If you’ve played World of Warcraft before the expansions, Azshara will no doubt be the last thing you care about, but not anymore! The goblins have exploded onto the scene (literally) and made an impact that not even the cataclysm could leave on the zone of Azshara. Blizzard recently did a Q&A on Azshara, the new zone for World of Warcraft: Catclysm and revealed some more information on the ideas behind it and some of the changes. For one this is now a Goblin Zone. After the events of Kezan and the Lost Isles, the Goblin race finds itself in Azshara. This would be suicide normally but somewhere along the lines, Azshara jumped down around 30 – 40 levels, Deus Ex Machina or Goblin Brilliance? You decide! One thing to note about this zone is it won’t be a simple grind fest anymore. Blizzard has taken the questing experience and stripped it down to what made Wrath of the Lich King fun. This area will be using some of the new Wrath mechanics, such as phasing, and using them for a more story driven experience. 

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If you play and follow MMOs regularly, you’re quite familiar with the behemoth that Blizzard built, World of Warcraft. Each time an expansion has been released for this game, records have been broken – both in game sales and hours without sleep. I know firsthand; given my love for the Diablo, Starcraft, and Warcraft series, I decided to delve into the exciting world of WoW. Though I stopped after the first expansion, Cataclysm seduces me with promises of more streamlined quest progression, two unique new races,  more epic lore, and the chance to observe the devastation that has be wrought upon the lands of Azeroth myself.

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Ever since World of Warcraft hit the markets, the gaming community has been speculating upon the subject matter behind Blizzard’s next big MMO. Whatever it is, it will certainly make a big splash – that’s just the nature of the beast. With Activision head Bobby Kotick’s latest interview on the subject, we can now be sure that we will not be seeing World of Warcraft 2.0:

“And remember, we have two enormous investments: one in Bungie and the other in another project at Blizzard that we haven’t given a lot of visibility to. Those are going to be entirely new intellectual properties.”

Like the Blizzard we’ve come to know and love, Kotick stresses that the team assembled for the project will take ample amounts of time, talent, and capital to assure the game’s realization. Activision Blizzard surely has all of those components, and it is only a matter of time before we start to see the pieces come together. Though it has not been announced yet, we assume the game is in a very early development stage, if not a preliminary one.

Blizzard Entertainment announced last week that the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm expansion would feature reduced talent trees to “concentrate the coolness” of each tree. This week the WoW team released their new trees for beta testers, and published an overview of the company’s vision for talents.

Players can now choose a (re-trainable) tree specialization at level 10. This will give the character some of the attributes of their tree of choice immediately, rather than the current system of needing enough levels (and attribute points) to really see a difference in playstyle. Once a player has put 31 points in a tree, reaching the last rank of talents, the other two trees open up for support talents.

Putting points in a tree will activate some Mastery bonuses, or passive stat boosts. Mastery is a new concept for Cataclysm, and Blizzard does not seem quite sure yet of exactly how it will be implemented. There are three Mastery bonuses per talent tree (although we don’t know what they are yet), and high-end Cataclysm gear will also feature a +Mastery stat.

This is all a work in progress, of course, and the talent trees in particular are likely to change many more times between now and the official release of Cataclysm. Players with questions about the new trees or the Mastery system can perhaps get some answers straight from the source at the WoW Developer Chat on Twitter tomorrow.

Blizzard has announced the World of Warcraft Tap Chat, a foot pedal designed to be used as a push-to-talk device in conjunction with the Sound Blaster World of Warcraft Headset. Developed by Creative, creators of Sound Blaster, it is exclusively available at the Blizzard and Creative online stores. There do not appear to be product pages for it in either location as of yet, though there is one on the UK Creative store website. Based on its £25 price tag there, a direct conversion to USD would put it at around $38, but it may well be cheaper in the US. Also included are a pair of interchangeable lenses for the aforementioned Sound Blaster Headset, pictured above.

While I admit to being vaguely intrigued by this concept, I’m not sure exactly how big the market really is for this product. A number of WoW players probably do have problems with push-to-talk systems for voice chat in the midst of a tense raid, but honestly my first thought if I wanted to buy something to solve that issue would be to get a mouse with more buttons or something to that effect. I can also definitely envision a lot of accidental stamping on this pedal during the heat of combat. If you try this product yourself, please let me know in the comments and give me your impressions.

The 2010 Blizzard Global Writing Contest has begun, allowing fans of the Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo game series to submit their stories set in those universes for the chance to win a trip to Blizzard Entertainment’s HQ in California. The rules are that the submission must be a short story set in one (or perhaps more – not specified) of the aforementioned worlds, it must be between 2500 and 7500 words, it must be written in English and it must be submitted by August 23, 2010. The grand prize winner will also receive their choice of either a Diablo III “OVERTHROWN” barbarian diorama or a Frostmourne sword.

Blizzard has also announced that Real ID for Battle.net has officially rolled out with World of Warcraft’s 3.3.5 patch. This feature will eventually apply to all Battle.net games, allowing players to give out their Real ID to those other players who they want to be able to see their characters and status in every Battle.net game. Real ID will also allow cross-game chat, for example if one of your Real ID friends is playing Starcraft II while you play World of Warcraft, you will be able to speak to them from within WoW.

For more information on the Writing Contest, visit the Blizzard Entertainment site, and for more information on Real ID, visit the Battle.net site.

World of Warcraft’s patch 3.3.5 is in the process of rolling out worldwide, and it brings with it the latest endgame content; the Ruby Sanctum raid. This bastion of the red dragonflight, allies of heroes of both of Azeroth’s factions, has been assaulted by vengeful members of the black and twilight dragonflights, and the heroes must now protect the red dragons from their jealous kin.

Anyone who has participated in WoW’s earlier Obsidian Sanctum raid will know what to expect here, several dragon mini-bosses before a main boss, this time Halion, the Twilight Destroyer (pictured above). Unlike the Obsidian Sanctum, however, none of the Ruby Sanctum mini-bosses can be optionally ignored to make the final battle more difficult.

For more information on the story behind the new raid dungeon, located beneath the Wyrmrest Temple in Northrend, visit the official site.

Blizzard Insider brings us this interview with WoW’s production director, in which he explains how the development team has changed since the game’s release, and what lessons he and Blizzard have learned since. J. Allen Brack joined Blizzard Entertainment in 2006 as a senior producer for the Burning Crusade expansion pack for World of Warcraft. He eventually became the lead producer on the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, and now that the latest expansion, Cataclysm, is in the works, he is the production director.

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Gold sellers are an eternal irritation in World of Warcraft, but it seems they’re becoming quite imaginative in their quest to part WoW players from their cash. A strange new wave of WoW gold seller performance art has hit the game over the past few weeks, according to the official forums, evolving from the previous practice of “corpse art”. Corpse art was achieved by numerous gold sellers killing themselves and arranging the corpses in order to either spell something out or simply attract attention.

The above picture, however, shows an even greater exploitation of game mechanics, as it is achieved by taking advantage of the tolerance that is built into the system for lag. Using characters in different poses, standing, sitting and sleeping, the gold sellers then hack the client to move them just enough to form the advertisement without setting off WoW’s  anti-cheating routines, as it looks like the players are simply lagging a little. Inventive, yes, but I’ve no doubt the GMs already have their hands full trying to combat it.

Internet security company Symantec revealed this week that it had discovered a server containing the “credentials” – username, password and other information – of 44 million stolen game accounts. The credentials themselves were gathered by some sort of traditional malware botnet, but the new and terrifying twist on the story is that they were being validated by a distributed network of computers infected by a Trojan virus. What this means is that unsuspecting internet users were helping the hackers validate the account details of these 44 million accounts with their own computers, due to the presence of a Trojan in their system.

The theft appears to be targeted mainly at Chinese gaming company Wayi Entertainment, but around 2 million of the accounts were registered with PlayNC, a service that includes Lineage 2, City of Heroes and Guild Wars, among others. Around quarter of a million were also spread between Aion and World of Warcraft.

As always, make sure you keep antivirus protection and general internet security in mind on any computer that is online.