IGG is definitely keeping Zu Online alive for its citizens, and the next fun-filled event set on the mountains is enough proof. This time, game masters will get their share of fun as players try to cash in on their Wan Mountain caravan trips. For more details, head to the full article.

Ahoy there! Those of you who are into IGG's high seas exploration MMORPG, Voyage Century Online, will be pleased to know that your old equipment don't have to go to waste. The VCO group will help you unload your stockpiled booty at 9:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. on September 25 in-game.

Game Masters will appear in Athens at the designated time and players can basically exchange any old equipment that they have lying around for new ones. GMs will willingly accept equipment from items upgraded through either the guild system or the in-game mall and, depending on the quality of the items traded in, they will exchange these items for new equipment.

Specifications range from non-Dragon equipment with a minimum attribute bonus of 45, while the highest rating being from White Dragon to Black Dragon equipment with minimum attribute bonus of 70 can be traded in during these times. For more specific details, just follow the source link below on the specifics of each tradable item's requirements.

While IGG hasn't exactly specified what the "new equipment" entails, players can hope it's of a better quality make than the items they've traded in. Posters on the forums have asked IGG for further specifics on the event, but so far no word has been given out.

 

Hark! Let loose the long-lost WoW blogger of QJ! And heralding my comeback to MMORPG coverage is the equally hot topic in the World of Warcraft community yesterday. Because in that faithful maintenance day, brave Lilpwny of Chromaggus asked a hundred thousand dollar question: are Blues in player-created Guilds?

Truth be told, they are. Community Managers, aside from Game Masters, have often clued that they do play the game as normal players and have participated in many an instance of raids, PvEs and normal grinds. Eternally burning Nethaera herself had revealed that she played a priest a while back, and this time around she's confirming her membership to a guild:

Yes, we play in guilds. Yes, most people don't realize we're even a Blizz Employee in their guild. Yes, I've been in vent for Raids for things like Kara and Gruul. I haven't for a bit though since we've all been so busy with Comic Con and then BlizzCon, but I'll be getting back to some semblance of 'normal' play again soon. It's pretty much the same for everyone on the team.

Plenty of other personalities play World of Warcraft, including geeky ScreenSaver Leo Laporte and a good slew of developers from Bungie, but running the gauntlet with community personalities at your side is a thrill on its own. They've even expanded to PvP guilds and regular guilds across unnamed realms. But if there's truth not going to be told, it'll be just one thing: identities.

"Nope we can't [reveal our character's names]. I'm sure you can come up with many reasons why we can't," said the candle lit community manager and that's just how things will have to be. More on interesting WoW community buzz as they come a-trollin' by.

Bugs. Every game has at least one. Without the dedicated assistance of playtesters and Game Masters, some of them may have made their way into the latest version of your favorite games. This is doubly true for a game like Blizzard's World of Warcraft.

Hortus recently put up a list of issues affecting the PTRs in preparation for patch 2.2. As he notes in a disclaimer, these are the list of reported issues people have had while trying out the game on the public test realms and are thus still being tested for confirmation as bugs in the game. That being said, some of these issues have already popped up on our website, such as the issue of priestly Lightwell spamming and the mimicking problem with Hunters' Kill Commands.

We encourage people to check out the list there. It's pretty extensive, and there's bound to be a potential bug or two there that is of special interest to you as a player.

Given that hacking/keylogging incidents in the World of Warcraft are a hot-button topic, it doesn't hurt to keep abreast of how the game's tech team handle cases related to these E-crimes. We'll be looking at victim Hearthing's case over at the WoW forums, as he reports a hack incident that's left his account's characters deleted. Here were some of the questions Hearthing posed, and Blizzard spokesman Vrakthris's reply:

• Quote: Will someone contact me to go over who was on the account, where they traced it too, etc?
• No, we will never provide anyone with information related to another account. We will take all appropriate actions regarding accounts involved but we will not release any details.
• Quote: Would making a new ticket help at all in the "queue," and what part of the queue am I at?
• No, once a Game Master forwards your information to our Investigation Team it is in their hands; further requests will not speed up the process, also Game Masters can not check where in queue you are. Once your investigation is complete the Investigator will send an e-mail to the registered address of your account with the results.

While we're regretful that this incident had to happen, we're sure that players can learn much from this Q&A session, which clearly explains some details we imagine some guys here would have loved to ask in case their own accounts got into similar trouble. As always, prevention is still the best safeguard against these sort of problems.

Remember the Washington Post writer who got his World of Warcraft account banned because he asked a private company to do the levelling for him? Well, his account got banned because Blizzard has every reason to do it. As you know, sharing passwords and accounts with others are prohibited.

Now, what if you've honestly done nothing wrong and then all of a sudden, your account got banned. Such is the problem faced by user Zurm over at WoW's official community forum. The player mentioned that he contacted in-game GMs and even informed Blizzard's Account and Billing Services about the matter but their replies haven't been helpful: "Uh, okay. The report has been filed."

Blizzard forum moderator Vrakthris addressed the post by explaining how things like these are handled by their team. The blue poster remarked,

When a possible compromise of your account is reported, your information is forwarded to our investigation team, there it will wait in queue until it can be addressed. How long before your issue is resolved is dependent upon how many others are in queue before you and the complexity of your case. Unfortunately, although Game Masters can confirm that your issue was forwarded we are unable to provide you with an estimate on when it will be resolved.

Despite that, Vrakthris added that there are cases that the investigation team are able to restore things just within hours after the incident report. Some cases, however, may take three to five days to resolve. All of these, according to the moderator, is dependent on your case's complexity, and on how many other reports are queued before yours.

"Finally some answers!" This three word post from Level 70 Blood Elf Paladin Ino reflects our sentiments exactly. While Blizzard had made absolutely no remarks about the development of their fixes slated for the next major patch (Patch 2.1.0) of World of Warcraft, people have been exasperated by the complete news blackout.

But when Community Manager Ommra did her signature bovine cha-cha at the European World of Warcraft Forums with Game Master Tigole's dev updates not far behind, the community flocked right down over to that thread for some well-deserved appreciation for Big Blue.

We aren't going to place all that Tigole discussed here. We'd rather have you get the news straight from the horse's mouth.

That way, if someone forgets to deliver on their promise, you'll know there wasn't any misunderstanding between us and you guys. While these fixes aren't all that's coming by the next patch, they are what people have been hounding the forums for - for weeks on end.

• The Rogue Situation - the 360-degree striking sweep issue is being addressed.
• End Game Itemisation - end-game items will be balanced and scaled accordingly
• ”Trash” Concerns - non-epic dropping, non-bosses should be easier to clear
• Consumables - plans to remove massive consumable farming
• Boss Tuning - WoW's Big Baddies are getting an attitude readjustment

Despite lackadaisical issues with Blizzard's efforts to patching the game, the Game Masters and developers are actually listening to what's hot and what's not in the community forums. So if you think your little concern isn't being looked into, think again. Expect Patch 2.1.0 to be up in the Public Test Realms first, before making its way permanently to the live Realms. Don't forget to hop over to the thread via the "Read" link provided below.

Account hijacking is becoming a whole new way for spreading malicious software to your computer. As reported today from the World of Warcraft forums, there have been several incidents of massive keylogger spam across numerous boards, including Realm-specific ones. While the incident has been mostly taken care of, it wouldn't hurt to be extra careful about questionable links.
 
The spammed threads simply contained a three-liner initial post, which, as quoted from community helper Mezil, went something like this (we've patched up the semantics):

how [sexy] the woman is

[questionable link goes here]

where does she come from? so [sexy].

Now while we're not sure if that was a picture link to the lady behind dancing bovine Ommra, we'll never really know. But she has been busy banning most of the offending accounts from the community forums for an unspecified period of time. What happens to the in-game accounts, that's up to the Game Masters.

So remember, if you're a click-happy person who loves opening up each link in a page, you might want to rest that click finger of yours in a less compromising position, like over your space bar. It will save you grief from getting your account jacked by creators of these software and leaving it to the mercy of getting banned.

Blizzard, the brains behind World of Warcraft, is expanding into Austin, Texas - the Cradle of Gaming. Apparently, the Irvine, California-based company would be setting up a customer support center in the city.

The Blizzard office in Austin will be housing game masters, quality control, I.T., and human resource folks. A Blizzard rep also mentioned that the Austin office "is all in-house Blizzard people. It’s not going to be made up of third party providers".

This move by Blizzard confirms a recent report in the Austin Business Journal which mentioned that Blizzard is setting up house in Austin. This was so because the company has secured a 46,000 square foot office building in the Northeast Austin area and that they are planning on employing 500 people. To that, Blizzard replied that the 500-employee figure is just a tad too much and that they will simply hire people as needed.

The rumors have been circling around World of Warcraft about players suddenly popping up from nowhere sporting the "" tag in their characters' names.

There are so plenty of those stories in the WoW Forums, in fact, that Gargamelle, a level 56 Blood Elf Warlock, was wondering if the "" sightings were all just a case of a weird bug.

Drysc, Blizzard representative, has been speculative about the Game Master sightings. Why? It's because Game Masters, like most MMO games, don't just manifest themselves as characters in the game.

For special reasons and purposes, GMs do have characters, but only for testing and experimentation. He goes on to confirm:

GMs will rarely make themselves physically visible and usually only if necessary for the help they're providing. In some cases characters which have recently been under GM control to either test or help resolve an issue for that character may retain the "" tag in error. If you see one you can report it and we'll have it removed. Of course impersonating a GM would be grounds for disciplinary action.

Very few have credible (emphasis on credible) stories regarding GM sightings. But those that do, actually have screenshots of them. Of course, it gets more confusing that some sightings have characters with GM items but no GM tags. One case even had a character with GM tags but no GM items.

Since GMs are the number one person to approach to report bugs and botters, this could be a tad more difficult than a one-two step, don't you think? We'll be watching closely for more developments on these mysterious GM appearances.