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First, the Ten Ton Pulse, your finger on the beating heart of the MMOG industry.

If the Top 10 isn't enough, we now show the Top 20 and Top 50 lists as well, available to everyone on our homepage. (What is Pulse?)

1. Age of Conan - 200 BPM
2. World of Warcraft - 118 BPM
3. Lord of the Rings Online - 39 BPM
4. EverQuest 2 - 30 BPM
5. Lineage 2 - 25 BPM
6. EVE Online - 22 BPM
7. Warhammer Online - 22 BPM
8. Vanguard - 21 BPM
9. Guild Wars - 16 BPM
10. Tabula Rasa - 13 BPM

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Blizzard pulled back the curtains on Patch 2.4 yesterday to a fanbase that wailed and foamed at the mouth, but for the most part wagged their happy little tails at this rather large patch. Some of the highlights of this major addition to the game include.

• The Sunwell Isle is now available for play. This area includes a new quest hub and 5 and 25-player instances.
• The combined forces of Shattrath have launched an attack on the Isle of Quel’Danas, to confront Kael’thas and the Legion at the Sunwell and surrounding areas. Players will now be able to gain reputation with the Shattered Sun Offensive and participate in a new set of daily quests.
• A representative of the Keepers of Time has been spotted at the World’s End Tavern in Shattrath. Players in good standing with the faction will be granted ease of passage to the Caverns of Time.
• Characters will now retain talented spell ranks so when they retalent they do not have to relearn the spells from trainers.
• Spell Haste: Spell haste now reduces the global cooldown on spells, down to a minimum of 1 second. This change does not apply to melee and ranged abilities.
• Item Cast Spells: Many spells cast by items were being cast as if the caster were the same level as the item. Most of those will now be cast at the player’s level, giving them a reasonable chance to miss, be dispelled, or be resisted.
• Resilience: Now reduces the magnitude of mana draining effects by the same amount that it reduces critical strike damage. The Tooltip has been revised to reflect this.
• Spirit-Based Mana Regeneration: This system has been adjusted so that as your intellect rises, you will regenerate more mana per point of spirit.
• Weapon Skill: Points will be gained faster in weapon skills for levels 1 through 59.
• The Daily Quest limit has been increased to 25.
• [Full Patch Notes]

This was a major patch to the highest profile MMOG on the planet. How does it affect you? A Patch 2.4 class by class breakdown is up on our WoW community site.

Cameron posted his take on the new 5-man instance in the forums for those that are curious about the new content.

Scott Jennings, formerly Lum the Mad and now super-secret-designer-agent at NCSoft posted an articulate, witty and bang-on piece about the removal of the attunement requirements to enter Black Temple. He's right of course, as much as those that "did the work" to get attuned don't appreciate that 'casual' gamers now also get to enjoy the content. Get this, 121,000 people have finished Black Temple. That's it! A development team created content that only 121,000 people have finished and 10 million would like to attempt.

The WoW Effect, WAR unveils the CE, LOLCats, party fire engines and more, today in Loading...