The Lord of Frost's Private Label

Apparently this drink can also proc an iceblock that you get locked in for a little while, but in my experience it must be pretty rare? I've gone through a stack and a half of the stuff and haven't had it happen to me yet, but many of our readers have mentioned seeing it. I think the booze is playing favorites.
What do this month's brew do? Not a whole lot. Like I said, it cools you down. Really. After drinking it, you can see your character's breath for awhile. Which...you probably won't notice in Northrend at all, because almost the entire continent makes you do that anyway. If you prefer getting your drunk on in Ironforge, this drink is perfect and you can pick some up in the usual places in Orgrimmar and Ironforge. If you're looking for a drink to warm you up on a cold Northrend night, go for a Northrend staple: Mead. It's all over the place up there.Just the thing we needed in the middle of winter in Northrend! A drink to cool us down! Wait, what? Crap, that's not we need at all! Oh well, I guess we're out of luck. This month's brew from the Brew of the Month club is actually a drink we've seen before. It's the Lord of Frost's Private Label, previously only acquired from Lord Ahune's stash during the Midsummer festivities.

Tags: Label

Five man instances

Anything that could help our first guild run avoid total disaster would be greatly appreciated!
Percinho
Well hopefully they made the run fine, but it's a good question: what do you wish you'd been told when you first started running instances? Percinho also mentions that they're aware of the aggro mechanics -that's the thing I had the hardest time with when I started, though it seems easy now. I'd also say settle the loot rules first, since even in a guild, that's where problems come from. Finally, an awareness of what other classes can do is always good: helping a Warlock to remember his soul stone or asking a Shaman for a specific totem in a certain situation can help the whole group (if done tactfully, of course, not "omg lay poison totem down, noob"). What say you, readers?
Here's a question for you all from Percinho about my absolute favorite thing to do in game: five man instances. He and his guildies are about to run their very first instance (or they were when he sent this to us at ask@wowinsider.com), and he wants to know your very best tips for instance running:
For the first time we have 5 players with level 60+ characters and so have decided to run some instances. None of the guild have extensive experience of instancing as we tend to mainly be solo-ers, or group up in twos and threes just to quest. We're heading to the Ramparts in Hellfire Peninsula with a Warrior, Priest, DK, Rogue and Mage. What we're after is some tips for successful instancing that we may not have considered, those things that every veteran knows that wouldn't even occur to instance-n00bs like ourselves.

The weaponsmithing specialization

While this isn't a major issue to those of us at level 80 as there are currently no top end weapons that require one of the three specializations, it not only prevents these leveling characters from making the epic weapons it could prevent a character who currently is an armorsmith from being able to trade specializations. It's certainly not the end of the world for most of us, just don't try and retrain until it's fixed, but it's got to be a bummer for the people who intended to have a fun new toy in Northrend and will instead be staring at a pile of mats they won't have any use for.
You will be unable to learn a new one. In a bug first noticed by new DK's wanting to craft an epic to bring to Northrend with them and later confirmed by other characters, if you go to Winterspring to pick up a weaponsmithing specialization the three NPC's do not give it to you. As a swordsmith myself, I'm not willing to unlearn my profession to test it out, it does seem very strongly corroborated at this point.

Tags: level 80

Level 80 of hardcore

That will ruffle a few feathers, and I should know, because I ruffled a few of the same feathers yesterday. But the stats back GC up -it's true that most of the players in the game haven't gotten to level 80 yet, and of course it doesn't mean that you're a no-life loser if you're 80; it just means that you're faster than the average player. Congrats.
But in the hopes of actually bringing this whole thing home to a place we can all agree on without flaming each other, let's take a look at the new way of doing the endgame: the regular, show up-and-fight PvE content is now for casual players. Ulduar will be harder than the current endgame, says GC, but it still won't be as hard as AQ40 and the original Naxx were in their day. And for the hardcore players, Blizzard is offering achievements and special runs -have you finished Sartharion with three drakes yet, he asks? Have you finished all of the achievements yet (and if you have, let us know, because we'd love to post about you)? There are really hardcore, really challenging things to do in the game, still, and Blizzard is working on offering appropriate rewards for them, says GC. But the average endgame is no longer the domain of people who raid three times a week or more, and that's the way Blizzard wants it.
We had quite the firey argument yesterday here on the site -first, Adam postulated that raiding was so easy we didn't even need to track it, and then I responded by saying that anyone who'd already beat the raid content was just going too fast. And now we have a response from Ghostcrawler (even though he beat us to the punch anyway by posting on Wednesday -that's just how awesome he is). "If you're 80 already," he says on the forums, "you are a relatively hardcore player."

Tags: level 80