Welcome to the first edition of "The Week In WoW" here on Curse -- your weekly recap of everything that happened related to World of Warcraft. We'll go through the recap in order, starting with Saturday, October 31st and finally capping things off with Friday, November 6th. Saturday, October 31st World of Raids Player Spotlight, Kripparrian of Exodus World of Raids chats with Kripparrian, a hunter in Exodus -- one of the top guilds in the world -- about his life in and out of World of Warcraft. Sunday, November 1st Quel'Delar Quest Preview Update World of Raids provides a hands-on preview of the Quel'Delar quest, a new epic quest series being added in patch 3.3. World First - Tribute to Immortality by Ensidia Ensidia becomes the first in the world to complete Tribute to Immortality, the final noteworthy achievement in Trial of the Grand Crusader. Monday, November 2nd WoW Intel Extreme Masters Opening Night Arena Junkies provides coverage for the Intel Extreme Masters...

The patch notes were updated again today to reflect today's build. They were also updated late on the 3rd and I've included those as well. PvP Arenas All abilities that have base cooldowns of 10 minutes or longer cannot be used in Arenas, down from 15 minutes. Dungeons and Raids Naxxramas Players no longer need to kill the final bosses in all four wings of this dungeon in order to teleport to Sapphiron. Teleportation orbs have been added to allow players access back and forth from Sapphiron's lair. Death Knight Talents Unholy Night of the Dead: Now reduces the damage your pet takes from area-of-effect damage by 45/90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other Druid Tranquility: The cooldown on this spell has been reduced to 8 minutes, down from 10 minutes. Mage Talents Frost Deep Freeze: This spell now deals a large amount of damage to targets permanently immune to stuns. In addition, when this ability deals damage it will no longer consume two charges...

Update: Nevermind. Blizzard messed up and posted the season 8 paladin set instead of tier-10. It's now been fixed. The official tier-10 sneak peek page has been updated with the paladin and priest sets. Check out the images below. What do you think of the tier-10 paladin armor?

This could be both controversial, or welcomed, depending on how you look at it. On one hand, Blizzard is giving 50% of the proceeds for the Pandaren Monk to the Make-a-Wish Foundation. On the other hand, it's only until the end of this year (which even so could be a substantial amount of money), and it's only for one of the two pets, so keep that in mind if you're planning to purchase these for charity purposes. Regardless of that, today Blizzard took a step closer to fully adopting microtransactions by introducing the World of Warcraft Pet Store, a way for players to purchase companion pets with real money and have them automatically delivered to their in-game mail box. Check out the details below. Quote from: Nethaera ( Source ) Today we’re pleased to introduce the Pet Store for World of Warcraft, a new way for players to obtain in-game pets to join them on their adventures in Azeroth. Two brand-new companions are now available for purchase exclusively at the Pet Store...

Blizzard is once again tweaking the way raid difficulties work, first trying through achievement mechanics, then through entirely separate zones, and now a third experiment with Icecrown Citadel: a difficulty setting you can change on the fly through the user interface. Check out the details below, provided by Bornakk! Quote from: Bornakk ( Source ) In the upcoming patch we are adding a new feature to the Icecrown raid instance that allows the raid leader to change the instance's difficulty setting on a boss per boss basis. The way the raid leader chooses to switch is the same as now, by right-clicking on the character portrait. The difficulty settings can be changed from inside Icecrown Citadel, with some restrictions. For example, you cannot change the difficulty in combat or during certain events specified by our design team. To enable the ability to change the raid difficulty to heroic, you must first defeat the Lich King on normal mode, as doing so unlocks the heroic version of...

Welcome to the first edition of "The Week In WoW" here on Curse -- your weekly recap of everything that happened related to World of Warcraft. We'll go through the recap in order, starting with Saturday, October 31st and finally capping things off with Friday, November 6th. Saturday, October 31st World of Raids Player Spotlight, Kripparrian of Exodus World of Raids chats with Kripparrian, a hunter in Exodus -- one of the top guilds in the world -- about his life in and out of World of Warcraft. Sunday, November 1st Quel'Delar Quest Preview Update World of Raids provides a hands-on preview of the Quel'Delar quest, a new epic quest series being added in patch 3.3. World First - Tribute to Immortality by Ensidia Ensidia becomes the first in the world to complete Tribute to Immortality, the final noteworthy achievement in Trial of the Grand Crusader. Monday, November 2nd WoW Intel Extreme Masters Opening Night Arena Junkies provides coverage for the Intel Extreme Masters...

The patch notes were updated again today to reflect today's build. They were also updated late on the 3rd and I've included those as well. PvP Arenas All abilities that have base cooldowns of 10 minutes or longer cannot be used in Arenas, down from 15 minutes. Dungeons and Raids Naxxramas Players no longer need to kill the final bosses in all four wings of this dungeon in order to teleport to Sapphiron. Teleportation orbs have been added to allow players access back and forth from Sapphiron's lair. Death Knight Talents Unholy Night of the Dead: Now reduces the damage your pet takes from area-of-effect damage by 45/90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other Druid Tranquility: The cooldown on this spell has been reduced to 8 minutes, down from 10 minutes. Mage Talents Frost Deep Freeze: This spell now deals a large amount of damage to targets permanently immune to stuns. In addition, when this ability deals damage it will no longer consume two charges...

Update: Nevermind. Blizzard messed up and posted the season 8 paladin set instead of tier-10. It's now been fixed. The official tier-10 sneak peek page has been updated with the paladin and priest sets. Check out the images below. What do you think of the tier-10 paladin armor?

This could be both controversial, or welcomed, depending on how you look at it. On one hand, Blizzard is giving 50% of the proceeds for the Pandaren Monk to the Make-a-Wish Foundation. On the other hand, it's only until the end of this year (which even so could be a substantial amount of money), and it's only for one of the two pets, so keep that in mind if you're planning to purchase these for charity purposes. Regardless of that, today Blizzard took a step closer to fully adopting microtransactions by introducing the World of Warcraft Pet Store, a way for players to purchase companion pets with real money and have them automatically delivered to their in-game mail box. Check out the details below. Quote from: Nethaera ( Source ) Today we’re pleased to introduce the Pet Store for World of Warcraft, a new way for players to obtain in-game pets to join them on their adventures in Azeroth. Two brand-new companions are now available for purchase exclusively at the Pet Store...

Blizzard is once again tweaking the way raid difficulties work, first trying through achievement mechanics, then through entirely separate zones, and now a third experiment with Icecrown Citadel: a difficulty setting you can change on the fly through the user interface. Check out the details below, provided by Bornakk! Quote from: Bornakk ( Source ) In the upcoming patch we are adding a new feature to the Icecrown raid instance that allows the raid leader to change the instance's difficulty setting on a boss per boss basis. The way the raid leader chooses to switch is the same as now, by right-clicking on the character portrait. The difficulty settings can be changed from inside Icecrown Citadel, with some restrictions. For example, you cannot change the difficulty in combat or during certain events specified by our design team. To enable the ability to change the raid difficulty to heroic, you must first defeat the Lich King on normal mode, as doing so unlocks the heroic version of...

Hi Curse Network readers, I took the opportunity I have living near the WWi08 that happened in Paris and so on getting stables slots to watch and record the live stream. All is uploaded on veoh.com and I have planned to upload so on vimeo as a few peoples requested on mmo-champion, feel free to share your mind about veoh or vimeo. What is online: day 1 Tom Chilton answering exclusives WOTLK questions Blizzard devs answering exclusives Diablo3 questions Nihilum vs Kil'Jaeden first fight Nihilum vs Kil'Jaeden second fight Blizzard devs answering exclusives WoW/WOTLK questions Costume & Dance contest day 2 Blizzard devs answering exclusives Diablo3 questions Starcraft final Blizzard devs answering exclusives WoW pvp questions WoW arena final Contest results Closing ceremony Hope you will apreciate this, took me all the weekend to compute this for you (also me for personal records) and special thanks to Marylin who made the awesome show while playing with teammates and public audience...

While we do have quite a bit to present in textual format, as proven by our recent article , we also wanted to give you a text-free look at ten new screenshots from Wrath of the Lich King, directly from our visit to Blizzard's HQ in Irvine, CA. Check them out below, and enjoy!

It's been a while since Blizzard has talked publicly about Wrath of the Lich King; nearly nine months, to be exact. However, recently they invited a select group of fansites to their headquarters in Irvine, California for a day of everything World of Warcraft -- all pertaining to the game's next expansion, where all ten million players have the opportunity to tango with Arthas in some capacity. That said, we were also given a tour of Blizzard HQ -- which is mighty cool for a game development studio, I might add. But really, what you're most interested in is hearing some new juicy info on the expansion, right? Right. The day kicked off with what turned out to be one of the most informative presentations I've sat in on for a game or its expansion thus far in my days at Curse; and it was done in style, in Blizzard's state of the art, high-quality theatre (we're talking leather seats with cup holders here, folks). In on the presentation was both Jeffrey "Tigole"...

Le site Curse ayant eu quelques problèmes d'accès la semaine passée suite à une navigation intensive des pages par les utilisateurs d'addons World of Warcraft, je n'ai pas pu faire la preview des nouvelles informations du bestiaire de World of Warcraft, les voici donc, avec un peu de retard : Nains de Fer La Ligue des explorateurs a creusé aux quatre coins du monde à la recherche de la véritable origine des nains. On dirait à présent qu’elle a fait un pas de plus vers la découverte des secrets du passé. Les derniers indices en date proviennent d’anciens sites de fouilles à l’intérieur du Fjord hurlant, lieu des premières rencontres avec les nains de fer. Avec leur épaisse peau métallique gravée de runes de puissance, sous laquelle palpitent des éclairs, ceux-ci représentent peut-être le chaînon manquant entre les nains et les titans des mythes et légendes. Malheureusement, les malveillants nains de fer ont ouvertement défié la Ligue des explorateurs et semblent décidés à détruire...

We have a quick preview of the Kalecgos encounter from 2.4's new raid dungeon, Sunwell Plateau , for you this morning. Kalecgos is one of the few surviving blue dragons left on Azeroth, and he's decided to take the fight directly to the Burning Legion as they attempt to bring Kil'jaeden into the world via the Sunwell. Unfortunately for him, he's fallen under the influence of one of the demons of the Legion, and so has now become one of their many minions. To avoid spoiling the encounter, let's just say it's a very unique, but also familiar story -- for those of you that have experienced the Vaelastrasz storyline and encounter. He can also be found in Human form in Magisters' Terrace . Here he gives the quest Hard to Kill , which provides attunement to the Heroic version of Magisters' Terrace. Check out the video below for a preview of the encounter in Sunwell Plateau, and don't forget to click through on the video's title to rate it! Sunwell - Kalecgos...

I remember when Stratholme, Scholomance and Onyxia were a big deal. Back when conquering MC and Blackwing Lair were, "OMG we did it," moments. But not anymore. Nowadays when you find yourself in WoW, even with 10 million+ players, it seems nearly impossible to find a group to go after these "old world" instances. This is a shame for the newcomers to WoW, seeing as they may never get the chance to experience these instances like some of us veterans once did. Sure, they could go back when they are 70 and play through the instance, but is it really going to be as fun as it would be when the adrenaline of getting that first class set item is running through your bloodstream? So this brings forth a question that has been brewing and being whispered for months, "Did the Burning Crusade ruin the old world instances?" It seems a sad fact that you can finish your first quest in Outland and receive a green item that is far superior to the hardest blues to acquire in...

Here is a list of the most Social Addons on World of Warcraft download section at curse @import url('v5/styles/core/115-tooltips.css?'); GuildGreet Extended Downloads Today:72 Downloads Total:42,767 Brought to you by Curse.com @import url('v5/styles/core/115-tooltips.css?'); Teamspeak Announcer Downloads Today:1 Downloads Total:17,306 Brought to you by Curse.com @import url('v5/styles/core/115-tooltips.css?'); TriviaBot Downloads Today:325 Downloads Total:75,720 Brought to you by Curse.com @import url('v5/styles/core/115-tooltips.css?'); WIM (WoW Instant Messenger) Downloads Today:459 Downloads Total:460,984 Brought to you by Curse.com @import url('v5/styles/core/115-tooltips.css?'); Whiteboard -Cont. for BC- Downloads Today:4 Downloads Total:3,261 Brought to you by Curse.com @import url('v5/styles/core/115-tooltips.css?'); FriendNet Downloads Today:2 Downloads Total:1,370 Brought to you by Curse.com @import url('v5/styles/core/115-tooltips...

【艾佛列的藏寶箱】一個陪伴玩家一起成長的最佳幫手。只要一說到【艾佛列的藏寶箱】絕對沒有玩家露出一臉茫然樣，想當初小編剛接觸魔獸世界的時候，在線上詢問有關魔獸世界的任務，大家幾乎開口都是說：你上【艾佛列的藏寶箱】。可見【艾佛列的藏寶箱】對一個玩魔獸世界的人來說佔了多麼重要的地位。 小編得知今日要訪問艾佛列大大，心情其實有點忐忑，因為據說艾佛列大大是各挺難搞的人，小編深怕出師不利，一個不小心便跌入深淵。但是在經過交談後，小編發現其實艾佛列大大還挺好相處的，讓小編頓時卸下謹慎的心情，開始肆無忌憚的喇塞起來。小編偷偷地假公濟私了一下，問了一個困惑小編很久的任務：希斯爾布萊德城鎮文檔到底在哪阿？經過艾佛列大大的指點迷津，小編很順利的解決了任務，艾佛列大大不謹解惑了小編的困擾也拯救了希斯爾布萊德城鎮居民免於再被屠村的危險，尤其是鎮長被屠了5.6次，終於獲得平靜，我想鎮長該頒個錦輝給艾佛列大大表達感謝之意才對。 ........

【98play 記者依麗莎/台北報導】線上遊戲市場興起，讓網路遊戲成為不少人排遣時間的活動之一，台灣大部分玩家的遊戲模式，在建立好遊戲角色後便開始打怪衝等，一不小心有可能花費過多時間在線上遊戲中，忽略自我本身的生活作息，或是已習慣透過虛擬平台與其他人交際，真實的交談溝通模式退化，以至於更加依賴遊戲，不在遊戲內生活，甚至造成心理焦慮等狀況。 美國頗受到歡迎與爭議的卡通 South Park(南方四賤客)，曾經針對兒童沉迷線上遊戲的現象製作一集故事，劇情是四位主角是當紅網路遊戲《WOW魔獸世界》玩家，卻在劇中遇到一個玩家角色，不問理由就將其他玩家角色殺光，四位主角為了報仇不分日夜拼命打怪衝等，放棄所有戶外活動，換來發胖、滿臉青春痘、手臂扭傷等狀況，雖然卡通的成分以娛樂居多，但也多少反應沉迷線上遊戲會帶給玩家「實際」的影響。 ........

Lately, you may have noticed the increasing amount of publicity and promotion of competitive World of Warcraft PvP. Starting out with Blizzard's official Arena Rankings with their implementation of the Armory and following up with the World Series of Video Games (WSVG) in China and Louisville and Championship Gaming Series (CGS) , the media's eyes on WoW as a game, let alone as a competitive E-Sport is becoming more and more of a debate in the gaming industry. While for years already, games such as Guildwars have had competitive PvP tournaments with monetary prizes, it is first now that MMORPGs as a genre is being looked at by the eyes of the world. This is mostly due to the sheer size of WoW's subscription base as well as Blizzard's enormous financial resources backing the project. To tell the truth, I was not really into the idea of competitive "professional" gaming much myself until the mass PR around World of Warcraft PvP hit the world with storm shortly after...

德鲁伊 天赋：原始狂怒（等级 2）在遗忘天赋时可以正确遗忘了。 猎人 蝰蛇守护：该技能现在会提供额外的5秒法力回复，数值相当于猎人等级的35%。 野猪冲锋：施放该技能后不会再立即施放低吼并造成额外仇恨。 宠物技能低吼不再根据宠物的攻击强度获得加成，而是根据猎人的攻击强度得到加成。 刀锋山的恶鸦现在可以被驯服了。 驯服后，尘泥钳嘴鳄鱼现在可以学习“嘶咬”（5级），而不是“爪击”（5级）。 恐惧野兽：该法术的射程提高到30码，并且变为瞬发。 法师 天赋：强化闪现术（奥术）将减少被击中几率13/25%，同时1级的持续时间增加为4秒。 完成任务“久违的法师”后可正常学会法术“造水术”（7级）。 变形术：坐骑上的怪物不会在被变形之后仍然留在坐骑上了。 熔岩护甲在伤害吸收护甲生效的情况下可以造成伤害了。 新的传送法术/传送门：现在法师们可以在塞拉摩和斯通纳德的传送门训练师处学习到各自的传送法术和传送门。你必须达到35级才能学习这些新法术。 圣骑士 圣光闪现和圣光术可以在castsequence宏中正常使用了。 十字军圣印：这个技能现在令十字军打击的伤害提高40%。 天赋：精确（等级 1-3）的说明信息中不再错误地将匕首和法杖列为可用武器。 已经学习了初级骑乘技能的圣骑士可以在训练师处学习召唤战马的法术。 牧师 在受到飓风术影响的状态下时，防护恐惧结界不会被消耗掉。 法力燃烧：该法术不再触发各类需要目标受到爆击才会触发的效果。 真言术：盾可以发出正确的声效，并且不再被距离过远的人听到。 天赋：能量灌注在施放给自己时可以消耗正确数值的法力值了。 潜行者 技能：剑刃乱舞：该技能不再将小动物作为第二攻击目标，并且将使用正确的距离计算规则来选择第二目标。 天赋：毁伤（刺杀系）不再在战斗记录中多次显示。 萨满祭司 技能：冰封武器（等级 6）的伤害被略微提高了。 术士 吸取灵魂：当目标玩家死亡时，该法术的引导会自动结束。 宠物：使用牺牲技能杀死你自己的宠物不会再触发各类必须通过杀死敌人才能触发的效果。 战士 横扫攻击：该技能不再将小动物作为第二攻击目标，并且将使用正确的距离计算规则来选择第二目标。 PvP 竞技场 如果角色的个人等级低于队伍积分150分，则该角色所获点数将按照其个人等级而非队伍等级计算。 在排队系统中，如果一支队伍的队员平均个人等级低于队伍等级150分，系统将把该队伍匹配给个人平均等级相同或相近的队伍...

During our visit to Blizzard's HQ in Irvine, CA, we had a chance to sit down with both Jeffrey "Tigole" Kaplan and Tom "Kalgan" Chilton. This wasn't a one-on-one interview, though, so credit needs to be given where it's due. Also in on the interview was Ten Ton Hammer and MMOGAMER . We all took turns grilling both Tigole and Kalgan, to see if we could get any juicy info out of them on the expansion, and to hopefully learn more information gleaned from the demonstration . This is an extremely long, but very informative interview, so buckle up and enjoy the ride. TTH: I thought it was a pretty interesting decision that you guys decided to go with the dual raiding system thing. How did you decide to go and do that, was it just a lot of community response to we need 10 man and 25 man raids going at the same time or was it just what you saw from the numbers? JK: No, we wouldn't do anything we saw from the numbers. I think when you look at statistics you can...

Guillotine recently had a chance to chat with Antiarc -- creator of Omen Threat Meter -- about what 2.4 means for the combat log, Omen, and of course its future. This continues our WoW patch 2.4 coverage, so read on for the interview with the author of one of World of Warcraft's most popular AddOns! Guillotine: I would like to welcome Antiarc, author of Omen and ThreatLib to the Curse Word. Let’s get right into the interview! Guillotine: So most people have heard that there are some major UI changes coming in 2.4. In what ways will these affect Omen and the Threat library? Antiarc: We'll, I've had to do a full rewrite of Threat to compensate. However, this is a very good thing, since it means we now get true per-target (not just per-target-name) threat readings. Also, tons of encounters that were somewhat buggy in Omen before are going to be far less so now. Finally, some of the changes have reduced reliance on translators, so non-english locales should have accurate threat...

Gosey of SK-Gaming published an interesting interview about 2 days ago, in that interview David "Shawn" K, head admin for World of Warcraft at the ESL answered to several questions, in one of them he is telling us Blizzard will be supporting ESL to set up an online tournament. Does ESL have any plans to host more wow tournaments? Since the public's response to the Dreamhack tournament was really positive we definitely plan to stick to WoW. One of the big goals that we have is to establish a 'pro'-scene, especially for European teams. The American scene is a lot more evolved right now with their small offline-tournaments on a regular basis, their infamous BG9 and their 'star-players' that actively write blogs and discuss strategies. The European scene is a lot more cluttered right now and only a handful of teams could prove their worth on a more international level. Our first step will be an online tournament on an event realm that Blizzard is providing us with...

Four years ago, World of Warcraft was released to the masses and Blizzard expected a player base of around 1,000,000 at peak. Roll the clock forward and we have the single most successful MMORPG, boasting 10,000,000 active subscriptions and the game is still getting bigger. In 2007, Blizzard Entertainment released the first expansion for World of Warcraft - The Burning Crusade. In this expansion, we were treated to new abilities and spells, new talents, new levels, a whoe new continent and much, much more. The expansion was a hit, selling over 2,000,000 copies in the first 24 hours but for all the success it saw, there were still a lot of things to be learned from this frist expansion. Now it is 2008 and we are expecting to see the second expansion for World of Warcraft at some point in the next 12 months. It looks like there are things that have been learned and yet more to learn from this new content rich add on. CVG sat down with Jeff Kaplan, the Lead Designer for World of Warcraft and...

In this special Worldwide Invitational wrap-up edition of BlizzCast, we briefly recap some of the events at the recent WWI in Paris, and then move straight into a discussion with Diablo III Lead Designer Jay Wilson. We quiz him on how the development team is evolving the classic series -- and then dive into a discussion of some recent hot issues surrounding the upcoming sequel. Listen to the show now .

I got my Beta Opt-In e-mail at work. With shifty eyes I looked towards my co-workers all huddled in a small smoke-filled room, each of us typing away on our keyboards with research articles open on the conference table. Looking left and right, I clicked the print button. Sprinting to the printer, I grabbed for my golden ticket. Without packing up my personal things, I ducked out the door, work forgotten. Reminiscing about Gene Wilder’s crazy antics, I whistled the whole way home. While Beta-Testing, something dawned on me. I was waiting for a quest mob to spawn so that I could whirlwind its face off when I thought to myself that I was experiencing a parody of life. World of Warcraft to me at this time was a metaphor for how everything should be. During the days of Vanilla WoW, most things were taken for granted on my realm. People were still discovering what the game had to offer. With the first expansion pack “The Burning Crusade” most addicts complained about things that they felt should...

To celebrate the Latin American launch of World of Warcraft on Friday, July 25, we held a midnight signing at the Blockbuster Pilares in Col. Del Valle, Mexico, followed by a two-day event at the Plaza Satélite mall in Estado de Mexico featuring 3v3 Arena competitions, leveling contests, and more. We'd like to thank everyone who took the time to join us -- and if you couldn’t make it, we hope you enjoy this quick recap .

The winners of the BlizzCon 2008 Ticket Drawing have been chosen. We’ve sent emails to 1,500 randomly selected eligible Blizzard Account holders containing instructions for purchasing up to two tickets to the show. For your security, please note that in this email we are not asking winners to email us credit card information directly, nor are we asking winners to call Blizzard for any reason. If we still have tickets remaining after this initial round, we will select more winners from the original opt-in pool. We will make an announcement on our websites once all tickets available have been sold. For more information, refer to the BlizzCon Ticket Drawing FAQ .

We will be performing a scheduled website maintenance from Wednesday, August 27 at 12:00AM PDT until approximately 2:00AM PDT. During this timeframe our online services such as The Armory and Account Management may be unavailable. We thank you for your patience as we continue to update our sites and prepare them for the future.