Due to the increase in downtime caused by today’s hardware maintenance, we will be giving all players with characters on the realms listed below a one-day time extension. In addition, players on the realms below will also receive a rested experience bonus, whether or not they had left their characters logged out at an Inn.

If your realm was down today, they at least you'll have an extra one. Affected realms are found here.

 Irvine, Calif. - Monday, March 28, 2005 - Blizzard Entertainment® today announced their plans to debut World of Warcraft®: NorthrendT the first expansion to World of Warcraft®, its award winning massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). The expanion will add new player races, a new faction and a whole new continent for players to explore.

"We are very excited about this." said Mike Morhaime, president of Blizzard Entertainment. "World of WarCraft has been a tremendous worldwide success and we look forward to giving our customers much more content to explore. The expansion will further the game's storyline in conjunction with free content that Blizzard plans to release in the coming months."

The expansion will be aimed largely at higher level players, and will involve a higher level cap, bigger and larger dungeons both inside and outside in Northrend and elsewhere, and many new items and quests. Blizzard is also expected to announce that the game's graphic engine has been further enhanced as planned to keep World of WarCraft in line with the latest technology.

After its debut at E3, World of Warcraft®: NorthrendT is expected to go into beta testing over the summer and be released in late 2005.

While this press released has been denied as official by Blizzard, their response was ambigous.  "We have no problems with the discussion, so long as everyone is aware this was not an announcement made by Blizzard, and we are not sure where this rumor originated." Personally, the rumor will definately hold some degree of truth, it is obvious deduction that a Northrend expansion is planned, and the end of this year generally fits in the schedule of when Blizzard releases their expansions.

Source: Actiontrip

• Dire Maul East: Map

Expect a walkthrough on this instance shortly!

• Dire Maul Screenshots

Currently, there are some serious issues with Arcane Meditation and the Mage Armor Spell. Breeze explains:

Let me begin with what I did. I cast Mage Armor, got 30% regn. Put 5 points into Arcane Med, got 45% regen. Canceled Mage Armor, recast it, back to 30% regn. Cancelled Mage Armor, ecpected 15% regen, got none. Arcane Med was compeletly shutdown and would not return until I logged.

A word with a GM showed that Arcane Meditation and Mage Armor are not meant to stack, though this still doesn't explain why Arcane meditation should stop working after magr armor has been cast. At any rate, Arcane meditation may not be a useful talent at this point in time.

1. The Sims 2 University (Electronic Arts)
2. World of Warcraft (Blizzard)
3. The Sims 2 (Electronic Arts)
4. Half-Life 2 (Vivendi Universal)
5. Star Wars: Republic Commando (LucasArts)
6. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords (LucasArts)
7. The Sims Deluxe(Electronic Arts)
8. Halo: Combat Evolved (Microsoft)
9. Galaxy Of Games 350 JC (eGames)
10. RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 (Atari)

World of Warcraft finally loses to the sims onslaught as another new expansion was released... Oh Well, it's doing pretty well at number 2, considering its an MMORPG!

EA president Larry Probst also acknowledged sales of competitive titles, including "Half-Life 2" and "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" have cut into sales. "World of Warcraft," a massively multiplayer game from powerhouse developer Blizzard, he said "has had an impact on everyone in the industry."

"Everybody in the industry has been surprised with 'World of Warcraft,'" he said. "I can tell you from firsthand observation that there are people who haven't played games in years who are now spending 15 to 20 hours a week playing 'World of Warcraft'."

Haha, grab the details here.

Double standard? Yup. Now someone get me a Euro account.

Blizzard has announced that the content patch for World of Warcraft will be finally released tommorow! Excellent news!

The new content patch you've been waiting for will be available after tomorrow's weekly scheduled maintenance. In order to make the patch available at that time, we need to extend the maintenance by an additional two hours. The realms will be taken down at approximately 5:00AM PST instead of at the normal maintenance time, and made available again at 11:00AM PST. During this time, forum login will be unavailable. Once the realms are live, players can immediately download the patch by simply connecting to the game. Complete patch notes can be found by following the link below. We wish to thank everyone who helped us test this patch on the new test realm.

So get ready! There's reason to log on your level 60 characters again!

In order to better decide on what World of Warcraft material we plan to cover, we thought it's time to check out the demographics of the site. Different levelled characters what different content, be it which instance to right walkthroughs for, or whether advanced PvP material should be covered. So go vote!

What would you most prefer to do when your character in WoW hits 60?
PvE Raids	91	13%
5 Man Instances	83	12%
Battlegrounds	306	45%
Gank those N00bs	117	17%
Roll a new character	88	13%
TOTAL	685	10

Battlegrounds! We want battlegrounds! It looks like Blizzard will need to get their act together and release the feature before too many level 60s get bored. It's wildly apparent that few people enjoy raiding. In fact, there's way more that prefer to just gank n00bs. No wonder why being a n00b on a PvP server is hell right now!

Arthas to Nathrezim
Warsong to Bonechewer,
Bleeding Hollow to Crushridge
Illidan to Stonemaul.

If you're tired of qeues, you may consider a server swap. But beware, they are one way only!

The first realm to give this option is Arthas. If you're tired to the lag, you can now switch to  Nathrezim by clicking this link.

Regarding Onyxia/Molten Core loot, the main thing to remember is that the loot table changes are not coming in this patch. Luckily, the next patch will follow much quicker than the current one on test (the delays in patching frustrated us as much as you, if you can believe that). So t here will be a delay before MC/Onyxia loot completely catches up to the Kazzak/Azuregos stuff.

MC/Onyxia loot should be on par if not better than some of the Azuregos/Kazzak stuff once the patch-after-next hits the live servers.

Also, you guys will be happy to know that Blackwing Lair is coming along nicely and is being tuned and tested internally now. So there's more instanced raid content on the way, although I don't have an ETA on Blackwing just yet...

Yup, keep waiting!

Over the recent weeks we have been investigating the activities of certain individuals who have been farming gold in order to sell it in exchange for real world currency. After researching the situation, we have issued permanent suspensions to over one thousand accounts that have been engaging in this practice. We do not condone such actions and will take decisive action as they are against our policy and damage the game economy as a whole. We will continue researching this matter. If you suspect someone of taking part in said gold farming, please eMail the report to wowgm@blizzard.com.

Let that be a warning too all those bots!

• Players who have completed the Molten Core discovery quest can now port directly to the zone, bypassing Blackrock Depths.
• Divine Favor - Fixed a bug that prevented the effect from being removed, allowing all Flash of Light and Holy Light spells to crit for the full duration.
• Bind on Pickup items that are of a quality below the default group loot threshold (white/gray) will no longer require confirmation before looting.
• Various Bind on Pickup items that were previously of common quality (white) have been changed to green (ie: Corruptor's Scourgestone).
• Several of the dungeon and raid armor sets have been updated with their non-placeholder textures. These sets include the Devout, Prophecy, Elements, Arcanist's and Wildheart sets. Future patches will update more dungeon and raid sets.

Sounds good, lets hope the patch gets released soon.

World of Warcraft is now the fastest growing online game in European History. Here's a direct quote from Gamespy:

Blizzard announced today the overnight success of the European release of World of Warcraft, its first foray into the MMORPG market.

Blizzard reports that its latest game has sold through about 280,000 copies on Friday Feb 11 and roughly 380,000 copies were sold by Feb 13.

Check out the details, as well as a screenshot of the loot here.

Dustin Browder, game design director for Battle for Middle-earth for Electronic Arts, will be leaving the company March 9 to join Blizzard as a senior designer.

Browder, who has been with EA since the Westwood Studios days, has worked on several RTSs, including Red Alert 2 and C&C Generals. He said he will be working out of Blizzard's Irvine office and will be answering to Rob Pardo, who has worked extensively on Blizzard's Warcraft franchise, most recently, World of Warcraft.

He has not been told what project he will be working on when he starts March 14, but he assumes it will be an RTS because of his background. Could it possibly be Warcraft IV or StarCraft 2? "I hope so," he said.

Check out the rest of the article over here. Blizzard is certainly the process of developing an RTS, and with it being based in Irvine, it'll certainly be a continuation of either the Warcraft or Starcraft universe. Our bet in Starcraft 2.

1. Half-Life 2 (Vivendi Universal)
2. World of Warcraft (Blizzard)
3. The Sims 2 (Electronic Arts)
4. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: (LucasArts)
5. The Sims Deluxe (Electronic Arts)
6. RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 (Atari)
7. Halo: Combat Evolved (Microsoft)
8. Zoo Tycoon 2 (Microsoft)
9. NASCAR SimRacing (Electronic Arts)
10. Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight (Microsoft)

Interesting, A MMORPG outselling Sims 2? Is that possible? Now that deserves some recognition.

Blizzard has announced that they will be shipping World of Warcraft to audiences in Taiwan

 TAIPEI, Taiwan - March 11, 2005 - Blizzard Entertainment^® today announced a strategic license agreement with Soft-World International Corporation to bring Blizzard's World of Warcraft^®, the subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game, to Taiwanese gamers. The highly successful MMORPG has already achieved phenomenal success in its three current markets - North America, Korea, and Europe. Blizzard and Soft-World are anticipating similar success for World of Warcraft's launch in Taiwan.

There's currently no release date.

While the Honor system presented by Blizzard looks very promising, we could help but notice some possible loopholes that may undermine its intent of encouraging a fair, challenging and fun PVP experience.  For example:

An alliance and a horde guild on the same PVP server can organise meetings at some graveyard and have each member kill each other member. For example, to guild with 40 players could do this, and have each player gain 40 honourably kills in the space of less than a hour. I'm not sure about you, but my PvP abilities are generally not good enough to finding and beating 40 Level 60 players within that space of time. This further encourages elite guilds that perform tedius tasks to gain maximal reward.

Read the rest of our editorial here.

Blizzard has wrote up a large artcile with juicy details on how the PVP Honor system will work. Key features include:

• Killing any green or higher Player or PVP Enabled NPC Gives Honor Points
• Each week, all players are ranked based on their honor points.
• As players gain higher ranks, they're able to purhcase blue and eventually even purple sets for their class.

Be sure to give it a read.

Two new public test realms will be going live soon! These realms will give select players the chance to experience new content before it is patched to public realms. More importantly, it gives us a place to test new features and systems in a live environment without impacting the public realms. This will allow us to provide players with more frequent content patches in the future.

Moving forward, all players who have an active World of Warcraft account will be eligible to participate in testing on the test realms. However, this initial testing phase requires characters between the levels of 55 and 60 in order to properly test the content and functionality for the next patch. Email invitations have been sent out to a random set of players who meet these qualifications. Their level 55 to 60 characters have been copied to the test realm and will be waiting for them when they log in for the first time.

If you fit the criteria, be sure to check mail. Keep in mind though, everything that you do on a test server will be deleted once the patch goes live. Be sure to read the FAQ.

• Warrior, Shaman and Druid Significantly Buffed
• No one is significantly nerfed.
• New Instance, Dire Maul will be added
• Meeting Stones Added
• Silithus Itemized
• New Outdoor Raide bosses

Also, Blizzard has addressed one of my chief concerns:

All dungeons now have a cap on group size to limit the number of players that may enter the dungeon. It was necessary to add this cap as raiding these dungeons trivialized much of the content. Because of this change we can now look to adding better loot to them during future content patches.

With that in mind, the dungeons below now have the following caps:

• Onyxia/Molten Core - 40 members
• Blackrock Spire - 15 members
• Diremaul - 5 members

All other dungeons in the game will be capped at 10 members.Several dungeons will be re-examined for balancing in light of thischange. In addition, will have their loot improved significantly forthe next content patch.

Well, looks like I will definately be heading for Dire Maul! Its too bad that they didn't set all the instances to 5 man limits as well.

Opinions? Discuss here!

World of Warcraft does not have a free market economy. In fact,  its form of economy is probably closer to that of communism. There have been many confirmed reports of GMs messaging players should they put the buyout price of their items more than 5 times what is deemed usual. So what prices are you meant to sell, say, Copper Bars for?

Each realm has different prices for their auction house. If we put up a standard guide it would not hold true across all forums due to inflation and other such economical factors.

Anyway, beware. Players get off on their first warning, but after that, you may face more serious action! Your thoughts? Should the prices in WoW be regulated? Respond here.

Blizzard has posted a quick response for getting exalted status for non starting races so that you can purchase their mounts:

Currently it's not possible to obtain the Exalted status necessary to obtain another race's mount. The development team realizes that this is a problem and are actively working on adding faction quest content that can be repeated by players, similar to what exists for the Argent Dawn factional quests.

Please keep in mind that the faction currently being gained will still be useful when the said changes have been implimted, as players will be that much closer to hitting the Exalted mark

Sounds good, hope the game is completed some time!

Reecently, Blizzard has gone on a crusade against people using third party hack programs, including most notably, the speed hack, the floating hack and the teleportation hack

 Over the past few weeks, we have seen an increase in the number of players using third party teleportation hacks. These hacks allowed players to instantly teleport their characters to any location in the world. This exploit is a clear violation of our Terms of Use and End User License agreements, and those accounts using it have been permanently banned from World of Warcraft.

The use of exploits and/or hacks in World of Warcraft will not be tolerated. We will continue to investigate all accounts suspected of using third party programs to exploit the game, and anyone found guilty will be permanently banned.

However, it appears that in the midst of the action, many innocent players are also banned in the process. Most notably, are a number of priests who used the spell 'Levitation', that often exhibitted the same behaviour as the floating hack. If you have been wronfully banned, please contant Blizzard.

Otherwise, for the meantime, it is a good idea that if your a priest, avoid the use of 'Levitation', its a spell that could get you banned!

In a surprise turn of events, Blizzard has released a new patch for Warcraft 3. Yup, it's ironic, but Warcraft 3 has got more patches recently than World of Warcraft. Anyway, here are the contents:

• Six new maps from our Bonus Map program, including Excavation Site (4 players), Echo Isle (2), Hinterland Raid (6), Ruins of Stratholme (6), Azeroth Grand Prix (8), and Extreme Candy Wars 2004 (8). The six-player map, River of Souls, has also been updated to allow AMM play.
• Balance changes, including reduced build time for the Undead Banshee, increased gold cost for the Staff of Teleportation, and changes to the abilities of several neutral Heroes.
• New environment and floating text functions for the world editor, as well as new triggers and unit states.
• Numerous fixes to units and abilities for all four races

Details can be found here. It's good to see the underused Banshee get something!

Blizzard has announced a new job for hire, and this time we've announced it too because it doesn't sound boring. A game designer:

Blizzard Entertainment is looking for a talented and experienced game designer to join the World of Warcraft design team. Duties will include working on general game design, rules systems, play balance, interface design and story. The ideal candidate will have proven experience in game design, outstanding "people" skills, and a longstanding passion for playing games within the Massively Multiplayer Online genre.

If you don't like the balance in World of Warcraft, then maybe this is your chance to change it! And remember my suggestion, limit 5 man instance to 5 people!