Earlier this week, the highly-anticipated Aion finally launched in North America and in Europe today. Developed by NCSoft, Aion's release was just as successful as many predicted; selling 450,000 pre-order copies, making it the best-selling MMO of 2009. Much of that success is probably because Aion isn't technically a brand-new MMO; it has a proven record of accomplishment in Asia, where it's had enough time to be polished and primed for its Western release. For more information, check out our Aion preview, which we published earlier this summer.

As a long-time World of Warcraft player, I was more interested in the new MMO's playability from that specific standpoint than anything else. For example, many players found a steep learning curve in the transition from WoW to an MMO like Champions Online. If WoW is your earliest or "primary" MMO, it's probably the benchmark you compare most new games to. As a hardcore WoW player, will Aion's gameplay come naturally to you? Regardless of its merit, what familiarities are you guaranteed to find in Aion, and to what extent?

ZAM Network is proud to announce that our second large scale League of Legends Beta Giveaway is now open to all our users. Click here to check out our beta giveaway page and get your key.

If you're unfamiliar with the game, League of Legends is a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) game similar to the popular Warcraft III mod, Defense of the Ancients (DotA). It's also a game that we've been watching closely because of its fun, session based, competitive gameplay that keeps players engaged via rich community features and persistent MMORPG elements.

According to Bornakk, the World of Warcraft team has released a minor bug fix patch to version 3.2.2a. The small patch is necessary because these problems can't be hot-fixed. Here's a list of the issues that were addressed:

• Fixed an issue players were having with ESC key causing the Battleground queue window to close.
• Fixed an issue players were having with entering Battlegrounds while dead or in combat, while already in a Battleground.
• Fixed the Wintergrasp zone map so it now shows the status of all walls correctly.
• Fixed a crash Mac clients were experiencing with ATI driver.
• Fixed the performance of certain spells that have transparent components.

UPDATE: ZAM user samperor has started a thread in our WoW general forum about Grunty. Feel free to add to the discussion about the gun-toting Murloc pet.

According to both a post on the official European World of Warcraft official forums and MMO-Champion, players who ordered the Pay Pay View Internet stream of BlizzCon are now receiving instructions on how to obtain their Grunty the Murloc Marine pet. So if you're still waiting to receive your Grunty, be sure to check your mail.

To get your pet, all you need to do is visit blizzcon.com/pet and enter your code. This step requires a Battle.net account, but it honestly only takes a few minutes to create one and merge it with your World of Warcraft account. If you have any questions about the merger process, check out the FAQ.

Once you enter your code, all of your characters will receive a Grunty pet in their in-game mailbox. Any new characters you create after redeeming the code will also get the Murloc Marine, so there's no need to hold onto the code while you make new alts.

Bornakk has listed three new hotfixes that were recently applied to World of Warcraft, and here they are:

• The Val'kyr Twins will now heal for more in Heroic difficulties and ignore any heal dampening effects.
  
  
• Koralon now pauses after casting Blazing Embers before casting Burning Breath.
  
  
• Relcaimed Thunderstrike and Reinforced Thunderstrike will now properly grant attack power to druids in Cat Form, Bear Form, and Dire Bear Form as listed in the item tooltip.

Check out the full thread on the official forums to read all of the hotfixes that have been added this month.

UPDATE: Crygil has explained that the reduced experience in AV is because "characters level 70-79 are no longer getting experience based on level 80 characters." As a result, Blizzard is going to increase exp gains from all battlegrounds. Also, the exp bonus from heirloom items now works properly in BGs.

Bornakk has clarified why level 80s now have their own separate bracket in Alterac Valley in patch 3.2.2, and it looks like the change was made by accident. The World of Warcraft development team actually planned to switch around the brackets in 3.3, but the update was "accidently applied" to 3.2.2.

Since the developers eventually intended to make the switch, Bornakk said they've decided to keep the brackets set up like this "so that players who are leveling play together and players who are at the level cap play together." Bornakk also said the levels of the bosses in the brackets below level 80 will be reduced to compensate for the change.

As you may have already noticed, a race change button has been added to the World of Warcraft account page that states the paid service is "coming soon!" Well, Bornakk just made this comment on the official forums a few minutes ago: "More information will be provided on this upcoming service when we are closer to launching it. Hang tight, it's not far off."

Considering most blue posters simply say "soon" when they don't want to give away a release date, the "not far off" comment certainly suggests we'll be able to change our races in the near future. The paid faction service was implemented earlier this month.

So do you think you'll switch your race once the service goes live? ZAM user Goggy started a thread in our forums a couple days ago to point out the addition of the race change buton on the account page, so you can discuss the topic there.

Vaneras has confirmed on the official European forums that the Brewfest quests "Pink Elekks On Parade" and "Catch the Wild Wolpertinger!" have been removed from European servers "to ensure that World of Warcraft contains content that complies with regional game rating requirements."

Many European players are asking for more details on exactly why the quests were removed, but Vaneras said in another thread that, "I'm afraid, however, I have no more information to give other than what I already have. We want the quests to be available here, but this isn't possible unfortunately."

Since both quests require you to be drunk or wearing Synthebrew Goggles to see the elekks and wolpertingers, we can only assume that the quests were removed due to the alcohol requirement, which seems ridiculous since Brewfest is all about enjoying brew. European players have asked if they'll have access to those 40 tokens through other means, but Blizzard has yet to respond.

As you all know, patch 3.2.2 is live to help celebrate five years of World of Warcraft. As with any other patch, known issues can creep up that may affect your gameplay. Game Master Syndri has outlined two such known issues from patch 3.2.2 and has provided some workarounds that may help.

It looks like socketing an item with an active BoP trade timer is not possible at this time. While the team looks into the issue, you can either remove the timer by enchanting the item or simply waiting for the timer to run out.

There's also the common problem of UI files becoming corrupted or outdated after a patch, which can cause display issues. You can try disabling or updating your AddOns, or just move or delete your WTF, Cache, and Interface folders out of your World of Warcraft directory.

According to a post by Bornakk several hotfixes have been applied recently and they are listed below.

• The Faction Champions encounter in the normal 10-player and normal 25-player Trial of the Crusader instances have had a number of spells and abilities altered which should result in less overall damage.
• The Anub'arak encounter has been changed on all difficulties. Anub’arak now attacks faster, the Nerubian Burrowers should hit a little harder, and their Expose Weakness ability now caps at 9 stacks.
• Some season 7 arena weapons will now have a socket.
• Threat of Thassarian will now properly halve the damage of Rune Strike for the off-hand strike.
• Soulstone Resurrection now fades upon entering raid combat if the character who cast it is not present.
• The Idle/Inactive debuff is now cleared upon round switches in Strand of the Ancients.
• The Mistress of Pain will now target more accurately in the 25 man Heroic Jaraxxus encounter.
• The damage of Hunter’s Volley ability has been increased.

You can check out the original post on the forums here.