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Get your Guardian Cub while you still can
Okay, truth time -- I have always found the Guardian Cub to be just freaking adorable. Like, really adorable. Look at that little guy. This is why it saddens me to report that, on June 18th, the Guardian Cub will no longer be available for purchase. The Guardian Cub differs from other battle pets in that it's not bind to account (although this was a much bigger deal back before you could cage and put captured battle pets on the AH) and can be traded. I don't do pet battles, but I really think this is a cute pet worth having, so I may have to pick one up before they're unavailable. Since it's going into the 'Blizzard Archive' (think the Disney Vault, but with presumably more axes in it) we may get to see it again someday, but who knows if or when that day will be?
Mists of Pandaria Digital Deluxe disappearing soon
Blizzard is taking a page from Disney with this one: in "approximately one week" the Digital Deluxe edition of Mists of Pandaria will be sent to the Blizzard Archive. Meaning: Unable to be acquired for an undetermined amount of time. If you don't have the Imperial Quilen mount or the Lucky Quilen Cub pet but were considering picking them up, upgrade your account before it's too late. Much like your favorite Disney film, the Mists Digital Deluxe might return one day, but who knows when. Personally, I'm curious why the Digital Deluxe is going away at all. Digital items have no real scarcity beyond the artificial. It's possible we'll see Mists of Pandaria become a part of a Warlords of Draenor battle chest, rendering a digital deluxe of anything prior to Warlords a complication. When the Digital Deluxe returns, we might see it in the form of buying the included digital items individually rather than as a package. That's only speculation, however. You can view the full blue post behind the cut below or on Battle.net.
Music from the MPQs
Want to listen to the music of World of Warcraft without actually playing the game? It's possible -- anyee has posted a quick how-to over on the WoW Livejournal. The music is sitting on your computer in MPQ files, which are a proprietary Blizzard archiving format for their games. But there are a number of MPQ extractors and editors out there (the two recommended are MPQ Extractor for the Mac and MPQ Editor for Windows), so download one of those, use it to break open the MPQ you're looking for, and then find the music you want in that folder. Extract it out, and voila, you've got Warcraft music to listen to whenever you want.I know what you're saying -- this might be against the Terms of Service. But actually, it's not -- the ToS only mentions "modifying" game files, and since you're simply extracting them from their archives, you're not actually modifying them. Plus, Blizzard actually authorizes the extraction of this music for use in noncommercial machinima, so as long as you use this music and any other assets for personal, noncommercial use, Blizzard has no problem with it. Of course, you'll be stuck listening to the music in bits and pieces designed for looping rather than a snazzy CD set. But if all you want to do is taking a listen to some of the tunes out of game, there you go.
