Good news for all the European players out there! They were right about July 3 being the Wrath of the Lich King beta day, and beta signups for Wrath are now open! Learn more after the jump!

UPDATE: US accounts can now sign up for the Wrath of the Lich King beta by visiting the following link.

Given that the Stranglethorn Vale (SVT) are has drawn the ire and loathing of many a World of Warcraft player (including QJ's own Victor B.), it looks like Blizzard's about to make some major changes for patch 2.3. Blue-texter Eyonix just revealed to the community over at the WoW forums that come the said patch, they'll be adding a new flight path to the Rebel Camp in the region's northern parts.

This should give easier access to Lieutenant Doren in that said area, and to the quest line he'll be giving to any passing adventurers. Given that 2.3.0 is reportedly being readied for the Public Test Realms, we could be looking at STV's new transport service going active soon.

Good news for the the Alliance folk, and probably bad news for Horde guys hoping for more PvP bouts. We'll let you know if anything new pops up regarding this news.

 

*Article originally posted on August 27, 2007 at 02:56PM.

Some bit of bad news for players eager to resume their romp on World of Warcraft for more quality online gaming: a recently-discovered exploit that has the ability to crash servers, including the main worlds and all the instances associated with them, is currently being used to wreak havoc all over Azeroth.

We're not too sure how the exploit itself was unearthed, or how one goes about performing it - but suffice to say, this could be the first time that Blizzard's World of Warcraft has ever experienced anything like this. The Tichondrius server alone seems to have been made to crash over ten times after the discovery had been made - and it's safe to say that the players aren't feeling too happy about their game sessions being rudely interrupted by a server crash.

In what seems like an effort to keep the how-to of the exploit spilled out in the open to do more damage, the official World of Warcraft forums appear to be controlling the comments in this issue's thread. They have, however, already posted a response to the overwhelming number of server crashes, by way of Blizzard poster Eyonix. The official statement, verbatim:

We're aware of stability issues affecting select realms and are investigating. We'll provide an update on the situation as soon as additional information becomes available.

We certainly hope that Blizzard takes care of this issue as soon as possible, as it seems that the exploit itself has been spread to EU servers as well. We'll be sure to look into this further to bring  you more updates. In the meantime, sit tight... er... click on the TV.

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Update: Blizzard CM Palantia has just posted an announcement in the WoW Forums:

Rolling Restarts - All Realms - 8/27/07

All realms will being undergoing rolling restarts to resolve an issue that resulted in realms going down. These restarts will begin at 5am. Each realm's downtime is expected to be minimal.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your patience as we work to resolve this matter.

The rolling restarts today for all the realms may just be part of WoW's regular maintenance, or it may very well be Blizzard's response to the server-crashing exploit we've reported.

We came across a post from Blizzard poster Eyonix earlier and it was a public service announcement for the World of Warcraft-playing folk who currently have some items that are going to be changed in a coming content patch.

According to the blue poster, the changes will be made in the "next content patch" where the items will be flagged as Bind on Pick-up (BoP). The items are as follows:

• Felbane Slugs
• Recipe: Elixir of Major Agility
• Formula: Enchant Bracer - Superior Healing
• Hellfire Shot

The said items are currently not under any rules of soulbinding. Eyonix reminds that players should move the said items to their characters of choice before the changes are made to avoid any problems. There were no reasons given for the changes, though players on the WoW Forums have given their two cents worth regarding the change.

Will the changes be done to restrict reputation items? And when is the next major content patch? Zul'aman? Stay tuned for more World of Warcraft updates.

We'll be talking about a recent World of Warcraft forum topic today regarding blue-poster Nethaera. It won't be another bug report, new character nerfings (whew), or even about Wrath of the Lich King. It is, however still very big news in its own right.

Happy Birthday, Nethaera!

We've just picked up word that Neth has turned 35 last August 14, and as expected, there's quite a bit of jubilation on the player's parts to thank the Community Manager for all her hard work.

On a related note, Neth was considerate enough to point out that fellow CMs Eyonix and Drysc celebrated their birthdays last week. With that said, we also extend a hearty bit of congratulations to Neth, and the rest of the crew!

  

Every World of Warcraft raiding guild has hit a wall at least a time or two during their raids. We found one such example in the WoW Forums as Doru from Uther complained about Prince Malchezaar being "frustrating and cheap".

The basic frustration about the said instance comes in two forms: crushing blows and infernal spreads. Well, Blizzard poster Eyonix gave his two cents worth about the topic:

It's important for your tank to use shield block as often as possible during this entire encounter. Also, ideally shield wall is being saved for specific points where emergencies are likely to occur (i.e. having to move during phase 2).

This ought to save your tank from getting crushed too often, keeping pressure off your healers and improving the raid's mana efficiency. Also he stated that any form of additional damage mitigation for the tank should be used.

Eyonix continued to add "During phase 2, all healers should be spamming the tank, keeping him/her topped off completely." Healing your meatshield through the pain of tanking Prince is important as infernals begin to land in increasing numbers. "Outside of keeping the tank alive, this fight is about watching the environment," he added.

While crushing blows can be avoided with proper preparation and shield execution, the place where infernals land is beyond anyone's control. However, it doesn't hurt to take a /knee and /pray for a good infernal spread before each encounter. With that being said, good luck and happy looting. For more info on Eyonix' advice, click the via link below.

According to the World of Warcraft forums, two new changes will be implemented to address an imbalance to certain arena mechanics. The two issues being tackled now are some new mechanics for resilience and announced plans to disallow gear swapping once an arena match has begun. Two blue posters, Eyonix and Kalgan, posted on these topics respectively.

In the first change, resilience would also affect the damage done by damage over time (DoT) effects aside from its current mitigation of critical hits. According to Eyonix, this ensures DoTs wont scale too largely as compared to other damage mechanics. As a result, this comes out to a 10% damage reduction when players are equipped with 400 resilience. As of now, the mechanics deal primarily with PvP oriented damage. The effect on PvE is still in question but opinion is divided as to whether or not this change would have a profound impact on the playstyle of caster classes.

The second change to be effected is the inability to switch gears once an arena match has begun. Poster Kalgan confirmed in his forum post that Blizzard does have a plan to implement this. As it goes, current mechanics allow an arena team to nullify an opposing team's caster damage by equipping the corresponding resist gear before being tagged 'in combat', giving one side a significant edge over the other. It is expected that this change would force players to choose one set of gear over another before entering a match, creating a more level fight in the 2v2 and 3v3 arena tiers.

Currently both issues are getting a lot of comments in the World of Warcraft General Forums, with a lot of comments coming from approving and disapproving players. While these issues wont take effect anytime soon, we'll keep you informed as the story progresses.

Blizzard poster Eyonix has posted a heads up regarding a mail system update for World of Warcraft on the official WoW forums. Here's what the change brings:

Just like in-game mail transactions containing items, mail sent with gold, silver, and copper coins attached will in most cases now take one hour to reach the recipient.

This change will help us to better ensure the legitimacy of such transactions and further prevent the unlawful influx of currency into each realm’s economy.

This delay will only affect regular mail with coins attached and CoD payments received via the mail system. The delay will not affect mail sent from one character to another when under the same account. Take note that this is accompanied by other changes as Blizzard has just released WoW Patch 2.1.3.

 

Although the Ataris might not be top in your list of musical tastes, the World of Warcraft Music Contest has drawn in quite a talented crowd of Machinima editors to compose videos based on the few songs offered by Blizzard for the contest. And it's grown to quite a collection. Count 'em people: 67 entries in two-months time!

And now as the contest draws to a close, Blizzard's community manager Eyonix invites everyone (and not just active World of Warcraft players) to vote for the 10 finalists chosen by venerable judges. There are already immediate favorites emerging within the World of Warcraft community, so it might be wise to check if they suit your taste similarly before the voting period ends on June 27.

Now if you're experiencing problems with voting over at the Machinima site, you might want to keep trying until the traffic levels off. Apparently, site overload is hindering some people from even viewing videos altogether, and that doesn't include the people who just want to vote and skip video viewing.

Anyway, you might wanna try your luck. Just click on our Read link below.

 

If you've ever wanted to know just how bad keyloggers can get, here's an object lesson for the folks who scoff at them. It seems no one is safe from keyloggers, not even Blizzard representatives, because two community managers just happened to have been hit by hacks, and were seen posting keyloggers on the forums.

The two CMs involved, Drokthul and Nethaera, apparently had themselves hacked. Eyonix was on the scene, however, so the two were promptly banned until things could be sorted out. As noted in the above picture we took of the forums, Eyonix remarked, "The situation is now under control everyone. I'm afraid they were victims of moderation. I must admit, banning them was fun."

In the meantime, it's an important wake-up call to folks who aren't very cautious. Even if it's a trusted person who sends you a link, check the URL to avoid the hassle of getting hacked. Better still, add some anti-keylogging protection to help you against problematic hackers.