. It isn't low-pop (increasing towards full), but it hasn't seen real queues, yet.

Given that the season for giving's just been wrapped up, we resume our favorite topic: Revenge. Revenge against character deletions to be exact, at least according to this particular World of Warcraft gamer. Why wouldn't he be miffed - the guy's character was hacked and deleted on Christmas morning, along with all his hard-earned gold and loots.

To summarize his tale, he contacted Blizzard, who in turn told him they couldn't do anything because it was a phishing incident. The guy in turn decided he'd try to track down the perp, and managed to find a bogus credit card email he'd signed days before. Using this info, he asked an investigative firm to check up on who sent him the email, who in turn told him three days later told him the guy's home address...which was also in the United States.

So, what happens now? According to the disgruntled dude, he's planning to sue the guy for all 286 days and the $ 2000 bucks he lost when the offending hacker deleted his account. Secondly, he's planning to let the feds know it was pulled off via phishing - an offense that could land this poor sucker some serious jail time.

Sure, using an investigative firm is overkill. But being fellow gamers, we feel the guy's aggravation of losing something he painstakingly trained for - it's so close to the Burning Crusade to boot - and hope this incident resolves itself quietly.

So, what if this not a true story? It still makes for some cool bar room talk. Remember: Don't get mad, get even!

Perhaps they're having a year-end inventory clearing sale going on. WoW Insider reports that there are a few jewelcrafted items up for sale somewhere in the warrens of the game world (gee, first the ferry to nowhere, now this?). Jewelcrafting, as you know, is a specialized skill of the Exodar Draenei - looks like they've been busy long before they were scheduled to get busy (in the expansion's release next month, which anyways is just around the corner).

Word is, or at least one commenter noted, that this is a noted bug: "the vendor is supposed to sell just the pattern for it" and the other jewelcrafted items. Should be corrected with a new patch, but this will just mean a last-minute deluge of buyers scrambling to pick up their own jewelcrafted beauty before they disappear forev... until the expansion's official release.

Perhaps the next bit should interest you, if you're the type who celebrates New Year's with a big PvP bang. If you're on the lookout for more powerful arrows and weapons, there are more powerful versions for sale among vendors right now. An orc vendor in the Caverns of Time in Tanaris named Galfrom is also selling some very high-quality water. Good enough, says a satisfied customer, to refill your mana bars quickly without burning a potion cooldown (although he also says that lower-level water will suffice). Great. Even more last-minute holiday shopping. Hey, we're just glad the great Christmas shopping deluge is now over...

After singing along with the Winter Veil Twelve Days of Christmas, it's definitely back to business for WoW players. WoW PvPers, here's a head's up for what seems like a Christmas afterparty.

An announcement from the WoW Community Site has indicated that there would be a focused PvP beta testing on Hellfire and Blades Edge beta realms. Players who would like to participate need to be online between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. server time on December 27 to 29.

Here are the specific PvP areas where the tests would be held:

Wednesday, December 27 - Outdoor PvP objectives in Hellfire Peninsula, Zangarmarsh, Nagrand and Terokkar Forest

Thursday, December 28 - Any of the three Arena Skirmishes

Friday, December 29 - Eye of the Storm Battleground

Christmas day had just passed and we know you're all pretty eager to go back to Azeroth. But before we all do, we thought we'd squeeze in one last holiday festive video for World of Warcraft. It was really brilliant and funny, we couldn't help but put it up. Treat this one just like them drunkards always say, "one for the road!"

What we have here actually is a WoW rendition of classic holiday song "Twelve Days of Christmas." While we were watching it, we suddenly found ourselves singing along! Come on, give yourselves a break and loosen up a bit. After this, we won't bug you anymore with your DHKs.

Okay? So here goes: On the first day of Winter's Veil my Murlocs gave to me - a Gnome's head on a pine tree...

Developer Blizzard Entertainment, it turned out, has a lot of surprises for the 7.5 million strong fan base of World of Warcraft this Christmas. Aside from the usual holiday video and the skit "Twas the night before Wintervale," probably the most exciting of all is the removal of Tuesday downtimes.

Given these updates, it seems that there is no resting now for WoW players and that is actually a good thing for some. If that is what they want, well, we'll give it to them. For starters, we would like to discuss some druid PvP abilities. We all know that druids didn't get the best of the recent update so why not make the most of what they have, right? There are certain things players have to remember. A few of these are:

There are many ways you can PvP as a Druid. The Feral tree has a good amount of damage oriented talents, but it too has its weaknesses. Shadow priests and warlocks have shown me these weaknesses on many occasions. The many armor ignoring DoTs manage to damage even a Druid quickly.

Aside from the Feral Tree, druids can also opt to take the moonkin/caster route while some use the restoration tree in a group setting. Speaking of which, it is believed that a restoration tree will do excellently in group settings, especially outdoors. Of course, once a player have taken this path, they can't expect their druid to have a lot of one-on-one combat skills. A good explanation of this is as follows:

Restoration druids can still take a lot of damage very quickly. Nature's Swiftness is a good talent to acquire. With the many new silence abilities from all different classes, along with stuns and counterspells, it makes it hard to cast a quick heal. This talent can save a druid from death, by making any nature cast an instant. Therefore your healing touch can be instant, and makes a great saving heal that keeps you alive.

On the other hand, a moonkin druid is more complete and balance as compared to the previous one. However, it is a wonder why this type of form doesn't attract a lot of players. Maybe it depends on one's preferred fighting style. But here's a rough explanation about a moonkin's skills:

A balance druid is all about spell damage through Moonkin form and he is equipped with many talents that lower casting time and mana cost. Some of the key talents to get for balance druids are Nature's Grasp, along with Improved Nature's Grasp. Nature's Reach, Celestial Focus, and Improved Faerie Fire (Feral), are all good talents to acquire form the balance tree.

Okay, so maybe this piece find you a little too early, but what the heck. We're going to be celebrating Christmas dinner and ripping up presents in a few hours or minutes (depending on what part of the globe you're in), with a fresh new year waiting for us in six to seven days. You know what that means, people...consider this a bit of quiet time for some of the older among us.

It's been a crazy year for a lot of us, and we're not even getting to the part of the console launches. For one, we've been looking at congress attempt to wangle new (and queer) legislation, like the ill-fated "Truth in Video Game Ratings Act" from way back. Good thing that never took off. Then there's the ESRB...which has enough coverage that we won't be mentioning 'em any more.

Moving on to the more stranger side of the year, there's our all-time favorite lawyer, Phoenix Wright Jack Thompson. We're at a loss of how to describe him. On one hand, he's been dissing off anything that is Rockstar, be it the GTA franchise or Bully. On the other hand, though, we found ourselves agreeing ever-so-slightly to some of his points, along with the other surveys that say violent gaming might spur violent behavior (Key word: might).

How is this so? It shows in our language, and most prominently, in the way we've balked at Thompson's statements in the blogs - by way of flaming. "Violence begets violence," as the old saying goes, and maybe the more intolerant we are of his statements, the more fired up his kind gets. With over six billion people (correct me if I'm wrong) on earth, you can't expect everybody to agree with you.

Well, now that we've gotten some of this bad karma off our chest, let's look at the brighter side of things, after this jump

T'was the night before Christmas and all through the site, all the banners were snowing and consoles alight! As a holiday gift to all our readers, I'll end the poetry abuse right there. On behalf of the entire QJ.NET staff, I'd like to wish all of our readers a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, a cheerful Kwanzaa and any other yuletide tradition you might practice.

It has been quite a year for the gaming industry with the rounding out of the next-gen console list, and here's hoping some of you are lucky enough to find your favorite gadgets in your stockings tomorrow. But even if you don't, you can count on our fantastic writing team to keep you up to date on all the latest news and happenings over the holidays. They're sacrificing quite a bit of their own holiday time to keep the articles flowing over the next few days, so be sure to drop them a line and let them know you appreciate their unwavering commitment to keeping you in the loop! There's no rest for the wicked, and we've got that covered in spades.

Aside from sparing everyone from my pathetic attempt at poetry parody, we do have one small present for you guys in the form of a new feature! As many of you probably know, the QJ.NET Blog of Blogs is a compilation of every news story posted across the entire network, making it a one stop shop for all your news needs. But since not everyone will be interested in everything we cover, you can now make the Blog of Blogs (or as we lovingly call it, "the BoB") display just the news you want to read about.

All you have to do is register an account (for free of course) and then click on Blog of Blogs Settings at the top of the right-hand column. From there, you can select which subjects you want displayed on the BoB and voila! - a custom front page chock full of all the news you want to see!

Happy Holidays!

Don't you ever wonder how they celebrate Christmas in Azeroth? To some, it even must be surprising to learn that they do have Christmas there. Anyway, just for a little comparison. Do they hang stockings too by their fireplace? Do they also enjoy roasted turkey and eggnogs? What about mistletoes and fireworks and parties?

Well, if you're interested to find out, then we have the answer just for you! Yup, this video right here will show you how they celebrate the occasion in Azeroth. And like the way we do it here in the real world, everything is also all jazzed up for the holidays. Christmas lights are generously hanging from buildings, and gnomes are dressed up like the big guy from the North Pole.

Interestingly enough, they can afford not to have fireworks, 'cause, hey, they do have their own natural light shows care of their powers. Anyway, it definitely is a jovial mood out there. So, if they're having a blast in World of Warcraft, we don't see a reason why we shouldn't be, too.

Happy Holidays!