Blizzard will be hosting the Battle.net World Championships this year in Asia, launching Diablo 3, Mists Of Pandaria and the first StarCraft 2 expansion, maybe even going to Bed, Bath & Beyond if they have enough time, I don’t know.

But one thing that we do know is that because of their full schedule there will be no Blizzcon this year.

In light of our jam-packed schedule, we’ve decided to hold the next BlizzCon in 2013.

Hmm, so does that mean we’ll get no new info about the Titan MMO project either? Or perhaps we’ll see Blizzard at E3? I had predicted Blizzard would reveal what Titan is in 2012, but now with Blizzcon canceled, I don’t know. We’ll see.

So Blizzard announced today that Battle.net will be able to hold players funds, real cash, for both World of Warcraft and Diablo 3 players. The cash can then be used by players to purchase items from the Battle.net store or can be used in the Diablo 3 auction house to buy items. Money earned from the D3 auction house can also be added to the Battle.net Balance.

The catch is that the money cannot be taken out of the system, meaning if you’re a seller in the D3 auction house, you have to cash out after every auction, which by the way has four separate fees. No that wasn’t a typo, it actually has four fees.

So let’s see how many times Blizzard is going to charge D3 sellers.

1. Auction listing fee – Each account will receive a limited number of waivers for the listing fees, but serious sellers will go through those in a day or so.
2. Auction closing fee
3. Cash out fee – Sellers will have to select the cash out option for every auction if they don’t want it going to their Battle.net Balance, meaning sellers will have to pay a Cash Out fee for every auction.
4. Paypal fee - Paypal takes a percentage of every transaction through their system, the more money involved the smaller the percentage. Since Blizzard is forcing sellers to cash out after every transaction, the percentage fee is going to be much higher then if you built up a large sum of money, then transferred it at once.

Ok, technically it’s only triple dipping cause the fourth fee is Paypal, but still. Is Blizzard serious? I can’t wait to see the fee list. Who in their right mind is going to use the Blizzard auction house when they can probably double their profits by using a blackmarket site.

I was all for the auction system, but this is ridiculous and just shows how greedy Blizzard has become since the merger with Activision.

The decline of World of Warcraft continues as yesterday, during Activision Blizzard’s investor call, it was announced that WoW has a total of 10.3 million players, down from 11.1 from August, which is a 800k total net lose. This means that for the year, WoW is down 1.7 million subscribers total when it lost 600k in the first quarter and 300k in the second. However Blizzard COE stated that the majority of the subscribers lost were from the eastern markets.

Don’t feel back from Blizzard yet, even though another 800k players left the game, Activision Blizzard reported its profits had tripled from the same time last year to the tune of $627 million. They also expect an increase in profits for the fourth quarter and into 2012 with the launch of Modern Warfare 3 and Diablo 3.

Looks like the Q4 will be another milestone for WoW as I’m sure subscription numbers will most likely dip below 10 million for the first time in years. Truly a sign that WoW MMORPG dominance is coming to an end.

Last night Blizzard held an open developer Q&A session for Mists of Pandaria, allowing World of Warcraft players to ask all the questions they’ve been dying to know about. Questions ranged from talent trees to mounts to PvP, raids, Glyphs, the new pet system and of course the Pandaren.

Below is the full rundown of all the questions that were answered during the Mist of Pandaria QA session. Get ready, it’s a monster list.

• Players will be able to travel to Pandaria via new quests from Orgrimmar and Stormwind.
• Pets are being fixed so stats won’t lag behind for several seconds upon logging in or dismounting in patch 5.0
• Monks will have the same hit cap as e.g. an Arms warrior and their energy regen drives everything they do, so their regen will scale the same as rogues and haste in general will scale their damage by the same percentages.
• Blizzard is contemplating increased players conquest point caps by 10-15% to encourage world PvP
• When asked whether the new talent system will work differently in PvP and PvE, Blizzard responded:
  • What we don’t want to do is just launch into having different coefficients and talents and everything for PvP and PvE. That just doubles the size of the game which makes it more complex to balance and harder for players to understand.
• Leveling from 85-90 will take place on the new Pandaria continent
• Pandaria will have separate player hubs for Alliance and Horde, no sanctuary with the goal to encourage PvP. AH, Bank and general vendors will be available. Valor, conquest, profession and faction vendors will be scattered around Pandaria.
• When asked if the new talent system would be expanded past 6 specializing skills, Blizzard responded basically saying no. Response below:
  • We tried a lot of tiers. We were worried at more than 6 that the combinatorial complexity of >729 different variations of talents would be challenging to balance or for players to even comprehend. We want to focus on having fewer awesome talents than many tiers that will force us to dilute individual abilities in the name of balance
• Guild levels will be increased with new perks. Examples: reduce cost on void storage and transmogrification
• Pandaria is located south of Azeroth. The exact opposite of Northrend.
• The account-wide “Pet Library” feature if successful might be extended to mounts.
• All 9 MoP dungeons will have Challenge Mode enabled on them. Challenge Mode will most likely be extended to other dungeons and raids if successful
  • 6 dungeons on Pandaria, 3 will be classic heroics (Scholomance and Scarlet Monastery)
  • No plans for any max level, non-heroic dungeons
• Blizzard not happy with Prime Glyphs, might be removed.
• Players will gain XP for Pet Battles in a similar way to what players see with gathering professions.
• Players can engage in pet battle with people near them or through a queuing system.
  • Pet battle invites can be turned off.
• Poisons are being reworked
  • Rogues will have one damage poison, one utility.
  • We also want to reduce the amount of ramping that rogue DPS requires, such as removing the need for Deadly Poison to stack. (And likewise we want to make Bandit’s Guile less punitive when swapping targets)
• The starting zone for new Pandaren is located on The Wandering Isle (the turtle). The continent of Pandaria itself is not a turtle, its a piece of land.
• Asphyxiate, the new Death Knight talent, lasts 5 sec, the same as Strangulate, which it replaces.
• Existing Relics will turn into gray items that players can vendor
• Harvest of Life upgrades Drain Life (Drain Life turns into Harvest). Soul Harvest is being removed, but shards passively regen outside of combat or can Drain Soul in combat to replace them. Mortal Coil is the new Death Coil.
• Water Elemental is a Frost spec spell
• Blizzard wants World Bosses from Pandaria to be optional in regards to item drops
• Items will be required to change talents
• Pandaria is about the size of all 5 of Cataclysms 80-85 zones combined.
• Pandaren will be able to switch factions or defect once. Official response to the question:
  • Try to snatch the Valor Points from my hand.
• Enhance –  Will still have a frequent interrupt that locks out for less time than other interrupts. However, overall we want to reduce the frequency of interrupts and increase their duration so that when you use them is more of a decision.
• Specs as you know them will still exist. We want the specs (especially for the pure classes) to be more distinct than they are today since some of the signature utility is now available to all members of that class. Specs will contain core rotational mechanics and the tools needed to perform your role. Talents complement that with various forms of utility.
• Cooking will remain a secondary skill
• Professions new cap is 600.  No plans for any new professions
• Passive ability are gained from your specs. We are removing some of the less interesting buffs and debuffs (+bleed damage, armor, 3% damage, resists are all on the chopping block at the moment)
• PvE scenarios queues are localized from specific spots in the world (where the scenario is located), not in the cities.
• More Proc weapons in 4.3 raid and more coming
• Epic turtle mount possible for Pandaren.
• Spectator mode for pet battle in the works.
• Assaultable areas that can change factions will be added for World PvP in Pandaria.

If you needed any more confirmation that the MOBA genre is hot, then look no further than Blizzard Dota. For some reason this title got completely by me last year and I thought this was a newly announced game, however it’s not.

Blizzard DOTA will take some of Blizzards more famous characters from its most popular franchises and let players battle it out MOBA style. The backstory is that two gods, one blue and one read have been fighting each other for all of time, so to settle things, they each summon characters from various universes and pit them against each other.

Check out the preview trailer for Blizzard DOTA below.

Ten days ago Blizzard announced that the new Guardian Cub pet would be tradeable in-game, basically creating a loop-hole for users to buy gold in World of Warcraft.  While many players didn’t seem to care, others saw it as another black mark on Blizzards reputation by allowing RMT in yet another Blizzard game. Previously it was announced that Diablo 3 would have a RMT auction house.

Today Blizzard responded defending their decision stating that the introduction of the pet was to provide a more secure and enjoyable environment for players. While it might be fun for some to buy a pet using gold instead of real money, Blizzard didn’t really explain how this would make the game any more secure.

In fact Blizzard admitted that very little gold farming takes place anymore and that the vast majority of gold comes from compromised accounts.

We’ve been hard at work for years now thwarting gold farming tactics, and we know that only a very small percentage of gold is actually “farmed” these days. The vast majority of gold that third parties sell to players is obtained through account compromises.

While I agree the Guardian Cub will further diminish gold farmers, like Blizzard said, only a very small percentage is actually being farmed these days. So how does this provide more security or prevent hacking?

Simiply, it doesn’t. So why is Blizzard trying to convince players that they are introducing tradeable pets as a security measure? Personally I think the head honcho’s at Blizzard Activision are dying to enter the RMT market, but has been so negative about it for so long that they’ll have to spend a few years back pedaling to convince everyone that RMT is good for gaming.

Blizzard is auctioning off its original server blades, which were used during the early days of World of Warcraft, in order to raise money for the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

These original server blades, which once help host thousands of players online, are now becoming part of World of Warcraft history and will become unique collector’s pieces for fans.

The auctions begin on Oct 17th and run until Nov 14th with hundreds of server blades going up for auction. Below is the are end dates for each round of auctions.

• Round 1 Realms – Oct 24
• Round 2 Realms – Oct 31
• Round 3 Realms – Nov 7
• Round 4 Realms – Nov 14

You can check out Blizzard official Ebay page for more information.

Yesterday Blizzard introduced another new pet to the Blizzard store, nothing unusual except for the fact the pet is tradable and can be listed on the World of Warcraft auction house. This is essence creates a loophole where players can buy the pet for cash, then sell it in-game for gold.

Currently only the one pet can be traded in-game, however Blizzard did state depending how it goes, future pets will either follow suit or won’t depending on player reactions.

It’s too early to say how we’ll handle future Pet Store pets. We made this change in response to feedback from players looking for alternate ways to get the Pet Store pets, and we’re always looking into other opportunities for improvement.

This is nothing new for MMORPGs, Eve Online has been doing it for years with their PLEX economy which allows players to buy or sell 30 days account gamecards to players in-game for ISK (gold) and TERA has also announced they will be doing the same.

This is just another step for Blizzard to slowly expand into the RMT business model. Like it or not, this is where the MMORPG industry is heading. Companies are tired of fighting gold farmers and there’s no better way to kill them off then by selling gold yourself, even if they do it in a roundabout sort of way.

Since Blizzard announced that Diablo 3 would allow real-money-trading, allowing players to buy and sell in-game items for real-world money, the controversy surrounding RMT has been reignited. I came out of the closet so to speak in favor of RMT as I never really believed selling your account or items to someone else was wrong regardless of what the games terms were.

It seems companies themselves are also torn over the issue, Sony Online Entertainment allows Everquest and EQ2 players to buy and sell entire accounts and items to each other through their Exchange marketplace, but don’t allow it for other MMO games. Blizzard now joins SOE saying RMT is alright for D3, but not for World of Warcraft.

Aside from gold farmers, who have a direct impact on the game though spam, farming locations and ruining the game’s economy by flooding it with in-game currency

There are obvious other issues with RMT such as account hacking and theft. However these people are criminals and should not be considered, that would be like telling Ebay to shutdown because scammers can take advantage of their members. Thieves and criminals will always be around if they think they can make a quick buck, so the effort should be made to prevent them from doing so and not banning the entire enterprise of RMT.

So for those against RMT, my question to you would be, if it became possible to allow safe and secure RMT, would you still consider it wrong? And if so, why?

Do you wish that you could continue listening to those great Blizzard hits even after you log out of your favorite Blizzard game? Well now you can! Whether it’s Starcraft, Warcraft, Diablo or World of Warcraft, you can now own the complete soundtrack to your favorite Blizzard game.

No longer will you have to listen to that crap that they call “music” on the radio. Impress your friends with hits like Shadow of the Necropolis, Silvermoon City and everyone’s favorite The Kalu’ak. For only $9.99 you can own the soundtrack to your favorite Blizzard game or for just $0.99 you can pick and choose the tracks you want.

Head over to the new Blizzard Music page to see a complete list of albums and tracks. All purchases are made through iTunes.