The realms have come back up and Blizzard have announced a few interesting changes:

FOCUSED TESTING: Alterac Valley

Blizzard have made some changes to AV and would like players on the PTR to test them thoroughly.

Numerous changes were made to the Alterac Valley Battleground on 2.4 and we would like to gather some feedback on these changes.

The AV battleground is currently available for players on the PTR. Please take the time to check it out and post any feedback about the changes here in this thread.

Any bugs that you encounter should as always be posted in seperate threads.

New Vendors on the TTR

Due to popular demand, Blizz have added more Vendors to the TTR starting areas:

We've added vendors in a number of new starting areas on the TTR, and plan to add more in the next patch.

Until all the vendors have been added you may have to travel by foot from your starting location to another to use the vendors. We apologize for this inconvenience.

Sunwell Plateau Instance Open - For Now

The Sunwell Plateau is back open for testing, with focus on the Eredar Twins again:

We're currently seeking feedback on the Lady Sacrolash and Grand Warlock Alythess boss encounter, as well as the non-boss encounters leading up to it. The major bug that was making the encounter more difficult than intended has been resolved.

But be warned, Hortus stated that it will close later for more hotfixes!

Warlock Nerf Reversed!

After months of players crying for a Warlock nerf, Blizzard deliver with the proposed Life Tap reduction. However, the latest build of the PTR shows that Blizzard have changed their minds, and nerfed the nerf! Here's why they didn't see it through:

Locks are doing pretty well overall, but what had us worried was that it appeared to us a month ago or so as though warlocks were on an uptrend. However, the evidence is strong that that trend is reversing, which means significant nerfs aren't really what we want right now (we really don't know where those numbers will settle down).

Shaman's Buff Gets Taken Away!

Sometimes, life just doesn't seem fair, and this is one of those times. Just as Warlocks escape their nerf, Shamans lose out on a buff. I must admit, I don't have a Shaman character over level 30, but even I know the Shaman class could do with some love.

The proposed change to Flametongue spells, which we reported on earlier, has been removed from the PTR:

Yes the flametongue revert was intentional. After putting it through its paces we felt like we'd gone too far on that one.

Random Spawning and Additional Vendors

Blizzard are testing out random spawning areas for players on the TTRs. Drysc has listed new places where players might spawn and find new vendors, but it's all still in the early stages and a little buggy by the sound of it:

We are currently in the process of creating a lot more starting locations to ease congestion for the vendors. As a part of these new starting locations, we are also currently testing random spawning for newly created characters, which should evenly spread the population throughout all vendor locations. If you create a new character now and log into the Arena Tournament Test Realm it is possible to load into an incorrect location with no NPCs. This will only happen while we test random spawning and before all new vendor locations are in place. In the meantime, you will find a list of all current vendor locations.

Current list of Vendor locations (subject to change)

1. Ammen Vale
2. North Shire
3. Coldridge Valley
4. Shadowglen
5. Goldshire
6. Sentinel Hill (Westfall)
7. Kharanos
8. Ironforge
9. Stormwind
10. Deathknell
11. Sunstrider Isle
12. Red Cloud Mesa
13. Valley of Trials