Out of all of the video game movies that have been rumored to come out, one of the one that seems the most likely to actually make it to the big screen is the one based on World of Warcraft.

When the movie was first conceived it was listed as just Warcraft however, a recent update to the title’s IMDB listing let us know that it will officially be called Warcraft: The Rise of the Lich King. This leads us to believe that either they scrapped the original idea and went for a more Lich King approach or just had this story from the beginning.

Either or, you’re sure to be hearing more about this movie as its release date grows closer, whenever that may be.

via thatvideogameblog

This news was made known after it was noted that Paul Sims and his family (wife and 3 kids) have been listed as part-owners of the Pittsburg Steelers. Sure, this news may not have much relevance to the video game industry but perhaps we can expect to see the Steelers appearing in Cataclysm? Then again, maybe not.

via kotaku

The limit for instances per server has been notched up a bit, and the performance instances are being given are also improved.

The reason behind many players participating in Heroic instances is due to the recent 3.2 changes of Heroic dungeons providing Emblems of Conquest. This way, all fresh 80’s can get their Ulduar gear with just some grinding.

No word on when European and Australian servers will be seeing the fix.

Read (World of Warcraft Forums)

Once changed, you can choose any race to be as long as it matches your character’s class. For example, you can’t create a Draenei Rogue, but you can become a Human Rogue. But, who would want to go Alliance anyways? Traitor.

The faction change costs $30.00 and can be done here.

Blizzard Entertainment and Legendary Pictures will be working together for the film. So, maybe it won’t be so bad if Blizzard has most of the creative control.

“Sam’s passion for ‘Warcraft’ is undeniable and we know that he will create an incredible film worthy of Blizzard’s phenomenal franchise,” said Legendary Pictures CEO Thomas Tull.

“From our first conversation with Sam, we could tell he was the perfect choice,”” added Paul Sams, chief operating officer of Blizzard Entertainment. “Sam knows how to simultaneously satisfy the enthusiasts and the mainstream audience that might be experiencing that content for the first time.”

There’s a lot of Warcraft lore out there, beginning from the debut of the scourge up to the return of the Lich King. And who can forget all of the novels that spawned along the way? Details are scarce right now, as the movie is still in production. Hopefully more information will pop up in this year’s Comic-Con.

Read (Toronto Sun)

Just in case you haven’t already spent enough time on World of Warcraft, Blizzard has recently launched the WoW Mobile Armory iPhone app effectively giving players their WoW fix on the go.

If you’re familiar with the World of Warcraft Armory currently available online, you’ll be familiar with this as it incorporates all of said online application’s features into a handheld package. This means you’ll be able to check up on character, guild and arena data along with check your guild’s calender.

Additionally you’ll be able to find out everything you need to know about items, zones and dungeons featured in the game. Best of all, it’s free!

via Kotaku

It seems Germany is at it again, this time setting their eyes upon Valve’s extremely popular Counter-Strike series. Legislation was recently passed that now makes it illegal to play Counter-Strike in public.

This has led to the cancelation of Germany’s Convention-X-Treme LAN event which is sure to discourage the mass of German gamers. Furthermore, Destructoid is reporting that World of Warcraft has also been banned from public play.

What’s next, Germany, Halo?

Don’t get your hopes too high, though, as Chilton only states that he “thinks” it’s possible to implement such a model in the game, but that it is “really too hard to say at this point.”

It’s unlikely that Blizzard will go for such a model while the monolithic MMO is still bringing in truckloads of money for them. Maybe sometime in the distant future when WoW is replaced by some other Blizzard MMO and forgotten.

Blizzard has been working on a secret MMO for some time now and details have been ridiculously scarce ever since the project began. However, if a recent trademark filing is anything to go by we might be one step closer to discovering what the game’s title will be.

Cataclysm is the filing and was filed for use in the field of online games, computer games and paper based products. There’s no telling if this is actually the MMO’s title but those 3 fields look pretty convincing considering the MMO would be an online computre game and most likely have some sort of trading card game like World of Warcraft.

Read (Joystiq)

First Blizzard announced that Starcraft 2 would not feature LAN support, fans were discouraged, then Blizzard defended them not adding LAN support and fans were still discouraged. Finally, those who were discouraged banded together and did the only thing they could do; formed a petition.

There is currently over 25,000 signatures and the guys who put it together really put some effort into it, breaking down and explaining exactly why Blizzard should re-add LAN support.

Will this work? Probably not. Is it the effort that counts? You bet.

Read (PetitionOnline)

There was somwhat of an uproar from the community when Blizzard announced that they would not be featuring LAN support in their forthcoming RTS, Starcraft II.

Below is their reasoning for removing LAN, mentioning Battle.net and piracy:

“We don’t currently plan to support LAN play with StarCraft II, as we are building Battle.net to be the ideal destination for multiplayer gaming with StarCraft II and future Blizzard Entertainment games,” confirms a Blizzard rep. “While this was a difficult decision for us, we felt that moving away from LAN play and directing players to our upgraded Battle.net service was the best option to ensure a quality multiplayer experience with StarCraft II and safeguard against piracy.

“Several Battle.net features like advanced communication options, achievements, stat-tracking, and more, require players to be connected to the service, so we’re encouraging everyone to use Battle.net as much as possible to get the most out of StarCraft II. We’re looking forward to sharing more details about Battle.net and online functionality for StarCraft II in the near future.”

Regardless if its the best idea or not, Starccraft II is sure to be a highly competitve game which means a lot of tournaments. Without LAN tournament organizers are going to have 1 more problem to deal with, bummer.

Read (Destructoid)

To all of the World of Warcraft players out there which side are you, Alliance or Horde? Regardless, have you ever felt the urge to switch sides but haven’t been able to?

Well, according to an official Blizzard forum poster by the name of Nethaera, you will soon be able to do that:

“There’s still much work to do and many details to iron out, but the basic idea is that players will be able to use the service to transform an existing character into a roughly equivalent character of the opposing faction on the same realm. Players who ended up creating and leveling up characters on the opposite factions from their friends have been asking for this type of functionality for some time, and we’re pleased to be getting closer to being able to deliver it.”

There’s no telling when this patch is set to drop but when it does there is sure to be a bit of chaos in the World of Warcraft.

Rob Pardo told the site that development on the sequel had begun in 2003 and that there had been a playable build since 2005. However, it was held up due to the appearance of World of Warcraft which saw a fair amount of the design team moving to MMO project to help finish the game.

Apparently, these people had lots of great experience and had knowledge and know-how to fix map editor problems, as well as dealing with balancing.

Now you know who to hate for holding up StarCraft 2. The original was released back in 1998. It’s been eleven years since then.

This comes from different previews of the game on Kotaku and IncGamers, both of whom checked out the new Battle.net, the solo campaign and more. When they asked about multiplayer LAN play, this is what they received as an answer: “We will not support it.”

The studio additionally pointed out that there is “zero percent” chance of seeing the game on consoles.

If the news got you down, Joystiq adds salt to the wound by showing seven minutes of multiplayer play from the game. Go cry in the corner, you.

EA is really taking out the big guns in an attempt to take down Blizzard and their World of Warcraft — Recently announced is the merger of Warhammer Online developer Mythic and Mass Effect developer, BioWare.

These two merged studios will form a new RPG/MMO studio group with most all of the executives from both studios staying onboard. However, Mark Jacobs, co-found of Mythic, has left EA yesterday June 23rd, 2009.

Both of these studios have come up with some great stuff, now let’s just see if they can pump out a game that will be enough to send Blizzard packin’.

Despite beating around the bush every which way they can, Blizzard has finally come out and said during an investor webcast that they are hoping to have StarCraft II on shelves by the end of this year.

Joystiq quotes Blizzard president Mike Morhaime as saying:

“We’re targeting an end of year release this year for StarCraft II. But as always, we won’t release it until it meets our standards and the expectations of our players.”

So there is it, while it’s not completely definite its at least more definite that StarCraft II will in fact be hitting shelves by the end of the year, or so they hope. As for the beta? Still slated to be released sometime this summer.

Now don’t get your hopes up too high because unfortunately we weren’t able to secure any Blizzcon tickets to give away to you guys, the readers. Fortunately, there is a slew of websites that were more fortunate than us and were able to get their hands on some Bilzzcon tickets to give away.

Below is a compiled list of all known fan sites holding Blizzcon ticket giveways, courtesy of Starcraft Wire:

StarcraftWire.net – Giveaway 1 – Giveaway 2

BlizzPlanet

Diii.net – (coming soon)

Diablo-Source

StarCraft-Source

inStarCraft

StarCraft II Australia

StarCraft 2 Source

TankSpot

World of Raids

WoW Interface

So, you won’t be getting a Blizzcon ticket from us but at least you still have the opportunity to get your hands on one while Blizzard prepares to put some more up for sale.

You can read more about Blizzard’s annual convention, Blizzcon, here.

Blizzard has recently announced that the 3.1.2 patch for World of Warcraft has left the public test realms and entered the live realms today.

Featured in said patch is everything you would expect, class changes, bug fixes, the like. However, the big thing that Blizzard introduced with this patch is the Equipment Manager which they describe as:

When enabled from the Interface Options menu, this feature will allow players to store sets of equipment, easily swap between saved sets using hotkeys, and pull items directly from backpacks or bank slots (must be at the bank to equip inventory from the bank).

This will ease the pain when you have to switch from your PvP set to your PvE set.

Full list of changes after the break.

World of Warcraft Client Patch 3.1.2 – (2009-05-19)

The latest patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/

General

• Equipment Manager
  • When enabled from the Interface Options menu, this feature will allow players to store sets of equipment, easily swap between saved sets using hotkeys, and pull items directly from backpacks or bank slots (must be at the bank to equip inventory from the bank).
• New art textures have been added for Argent Tournament mounts. Any mounts already purchased from the Argent Tournament vendors will be updated automatically. Argent Tournament mounts with the old textures will still be available for purchase from the Argent Tournament vendors for a small Champion’s Seal and gold cost (standard faction requirements apply).

PVP

• Vehicle health and damage output in Strand of the Ancients and Wintergrasp now scale with the item level of the operator’s gear. Power scaling is now 1% damage and 1% health per average item level.
• All Wintergrasp daily quests have been changed to a weekly format. The honor and Stone Keeper’s Shards rewarded for completing these quests have been increased to compensate.
• The bonus honor for winning the battle in Wintergrasp and controlling/destroying towers has been reduced.

Death Knights

• Improved Death Strike: This talent now also increases the healing from Death Strike by 25/50% and the tooltip has been adjusted to reflect the actual functionality after the hotfix in 3.1.0.
• Ghoul Frenzy: Now has a 10-second cooldown.

Druids

• Innervate: This ability has been redesigned to grant 450% of the casting Druid’s base mana pool to the target over 20 seconds.
• Improved Moonkin Form: Now grants 10/20/30% of spirit as spell power.

Hunters

• Disengage: Cooldown reduced by 5 seconds.

Mages

• Mirror Images: The images summoned by this spell will now target the creature that most hates the Mage, and should no longer cast Fire Blast or Frostbolt on targets that are affected by crowd control debuffs that break immediately on damage unless they are already casting these spells when crowd control is applied.

Paladins

• Blessing of Wisdom and Greater Blessing of Wisdom: Now grant 92 mana per 5 seconds to prevent being overwritten by Mana Spring Totem.
• Exorcism: Can no longer be used on player-controlled creatures.

Priests

• Divine Hymn: Healing and healing scaling reduced by 30%. Buff on affected players changed from 15% to 10%.
• Renewed Hope: Effect can no longer be dispelled.
• Soul Warding: Mana cost reduction is now 15% down from 30%.

Warlocks

• Conflagrate updated: Consumes an Immolate or Shadowflame effect on the enemy target to instantly deal damage equal to 12 seconds of your Immolate, or 8 seconds of your Shadowflame.
• Fire and Brimstone: Now increases the damage done by your Incinerate and Chaos Bolt by 3/6/9/12/15% on targets afflicted by Immolate, and increases the critical strike chance of your Conflagrate by 5/10/15/20/25%. In addition, the increased critical strike chance of Conflagrate provided by this talent no longer requires the Immolate effect to have 5 seconds or fewer remaining on the target.
• Nether Protection reduced to 30% damage reduction, down from 60%.
• Sacrifice (Voidwalker) redesigned: Sacrifices a portion of the Voidwalker’s health, giving its master a shield that will absorb X damage for 30 seconds. While the shield holds, spell casting will not be interrupted by damage. 1-minute cooldown.
• Shadow and Flame: Now also includes Shadowburn.

Warriors

• Juggernaut: Critical strike chance bonus reduced to 25%, down from 100%.

Items

• Arena weapons with an item level of 239 have had their rating requirements increased to 2350.
• Darkruned Battlegear 2-Piece Set Bonus: The bonus critical strike chance for Frost Strike and Death Coil has been increased from 5% to 8%.
• Furious Gladiator’s Staff and Furious Gladiator’s Greatstaff: The agility values on these two items were too high. They have been reduced by 50%.
• Glyphs
  • Glyph of Innervate: Has been adjusted to grant the Druid 90% of his or her base mana pool over 20 seconds.
  • Glyph of Mass Dispel: Now only decreases Mass Dispel cost by 35%.
  • Glyph of Rapid Charge: Reduced to 7%, down from 20% cooldown reduction to Charge.
• Guise of the Midgard Serpent: The base attack power on this item has been lowered to balance it against items of a similar quality.
• Increased the health and mana restored from Northrend food and drinks.
• Most scopes now have a level requirement and will bind the item to which they are applied.
• Nightsong Garb 4-Piece Set Bonus: Chance for Insect Swarm to trigger an instant Starfire changed to 15%.
• Scourgeborne Battlegear 4-Piece Set Bonus: The runic power gain has been reduced to 5 runic power from 10 runic power.
• Ulduar 10-player hard mode weapons have been updated to item level 232.

Professions

• Fishing
  • Jewel of the Sewers: You can now fish in all parts of the Dalaran sewers for this quest.
  • Phantom Ghostfish: Can now be caught from Nettlefish schools in Sholazar Basin.

Bug Fixes

• Death Knights
  • Anti-magic Shell: Tooltip error corrected.
  • Blood Boil: If no target is available for Blood Boil to hit, the spell will now cast and consume a blood rune but generate no runic power.
• Druids
  • Maim: Rank 2 of this ability is properly considered a stun and can be escaped by Blink.
• Hunters
  • Go For The Throat: Explosive Shot critical strikes now trigger this talent.
  • Lock and Load: The tooltip has been corrected to display its actual chance to occur.
  • Rabid: This Hunter pet talent no longer lists a percentage chance to be triggered, as that chance varies by the attack speed of the pet.
• Paladins
  • Divine Sacrifice: Damage done to the Paladin while this is active will no longer cause the effect to break early, and if it is dispelled or cancelled early, the damage counter will reset correctly the next time the spell is cast.
• Rogues
  • Shadow Dance: Issues with action bars and ability use arising from using Stealth while Shadow Dance is active have been fixed.
  • Tricks of the Trade: To prevent exploits, this ability can no longer be cast on non-player targets.
• Warlocks
  • Demonic Sacrifice: This spell will no longer appear in any Warlock’s spellbook.
• Professions
  • Tailoring
    • Swordguard Embroidery: Now correctly increases ranged attack power.
• Dungeons and Raids
  • Ulduar
    • Hodir should now reset in a timely manner if a group fails to kill him.
    • 10-player bosses that drop Runed Orbs will also sometimes drop the recipes that use those orbs.
    • The Spark of Imagination: Characters that release in part of the boss room will no longer be ported to Westfall or The Barrens.

Blizzard announced that the second and last batch of tickets will go on sale on May 30, so if you’re really interested in going, mark your calendar and wait until midnight of May 29.

Those hoping for World of Warcraft 2 or World of Starcraft to be Blizzard’s new MMO are met with a sad day — Zarhym, Blizzard community manager, has recently confirmed via the official World of Warcraft forums that the new MMO will be based on a “brand new franchise”.

That’s all we have to go by for now but Joystiq is reporting that the game is being developed using the World of Warcraft engine for the time being. Whatever the new franchise is, Blizzard is sure to be rollin’ in the dough by the time it rolls around.