Blizzard is preparing "a new service" that will allow World of Warcraft players to change their character's faction from Alliance to Horde or vice versa, the developer has revealed.

"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," the studio wrote, noting "there's still much work to do and many details to iron out."

"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," Blizzard added, explaining:

As with all of the features and services we offer, we intend to incorporate the faction-change service in a way that won't disrupt the gameplay experience on the realms, and there will be some rules... Read more

Blizzard has revealed that the upcoming "Call of the Crusade" content patch for World of Warcraft will deliver a new player-versus-player battleground capable of supporting up to 80 combatants in the "ongoing struggle between Horde and Alliance."

Of the five battlegrounds currently in Blizzard's ultra-popular PC MMO, only one other--Alterac Valley--supports up to 80 players. The remaining four max out at 30 or below.

Making use of "devastating siege weaponry on the field," the new "Isle of Conquest" battleground will see two teams of up to 40 players each attempt to capture various points on the map as they fight to bring down their opponent's keep and general.

While Blizzard has yet to state when the patch can be expected, the developer did offer a breakdown of the capture locations and objectives found... Read more

Continuing its tradition of providing BlizzCon attendees with an exclusive World of Warcraft item, Blizzard has unveiled this year's bonus.

Grunty the murloc marine, pictured left, will be available out to all those that either attend BlizzCon 09 or watch it via pay per view.

"This tiny terror is fully armored and comes equipped with a gauss rifle, which he'll occasionally fire into the air to make sure no invisible spacecraft are swooping in to attack," Blizzard says of Grunty and his StarCraft-inspired stylings.

Tickets for this year's BlizzCon, occurring on August 21 and 22 at the Anaheim Convention Center, go on sale via the BlizzCon site this Saturday, May 16, at $125 a pop. A second batch of tickets debut May 30, with DirectTV offering the ability to watch the festivities live from either a television or internet-connected computer for $40.

PopCap today announced the release of its popular casual game Peggle as free add-on for World of Warcraft.

Strangely enough, the Peggle port is rather impressive, including WoW-themed backgrounds and a custom "talent tree" to spec out your Peggle skills.

Also provided is a new "/peggleloot" option, which allows players to "roll" for loot based on the best Peggle shot--a feature truly reinforcing the random nature of Peggle.

Both the Peggle and Bejeweled World of Warcraft add-ons can be grabbed from FileShack.

Now available over on FileShack is the 3.0.9 to 3.1.0 World of Warcraft patch.

This latest update to Blizzard's monstrously successful MMORPG adds Ulduar, a new dungeon where you'll fell Titans and their metal minions, as this story trailer explains.

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Blizzard dedicates the patch to the memory of D&D co-creator Dave Arneson.

Switching between skill builds is simplified by the arrival of dual talent specialization, dungeons finally have maps, and the Argent Tournament kicks off. All these changes and more follow in the ginormous full patch notes below... Read more

Not content with pimping your epic mount? Blizzard Entertainment had another World of Warcraft-related April Fools' gag up its sleeve: the PvP Dance Battle System.

"As with the Arena system, close communication and teamwork is crucial--you'll have to be in sync, both with the music as well as with the other members of your crew, to become the 'server' and not the 'servee,'" cautioned Blizzard.

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Esteemed developer Blizzard Entertainment kicked off April Fools' Day with word that World of Warcraft may soon add a new "Pimp My Mount" customization feature. "Tired of your mount looking like every other raptor, wolf, horse, kodo, or nightsaber out there? Then Z to the A to the zzber (whew, that's a mouthful!) will be glad to welcome you to his shop where you can epic-ize your mount with some phat total pimpage!"

Given that Blizzard has a rich history of embracing April Fools' Day, let's chalk this one up to a celebration of the holiday. But it is World of Warcraft, so you never really know...

It wasn't all mistakes and regrets for former World of Warcraft director Jeffery Kaplan during today's "The Cruise Director of Azeroth" panel at GDC.

The jam-packed presentation also saw the release of many World of Warcraft statistics, including the average number of quests completed daily, and the circumstances that led to the extremely popular MMO sporting, at last count, some 7650 different quests.

• Between 6/30/2007 and 3/5/2009, some 8,570,222,436 quests were completed in the World of Warcraft.
• Daily average of quests completed: 16,641,209

Kaplan, now working on Blizzard's next MMO, talked about designing the original release of World of Warcraft, saying that the first total quest target was 600. This number was a result of needing to compete with EverQuest's estimated 1200 quests... Read more

With a scant 40 minutes to address the gathered masses, former World of Warcraft director Jeffery Kaplan had a lot to cover in his "The Cruise Director of Azeroth" lecture.

The presentation saw an extremely candid Kaplan, now working on Blizzard's next-gen MMO, recognize and address the nine major problems with World of Warcraft.

But before getting into the nitty-gritty details, Kaplan made one thing abundantly clear: the WoW team is aware of the problems, and is actively working to fix them.

1. "The Christmas Tree Effect"

What this means, and this is kind of a weird one, but you show up to a quest hub, and your minimap is lit up like a Christmas tree... Read more

During a presentation at this year's Game Developers Conference, former World of Warcraft director Jeffrey Kaplan took a moment to address the lengthy exposition that plagues numerous games, including those developed by Blizzard.

"Basically, and I'm speaking to the Blizzard guys in the back: we need to stop writing a fucking book in our game, because nobody wants to read it," he explained.

"We need to deliver our story in a way that is uniquely video game," Kaplan, who left WoW to work on Blizzard's next MMO, explained. "We need to engage our players in sort of an inspiring experience, and the sooner we accept that we are not Shakespeare, Scorsese, Tolstoy or the Beatles, the better off we are."

However, Kaplan did offer consolation to his fellow developers. "If it makes us feel better, Shakespeare couldn't 3D model his way out of a paper bag," he noted.

Former World of Warcraft lead designer and current next-gen Blizzard MMO director Jeffrey Kaplan today detailed a behind-the-scenes system of drop percentages secretly added in the WoW expansion Wrath of the Lich King.

The system, called "progressive percentages," was cribbed directly from Blizzard's own Warcraft 3, which used it for critical hit mechanics. It relates to how and when quest items drop from creatures--an important issue to all WoW players.

Originally, Blizzard settled on a standard WoW quest item drop rate of around 35%, with no system in place that would tweak the percentage as players killed more enemies.

"We found that this had a lot of problems where players would run into streaks, and they only remembered the shitty streaks," said Kaplan. "So what we decided... Read more

Blizzard today announced that it will soon be capitalizing on the lucrative gamer energy drink market by releasing Warcraft-themed flavors of Mountain Dew Game Fuel.

The two flavors, Alliance Blue (real wild fruit flavor!) and Horde Red (wacky citrus cherry flavor!), will debut this summer at your local 7-Eleven--perhaps alongside copies of the actual game.

Blizzard assures us that further details are coming soon. In the meantime, check out these extreme renderings of the drink.

World of Warcraft developer Blizzard has unveiled the next major addition to its successful PC MMO, the Ulduar dungeon, which will arrive via the 3.1 patch.

Available to those players with the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, Ulduar is described as the game's "most ambitious raid to date." It kicks off with players utilizing a fleet of siege vehicles to face off against a "massive iron army" before encountering the Flame Leviathan tank, a boss that requires combatants to rely on those siege vehicles.

In all, the dungeon will pack 14 bosses, with 11 of those having an optional hard mode that will provide additional challenge and rewards. Blizzard promises that Ulduar has a wide appeal to a variety of play styles and "has great longevity and high replay value."

The 3.1 patch and Ulduar dungeon are said to hit the public test realms "very soon." No information is available as to when the patch will go live for the rest of the realms.

By far one of the more interesting updates coming to Blizzard's World of Warcraft, dual talent specialization has now been thoroughly outlined by Warcraft developers in an official question and answer session.

Set for inclusion in the next patch, dual talent speccing will allow players to easily switch between two separate talent specs, hotbar and glyph setups. Level 80 characters will be able to gain the ability by paying a one-time training fee.

Once trained, the talent specs can be freely switched between at any Lexicons of Power. The lexicons will be available in major cities, and inscribers will be able to create an item that summons one. A new "Gear Manager" will allow players to easily switch between sets of talent-matching items.

"We will be launching the feature with just two specs, but depending on how we feel it works out, we might consider additional specs in the future," added Warcraft senior designer Greg Street.

Blizzard's Jeff Kaplan has left his post as the director of the popular PC MMO World of Warcraft in order to help out with the company's unannounced "next-gen MMO."

"World of Warcraft has been such a central part of my life these past six and a half years, and it's success would not have been possible without the tremendous community around it, so I wanted to say thank you to all our players who've shared this amazing experience with us so far," he wrote in a forum post noticed by WoW Insider.

Kaplan noted that he still plans to be involved in World of Warcraft's future, adding that "partners in crime" Tom Chilton and J. Allen Brac will now handle day to day operations.

"When all is said and done, WoW is still my favorite game. I play it every day. None of that passion is gone," he concluded. "If anything, it fuels the challenge of making our next MMO even better. We know we have some big shoes to fill."

As of late December, World of Warcraft had 11.5 million active subscribers worldwide.

Now available on FileShack is the World of Warcraft 3.0.3 to 3.0.8 patch.

The latest update for Blizzard's increasingly popular MMO brings a number of tweaks and changes, including the ability for players to create a Death Knight on any realm after hitting level 55. The patch also removes racial restrictions on mounts--allowing Taurens to ride raptors--and adds support for Nvidia's GeForce 3D Vision glasses.

The ever-lengthy full patch notes follow below:

General
• Players may now create death knights on any realm once they reach level 55.
• Bonus Armor: The mechanics for items with bonus armor on them has changed (any cloth, leather, mail, or plate items... Read more

Along with its list of the most-played consoles in 2008, research group The Nielsen Company has provided its list of the past year's most popular PC games in the US.

Of the ten titles, none were released in 2008, and only 2 debuted in 2007. The list is based off data from January through October 2008, meaning that the impact of the second World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, was not taken into account.

Unsurprisingly, Blizzard's World of Warcraft topped the PC charts, with those surveyed playing the PC MMO an average of 671 minutes, just a bit over 11 hours, per week. Blizzard's Diablo II also appears on the list, as do three games from Valve.

Unfortunately, Nielsen did not specify the methodology behind this year's results. In 2007, the firm based its list off an extremely small pool of participants, a mere 1200 gamers, which could explain the unexpected results. It is not known if this was changed for 2008.

Top 10 PC Game Titles in the U.S.
1. World of Warcraft (2004) / Blizzard Entertainment
   671 Avg Minutes Played Per Week / 0.723% AU*
2. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007) / Infinity Ward
   403 Avg Minutes Played Per Week / 0.163% AU*
3. Halo: Combat Evolved (2003) / Gearbox, Bungie... Read more

Blizzard's World of Warcraft is now more popular than ever, as the developer announced today that the MMO, launched in 2004, now has over 11.5 million subscribers worldwide.

As of October 28, the popular fantasy game had 11 million subscribers worldwide. Blizzard cited the November 13th arrival of Wrath of the Lich King, the game's second expansion pack, as a factor in the recent growth--Lich King sold 2.8 million copies on its first day at stores, with Blizzard dubbing it "the fastest-selling PC game of all time."

Since its debut, Lich King has continued to top the PC sales charts, with Blizzard today noting that the expansion sold over 4 million copies during its first month at retailers.

"The base World of Warcraft game and the World of Warcraft Battle Chest are performing better than last year," noted GameStop VP Bob McKenzie. "That type of traction is very impressive for a game that is going into its fifth holiday season and speaks to the enthusiastic player base Blizzard Entertainment products have."

World of Warcraft's Subscriber Definition... Read more

While some studies have found that players of massively multiplayer games are instilled with business leadership skills, some job recruiters are allegedly being told to avoid recommending players of Blizzard's ultra-successful MMO World of Warcraft.

After meeting with one such recruiter, f13.net forumite Tale relayed his experience:

He replied that employers specifically instruct him not to send them World of Warcraft players. He said there is a belief that WoW players cannot give 100% because their focus is elsewhere, their sleeping patterns are often not great, etc. I mentioned that some people have written about MMOG leadership experience as a career positive or a way to learn project management skills, and he shook his head. He has been specifically asked to avoid WoW players.

The recruiter in question was apparently working within the "online media industry," though no details were mentioned as to which employers he works with.

In the past, some have felt so strongly about the benefits of MMO experience that they've suggested players list that experience on a resume for applicable companies.

Thanks to Boing Boing and Raph Koster for the heads up.

Months after Blizzard confirmed that it would offer some sort of "paid character customization" in World of Warcraft and explained the controversial process, the option to re-customize a character's appearance once over is now available for $15.

"Character Re-Customization covers all available cosmetic options for a single character and includes an optional name change to go with your new look," reads the Community Site. "You can now change a character's gender, face, skin color, and other cosmetic features (such as tauren horn styles or a night elf's facial markings)."

As the process is limited to purely cosmetic options, players of the popular PC MMO are not able to change their class or race. To start "reinventing the new you," World of Warcraft subscribers simply need login to their account page.