The second expansion pack for Blizzard's so-successful-it-hurts PC MMO World of Warcraft is due out in the second half of 2008, according to studio owner Vivendi.

In financial documents released today, Vivendi twice specified that the Wrath of the Lich King expansion pack would arrive in the second half of 2008. Developer Blizzard had yet to provide any sort of release estimate.

Vivendi further revealed that, as of March 31, 2008, World of Warcraft's subscriber base had grown to 10.7 million since it hit the 10 million mark in January.

For more on Lich King, check out the latest details as well as our hands-on preview and a look at the new Death Knight class.

The latest World of Warcraft patch is now available, updating version 2.4.1 of the game to version 2.4.2. A 15mb download, the patch offers more class and item balancing changes, as well as interface tweaks and bug fixes. ... Read more

With such renowned institutions as IBM and Harvard suggesting that many traits displayed by dedicated players of massively multiplayer games are key to successful business leadership, Massively reporter Cameron Sorden has a radical suggestion: put that experience on your resume.

As with any resume addition, the trick is to highlight the qualities that employers seek. Sure, raiding in World of Warcraft gives you sweet loot, but it also shows long-term planning, dedication, and the ability to work well with others. And if you're just getting into the job market and don't have a lot of relevant experience, this could be a huge help:

Guild Member, World of Warcraft
Participated as a member of a raiding guild over a two-year period. Consistently demonstrated punctuality, patience, good communication skills, and a team-oriented attitude to overcome shared challenges in a group setting.

"At the very least it makes your resume a little more interesting," Sorden noted. "It never hurts to stand out from the crowd when you're trying to get noticed." Just remember that, even in the virtual world, not everyone makes a good leader.

Proving itself even more worthy of adoration, developer Blizzard has rejected an offer that would have seen reviled director Uwe Boll working on a World of Warcraft film.

"I got in contact with Paul Sams of Blizzard [about a World of Warcraft film] and he said, 'We will not sell the movie rights, not to you...especially not to you,'" Boll informed MTV News.

"Because it's such a big online game success, maybe a bad movie would destroy that ongoing income."

The director of such game-to-film adaptations as Far Cry, BloodRayne, Alone in the Dark, Postal, In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale and House of the Dead also spoke on the importance of ignoring a game's core fanbase.

"To be honest, the real gamers are the typical download guys, right?" Boll reasoned. "They don't pay anything for movies, because they illegally download the movies. So why [should I] please these guys? I need the normal audience."

Last August, Blizzard confirmed it would thankfully be taking the reigns of the Warcraft movie rights, with the studio-endorsed film, produced in conjunction with Legendary Pictures, currently slated for a vague 2009 release.

Blizzard Entertainment has issued a new patch for its incredibly popular PC MMO World of Warcraft, bringing the game up to version 2.4.1.

The small, incremental 4.93MB patch offers a number of minor fixes over last week's 2.4 patch, which added new quests, dungeons, and more.

In celebration of April Fools' Day, esteemed developer Blizzard Entertainment has posted a number of well-intentioned pranks on its official website.

Chief among today's jokes was word that the company's highly successful PC MMO World of Warcraft will hit Atari 2600 in the form of World of Warcraft: The Molten Core. The collector's edition is said to pack tinted cellophane TV overlays, among other extras.

Another post teased the addition of Warcraft's Tauren race to the upcoming sci-fi RTS sequel StarCraft II, complete with screenshots and artwork.

Blizzard then jested it would be adding a Guitar Hero-esque Bard Hero class to the forthcoming World of Warcraft expansion Wrath of the Lich King, before rounding out the festivities with its plans to sell a child-endangering Diablo-branded loot pinata.

Blizzard is now claiming that World of Warcraft bot author Michael Donnelly has made $2.8 million by selling his controversial Glider software, according to recent motions filed in court and mirrored on GamePolitics.

Donnelly, the author of popular World of Warcraft bot Glider--a downloadable tool that automatically plays the massively multiplayer game for users--was sued by Blizzard in February of 2007.

Both sides have since been locked in a legal battle, with Blizzard claiming that Donnelly knowingly infringed on its copyright, in addition to breaking World of Warcraft's End User License Agreement.

"Blizzard's designs expectations are frustrated, and resources are allocated unevenly, when bots are introduced into the WoW universe, because bots spend far more time in-game than an ordinary player would and consume resources the entire time," said Blizzard in a legal statement filed last week.

Donnelly claims that his program does not violate Blizzard's copyright because it never makes a true copy of the game client.

"Blizzard permits its licensees to load the WoW game client software into RAM to play WoW. As such, Blizzard‘s licensees cannot violate Blizzard‘s exclusive... Read more

Blizzard Entertainment has released the long-awaited World of Warcraft 2.4 patch. It is available in several flavors: the full US/AUS patch, the incremental 2.3 to 2.4 US/AUS patch, and the incremental 2.3 to 2.4 UK patch.

Titled Fury of the Sunwell, the patch adds new quests, dungeons, and raids to the incredibly popular PC MMO, along with a new global arena tournament and various user interface improvements.

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The complete patch notes follow:... Read more

Blizzard Entertainment has released a trailer for the next World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade content patch.

Titled Fury of the Sunwell, the patch includes new quests, dungeons, and raids along with a new global arena tournament and various user interface improvements.

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The Fury of the Sunwell patch is expected to arrive shortly, with World of Warcraft patches and updates traditionally released each Tuesday.

Tickets for Blizzard Entertainment's 2008 Worldwide Invitational will go on sale March 20, the company announced today. Priced at 70 euros / £55 (roughly $110), the two-day tickets will be available from the event's official site.

Taking place in Paris, France on June 28 and 29, the event will feature invite-only tournaments for StarCraft, Warcraft III and World of Warcraft, along with panel discussions of various Blizzard products and the latest playable versions of StarCraft II and World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King.

Though the company unveiled StarCraft II at last year's Worldwide Invitational in Seoul, South Korea, that news marked the only major announcement to come out of the event's three-year history. The studio is known to have at least one unannounced title in development.

"The previous Blizzard Worldwide Invitationals have provided great opportunities for us to meet with players and share some incredible gaming experiences with them," said Blizzard CEO and cofounder Mike Morhaime. "We're looking forward to bringing this event to Paris for the first time and offering an exciting show for everyone attending."

UK bank Halifax and its subsidiary Bank of Scotland are blocking credit card transactions that pay for World of Warcraft subscriptions, The Register reports.

According to Halifax, a large number of payments have been fraudulent, leading to this ban. "We do not believe the fraud is anything to do with Blizzard themselves, their sites or the integrity of their billing systems, rather it is site users utilising stolen credit card details to pay for subscriptions" said the bank in a statement.

Legitimate subscribers will have to contact the bank to continue paying for their subscription with a Halifax-issued credit card.

Halifax is believed to be the only bank with a World of Warcraft subscription payment ban.

Blizzard Entertainment will be sponsoring a worldwide tournament for its insanely popular PC MMO World of Warcraft, the company revealed today.

Set to begin in in April, the tournament will have players competing in three-on-three arena matches within a specialized realm that allows players to instantly create a level-70 character equipped with epic items.

It will start with two six-week rounds of online qualifiers in Europe, South Korea, North America, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. Each round will require players to pay an entrance fee, set at $20 for North American players and 15 EUR for those in Europe.

The top four teams from each region will progress to a regional tournament, where they will compete for upwards of $27,000 in prizes. The winners will them be invited to the global championship, which will award the victors with $120,000 in prizes, including a $75,000 cash payout.

"eSports is one of the most exciting facets of online gaming today," said Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime. "We're pleased to expand World of Warcraft's tournament options for players who want to focus mainly on the competitive aspect of the game."

The latest update to Blizzard's World of Warcraft has been applied to the game's test server, adding a new area to explore plus a slew of tweaks and mechanical updates.

The new patch includes the Sunwell Isle, a new area which features a quest hub, new 5-player and 25-player instances and the new Shattered Sun Offensive faction. The update also improves the combat log, allowing players to fine-tune their combat filtering and define custom colors for friends and enemies.

Players will also notice a huge number of class-specific tweaks and other fixes in 2.4, the entirety of which is detailed in the complete patch notes. The patch will likely make the jump to the World of Warcraft live servers in the very near future.

There's an article format World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Q&A on Computer & Video Games. Blizzard's Jeff Kaplan is quizzed about the expansion.

Update: The NPD Group has chimed in, attributing the low percentage of PC software sales to the growing shift towards digital distribution, which the firm does not track.

Original Story: Of the $18.85 billion the video game industry generated at North American retailers throughout 2007, only $910.7 million of that, roughly 14%, was attributed to PC games.

Data from the sales-tracking firm NPD reveals that retailers sold 267.8 million games in 2007, 36.4 million of which were PC titles. Console games brought in $6.6 billion, selling 153.9 million units total, while portable software hauled a record $2 billion in revenue with 77.5 million units sold.

Figures were also released highlighting the top ten best-selling PC games of this year, accompanying last week's list of 2007's top ten console games. The numbers, which do not take digital downloads into account, have Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft and EA Maxis' Sims franchises occupying six of the top ten spots. A complete run-down of the top PC games of 2007 follows:... Read more

Blizzard Entertainment's unavoidable MMORPG sensation World of Warcraft (PC) now sports over 10 million active subscribers, the company has announced. Of those, about 2.5 million are located in North America, 2 million in Europe, and 5.5 million in Asia.

Released in November 2004, World of Warcraft has since spawned the massively successful Burning Crusade expansion pack, with another, titled Wrath of the Lich King, on the way. The company regularly updates the game with new technology and gameplay tweaks via regular patches, the latest of which was released today.

Formerly a subsidiary of Vivendi Games, Blizzard was a major factor in the merger of Vivendi Games and Activision, with the resulting entity known as Activision Blizzard. At the time, Blizzard CEO and co-founder Mike Morhaime (pictured above) noted his belief that Vivendi shareholders never gave the studio "proper credit" and... Read more

Blizzard has issued a new World of Warcraft patch, updating version 2.3.2 of the game to version 2.3.3. The 4.3mb update offers improved load times and more bug fixes. ... Read more

There's a World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Q&A on Computer & Video Games, asking lead designer Jeff Kaplan about the second expansion pack for Blizzard's popular MMORPG.

What happens when players of all ages, sexes, and intelligences collide head-on with political theory in a virtual world? Read on to find out what John Locke would have thought about loot disputes, and whether total anarchy really works when it comes to epic items.

"The problem I see with guild leadership is that it brings out the worst in some people; mostly those who would want to seize and hold on to any little bit of power they can," said Jeff Buchwald, a World of Warcraft player since the beta phase. "It seems as though WoW is the one outlet [the leader of my guild] can control, where he can exude dominance and flex his proverbial muscle." Read more...

In an interview with Gamasutra, Id Software's John Carmack says Blizzard's World of Warcraft has spurred PC gaming, and he reaffirmed his company's support of the PC as a platform.

Carmack described World of Warcraft as "a train driving all the PC sales numbers altogether on gaming." He acknowledged that most players of "higher-end games" play them on the consoles, but said "the PC still has a strong enough margin to make games, and we continue to support it."

The studio head went on to say part of the reason PC gaming has remained less popular is because of well-implemented console connectivity features like Xbox Live and other PC-like options. The company's forthcoming title Rage will launch on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 as well as PC and Mac.