BLIZZARD IS HIRING!

We are breaking our own rule by posting the subject line for this in all caps because it is especially important that everyone reads this:

If you post links that ultimately lead to any images of areas in the game that are not yet designed to be accessible by players in the retail version, you will be permanently banned from participating in the World of Warcraft forums

Eyonix: "Since there has been some recent confusion concerning the issue, I thought I'd clarify that in order to protect our player base from abuse, we have placed some restrictions on accounts created using the promotional trial version of World of Warcraft that is available through certain magazine publications. Please be aware that these restrictions are only in place during the trial period; players who decide to purchase a retail copy of World of Warcraft and activate their accounts will be able to continue adventuring with the same characters and take full advantage of all features included in the retail version of the game.

During the trial period, characters on the promotional accounts will be able to advance up to level 20 and accumulate up to 10 gold. Use of the auction house and mailbox, player-to-player trade, and access to the in-game chat channels will be unavailable for the duration of the 14-day trial period"

Wish to win FREE tickets to BlizzCon? Easy. You don't need to own World of Warcraft. Starcraft, Warcraft III, Diablo players and even if you aren't a Blizzard player can win one of Three BlizzCon Tickets given to Blizzplanet by Blizzard Entertainment.

Now ... you would say, how can I win one of these Three Tickets? Just answer a Q&A after reading some of my questions. All you need to do is to read the links provided to gather the answers if you do not know them. This will encourage you to read some of the Warcraft lore hidden within Blizzplanet's pages and if your answers are correct you will be added into a drawing. I will choose randomly three winners from a batch of entries, then I will contact and display the name of the winners. Email your answers to blizzplanet@fanforce.net

NOTE: You must provide your full name, and home address. The winner's info will be sent to Blizzard to mail your BlizzCon badge. Your personal info won't be shared with anyone else and will be destroyed thereafter.

• Read the 14 questions below and email your answers to participate and win a ticket to BlizzCon. The deadline for submissions is Thursday, October 6th at 11:59pm EST/-5GMT so HURRY up!
  
  
• Additionally, you can participate at our friendly Wow.Stratics.com Contest for 1 more possibility to win a ticket. Therefore, also try out their contest by reading their simple Contest Rules

Stratics is having a drawing on Thursday October 6th for the most unique WoW character. What makes a unique character you might ask? Your style of course! We will be looking for a character that has the most unique name, dress and pose.

To enter please send a screenshot of your character and character's name to ladybeth@stratics.com by Thursday 11:59pm est and on Friday our Stratics staff will pick who the most unique character is! When sending in your entries please also include your real name so we are able to match you up with the BlizzCon ticket you will be receiving. We look forward to seeing all your entries and good luck!

For those who didn't know, the main characters of this book are NPCs in World of Warcraft. The Paladin is the simple guy outside a cabin near the Thondroril river northwest of Eastern Plaguelands, by the entrance to Terrorweb Tunnel. Once you complete all his quests, he will reveal to you his true name ... Tirion Fordring and below his name the tag: (Order of the Silver Hand). The second NPC is named Eitrigg, former member of the Blackrock Clan, now an NPC next to Thrall at the Valley of Wisdom. Warcraft: Of Blood of Honor is about this Alliance Paladin. This story takes place before Warcraft III Reign of Chaos, and is a backstory for the Knights of the Silver Hand. After Lordaeron's Fall and the loss of their leader Uther the Lightbringer, the Knights of the Silver Hand changed their name to Scarlet Crusade, distorting their credo into zealotry. With Tirion's son becoming High Lord of the Scarlet Crusade as protege of High General Abbendis. In the book, Taelan is but a young boy who loved his father Tirion. Enjoy the excerpt, and order the eBook at your leisure.

"Ysera, the great Dreaming dragon Aspect rules over the enigmatic green dragonflight. Her domain is the fantastic, mystical realm of the Emerald Dream - and it is said that from there she guides the evolutionary path of the world itself. She is the protector of nature and imagination, and it is the charge of her flight to guard all of the Great Trees across the world, which only druids use to enter the Dream itself.

In recent times, Ysera's most trusted lieutenants have been warped by a dark new power within the Emerald Dream. Now these wayward sentinels have passed through the Great Trees into Azeroth, intending to spread madness and terror throughout the mortal kingdoms. Even the mightiest of adventurers would be well advised to give the dragons a wide berth, or suffer the consequences of their misguided wrath"

Tonight, we found an exploit that people were using to gain faction with the Zandalar Trolls with little to no effort at all. As such, we unleashed the Guardians of Blizzard from their cages to ensure that people were not getting too friendly with the Zandalar trolls without putting in their proper dues first.

We certainly apologize for the inconvenience this might have caused to our players but we felt it was in the best interest of our newest residents of Azeroth, the Zandalar Trolls, to do so.

Tseric: "We will be issuing rolling restarts to all realms beginning at
4:00 AM PDT on 9/28/05. This will be done to close an exploit which we will
provide more information on at a later time.

In the meantime, our current GM policy, in terms of intended exploitation,
still stands and those in breach of said policy will be handled accordingly."

"This morning we issued rolling restarts for all realms in order to apply a hotfix which closed an exploit in the Nefarian encounter located in Blackwing Lair. Each of the realms has been brought back up, and the hotfix successfully applied. We thank you for your patience and understanding in this matter.

To clarify from previous posts, Last night we hotfixed part of the Nefarian encounter. Specifically, you should no longer be able to stand on various parts of the geometry and cause the Drakonids, Nefarian or the skeletons to go into evade mode. Forcibly trying to put creatures into evade mode is considered an exploit, on any encounter. As for crediting serverwide first kills as legitimate or not, that's not something that we've ever done. If we felt a specific guild was exploiting an encounter or had exploited an encounter to defeat it, our GM staff would contact them and take appropriate measures."

"One thing is for sure. We are a much stronger guild than we were when we first stepped foot into Blackwing Lair. The zone was difficult enough to make us better players by conquering it. As for the itemization, I know a lot of items were made with the hope of future improvements, and just me personally, don't feel that the item loot reflects the difficulty of the mobs.

Compared to the Molten Core, only real point of reference, the zone and the boss fights are very creative and unique. It was not the old fashioned "tank it 'n spank it" of Molten Core. All in all, I feel that Blizzard did a good job on the zone and have faith that Ah'Qiraj will release a lot smoother when Blizzard releases patch 1.9. Looking forward to it and Good Luck all in Blackwing Lair!"

"Since the beginning of recorded history, Azeroth has seen the most terrible conflicts imaginable. The War of the Ancients and the Sundering of the World. The coming of the Tides of Darkness. The return of the Burning Legion, the Scourge of Lordaeron and the rise of the Lich King. Yet all this time, deep beneath the shifting sands of Silithus, an unspeakable horror has been lying in wait, ever patient, and ever enduring. Mortal hands are at work awakening an ancient menace that, once set lose, will shake the very foundations of this world. Evil is stirring where mortals were never meant to tread. The world is waiting for a champion to step forward and stop the coming darkness before it is too late.

The time has finally come for the hero to assume the role fate has bestowed upon him.

To learn more about the changes coming to Silithus, take a moment to read the Introduction to Silithus..."

• Advance the story of Silithus through a brand new and exciting quest chain!
  
• Engage in solo, group and raid-level content as you fight the Twilight's Hammer cult and their elemental masters in the Abyssal Council!
  
• Cenarion Hold - a brand new quest hub for both Horde and Alliance!
  
• All new triggered outdoor raid content!
  
• Repeatable quests which allow players to build their faction with the Cenarion Circle!
  
• Brand new Graveyard and Flight point for both factions!

Blizzard announced that the closing-night concert at BlizzCon will feature multi-platinum recording artists The Offspring! The band established itself internationally with the hit singles "Come Out and Play (Keep 'Em Separated)," "Self Esteem," and "Gotta Get Away" from their 1994 album Smash, which went on to become the most successful independent release of all time. Most recently, The Offspring released Greatest Hits, a career-spanning compilation of their most memorable songs.

Visit the BlizzCon site to learn more about the event, scheduled for October 28 and 29 in Anaheim, CA, and check out the press release for more information about the closing-night The Offspring concert

"During this Wednesday?s weekly maintenance, we will be implementing code into the game that will limit the amount of unique instances a player can enter. This new code should relieve the realm wide instance instability issues for legitimate players that were caused by players trying to exploit the instances.

Since many have questions about how the new system works, and why it was implemented. The new system works like this; You can enter up to 5 unique instances per hour. If you try to enter a 6th instance in less than an hour after you entered the first, you will be blocked from doing so. You must wait 1 hour from the time you enter the first instance before you will be able to enter any others. This does not apply to PvP instances, nor do PvP instances count towards your total. The same goes for the Tram and officers' barracks (which aren't instances)."

Event: Tela en Laire (Summer's End)
Date: Sunday, October 2
Time: 6pm server time
Location: Darnassus, Temple of the Moon
Sponsor: Shadowed Tribe

Eyonix: "The development progress for weather effects continues to move forward, and before long we hope to offer additional information on the subject. I will offer up one exciting bit of information - currently, three types of weather are "in the works", each one designed to bring Azeroth to life in a unique fashion.

I'll wait for a more appropriate time to unveil the specifics."

• Death Coil - The cooldown on this spell has been reduced to two minutes and there will now be a short duration (3 sec), non-diminishing fear effect applied to the target. The mana cost has been increased so the spell is less efficient for purposes of DPS.
  
  
• Pyroclasm ? Now gives a chance to stun when Rain of Fire, Hellfire and Soul Fire hit the target.
  
  
• Damage over Time - in patch 1.8 we?ve lowered the duration of Corruption and Curse of Agony, increasing the damage per tick.
  
  
• Bane Talent - will now reduce the casting time of Soul Fire and Immolation spells in addition to Shadow Bolt. The second improvement affects Intensity, which will now reduce the chance to be interrupted while casting Rain of Fire, Hellfire and Soul Fire spells.
  
  
• Ruin - next patch we've also slightly reduced the critical damage bonus of Ruin. This change is very small and shouldn't impact overall Warlock DPS to a noticeable degree.
  
  
• End-Game Pets - overall creature power has increased for Doomguard and Infernal. Changes scheduled for Patch 1.9
  
  
• Soul shard bag - The Shard Bag is pending programmer time, which is divided amongst many tasks and projects. The designers are pushing for its production, however. All that I do know at this point in time has been stated before - the bag will be able to hold more Soul Shards than the normal bags which are available, easing the burden of shard management.

On September 12th we detected a dramatic increase in temperature at different data centers. We then brought down the servers to avoid any damage to the hardware. Our ISP quickly identified and rectified a failure in the air-conditioning system; however, before re-opening the servers, we brought our hardware manufacturer on-site to check for any damage.

"News from gaming circles tells of a highly contagious disease spreading through the dungeons of Azeroth. It seems that World of Warcraft (aka WoW), a massively multiplayer online role playing game (otherwise known as an MMORPG), has its own version of the plague, and it's got people buzzing. "