I was a little surprised when I reached the hill where I had been ambushed to find the corpses were still on the ground. Even more surprising was the fact that even the predators, like the remaining wolves in the region had barely even touched them. I was a little unnerved when I thought about it and immediately hefted my mighty hammer in the event that a repeat of the previous day was in store. I looked around to get a better bearing on the situation.

We are happy to announce that the second character transfer will be from Warsong to Bonechewer. If you have characters on the Warsong realm you would like to move, please visit the character transfer page. We have also updated our character transfer F.A.Q. located here.

As before, further character transfers will be announced once they are ready. Thanks to all our players and see you in the game!

The following is a World of Warcraft Radio show that featured an interview with "Caydiem", a Community Representative at Blizzard Entertainment. As is Blizzard's policy her real name will remain unsaid here. The interview clarified answers to many questions and had its fair share of "We have no information on that at this time." If you're interested to find out about upcoming class developments and the new fan site program, listen to this interview. The interview is covered in the first 45 minutes of the show, with the remaining half being the wrap up on our IGE discussion.

Blizzard Entertainment� today announced that World of Warcraft�, its massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), has surpassed the 1.5 million subscriber mark*, underscoring the game's continued success around the world. Building on its record-breaking debuts in North America, Korea, and Europe, World of Warcraft has reached global peak concurrency - the number of subscribers playing at the same time in each market - of more than 500,000 players.

"All of us at Blizzard are extremely gratified and amazed at the international demand for World of Warcraft," said Mike Morhaime, president of Blizzard Entertainment. "From region to region, we've seen a phenomenal level of enthusiasm for World of Warcraft, and we're absolutely thrilled people are enjoying the game so much."

"They are still working on the Feral Combat tree, but changes to talents are treated more carefully. I did say changes were coming, but I did not say in the next patch".

"Everyone here agrees that the current rate at which we've been delivering content is not acceptable. Too much time has passed between patches, and the fact of the matter is that bug fixes -- which, while not critical, have been done and waiting -- have been lumped in with content that has been continually pushed back. This is not conducive to running a stable and fun gameplay environment, and the idea of the "monster patch" only hinders you folks in the long run.
After this patch, we plan on delivering patches containing both bug fixes and content in a more timely fashion. I cannot commit at this time to saying "monthly", for example, but they will be coming more often and regularly, and will not be held up due to some large feature being the focal point. The internal processes to make this happen are already in place and operating; the changes are real, and you will see the effects shortly after the current patch is live."

"We have some plans for some very cool "casual" raids. We've definitely received a lot of feedback that players are looking for something they can raid with about 20 people in 1-3 hours. We have a good gameplan on how we're going to implement this content.
When all is said and done, there are a lot of different people playing this game, all with different goals and playstyles. We're going to provide content for everyone. Not everyone will do everything in the game, but everyone should have their niche. Some actually enjoy rare spawns, while others loathe the concept. I can see both sides of the issue.
We have more raid content in the pipeline. Some of it is very hardcore and some of it is aimed directly at casual raiders"

"Just a couple points...
Killing "green" players (like, say, a level 60 killing a level 50) will award significantly less points than killing someone of equal level or higher.
The practice of "griefing" is a touchy one, and while this system may not stave off the "hardcore griefers", it should stop those who are killing low level players out of boredom as it gives them a substantial goal in PvP.
We want to be very careful when implementing any sort of dishonor. We are going with the dishonor plan we've announced because we want to be very cautious in meting out such penalties. If we go too far, it will be detrimental to the system and gameplay as a whole. We will be reviewing the situation, but we'd rather be cautious rather than heavy-handed in doling out punishment for acts."

"I write up both an itemized list and detailed report, both of which are based purely upon the information gathered in this forum. When I'm confident that nothing has been missed, they are sent to the lead developers who pass it around to key personnel, as different subjects concern different members of their team. Once the leads have the information necessary to provide me with the requested feedback, we schedule a live meeting.
During this meeting, I relay the feedback that had been gathered, and to answer your question, yes, I definitely do what I can to push for what you guys feel is in your best interest. An example of me "pushing" one of your concerns can be seen in the patch notes concerning the upcoming change being made to Enslave Demon, which will prevent it from being dispelled.
The "Soul Shard" issue has not been ignored, and as stated in one of my updates, this is something we're working on. The fact is, some changes take time and it's very important that players remain patient in the case that a patch releases and the change that they had hoped for didn't make it in, as that is no indication that we're not planning a change in a future patch, which most certainly is the case with Soul Shards.
Also, please realize that I have responded to threads in this forum on a number of occasions beyond what you see in my sticky threads, however in the past my responses created unrest, and resulted in very hostile messaging, at which point it was more damaging to reply than remain silent. Keep in mind, I'm a facilitator of information and it's inappropriate to allow myself to be drawn into an argument, or forced into a situation where I play the role of someone defending himself. I'm on your side, and do my best to relay your thoughts to those creating this game."

"One thing at a time guys. First - new changes coming next patch.
I personally feel that the fix we made to rage generation is the biggest change. I'm a PvP junky, so I'm Arms up to Mortal Strike, Fury for the extra crits, and some Protection sprinkled in. With the new rage gen you'll be able to use your ablilities much more frequently. Mortal Strike. The damage plus the decrease in healing is fantastic. Put me close to someone in PvP and they will go down, fast. Which brings me to:
Stance switching is the key to PvP. The more rage gen, the more you switch your stance, especially if you have Tactical Mastery. I'm constantly switching from Battle to Berzerker in PvP. Pesky casters fall quick when you can switch back and forth to use Intercept without worrying about rage."

"Ranged weapon DPS was not decreased to address the ammo pouch/quiver haste % bug.
That bug has been addressed, but this rumor regarding ranged weapon DPS being nerfed to compensate is simple untrue."

"I believe the no combo points bug will be addressed in the near future, possibly the next content patch"

"While last I heard weather effects were still on the list of new features to be added, I'm not sure how high they sit on our priority ladder, however, I will make certain to find out more information in the weeks to come, and provide an appropriate update."

High Pop Realms (Origin) -> Low Pop Realms (Destination)
Warsong (PvP) -> ??? - To be announced
Bleeding Hollow (PvP) -> ??? - To be announced
Illidan (PvP) -> ??? - To be announced
Blackrock (PvP) -> ??? - To be announced
Stormreaver (PvP) -> ??? - To be announced
Shattered Hand (PvP) -> ??? - To be announced
Mannoroth (PvP) -> ??? - To be announced
Blackhand (PvE) -> ??? - To be announced
Whisperwind (PvE) -> ??? - To be announced

World of Warcraft, a new multi-player online game, has participants including reviewer Robert Holt captivated. He says the highly stylized fantasy world may be the best role-playing game yet.

The game's biggest flaw is that it's too popular -- and there are times when the servers are overloaded and the game is unresponsive.

Computer Games - Is Blizzard also concerned that the game's own network programming might also need to be upgraded to deal with the increase in players?

Shane Dabiri - We monitor the impact of players on our service daily, and we continue to make improvements to our service as warranted. Just as our design work isn�t done with World of Warcraft, I wouldn�t say our programming work is done either. There is a significant amount of work that goes into maintaining our service, and that happens as a matter of course and not as a reaction to a severe population explosion. We�re prepared for population expansion, and not concerned about our ability to accommodate it.

The wait was almost unbearable. The troll near my feet was totally incapacitated, desperately clawing with one arm to pull himself away from me. The troll behind as dead as a log in the river, chest caved inward. The one in front, who moments before had been grinning as I was now, full of pride at catching an easy target. Now he knew better, and began to think better of the whole endeavor. I stepped deliberately once,, then again in effort to press the issue before us now. I knew my place and my duty was to not allow this abomination of my land to leave this small pass alive. I knew that no matter the consequence I would have to best this creature. I was prepared. The only thing holding me up was whether or not he was.

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...

Blizzard Entertainment is proud to announce that we will be bringing World of Warcraft to Taiwan in cooperation with our Taiwanese partner, Soft-World International Corporation. For full details on this announcement, please refer to our official press release here.

Some players have been experiencing issues logging into the game since the conclusion of today's maintenance. This issue should be resolved shortly.

If you have one or more characters that experiences a sudden drop in frame rate when opening a window, i.e. Spell book, Quest Log, Vendor, etc. Please delete your WTF folder located in your \World of Warcraft folder. This problem is typically caused by specific parts of some custom UI addons.

Certain realms are currently experiencing performance issues. We are aware of the issue and are working hard to resolve it as soon as possible. We will update this thread with more information as it becomes available.