In case you're wondering how the upcoming paid race changes will affect Worgen and Goblins, Wryxian briefly addressed the issue on the official World of Warcraft European forums. A player assumed the changes "will be allowed eventually, though not immediately," and Wryxian responded by saying, "that's probably how it will be. However, stay tuned and we'll update you with specific details as and when they're fully decided on and ready to share."

This course of action obviously makes the most sense and shouldn't come as a surprise to players. After all, what's the point of making new races if a player could just pay to change their high-level character into a Goblin or Worgen? The real question is how long players will have to wait until they can use the race change option to switch over to the two new races. Any thoughts?

We've heard a lot of WoW vs. Aion talk throughout the past few months, but this takes the cake. MMOSite.com published a unique editorial recently, titled "Would WoW Clone be Replaced by Aion Clone in the Days to Come?" In a nutshell, the MMOSite team postulates a dramatic twist of fate in which someday down the road, we might begin seeing Aion clones instead of WoW clones. "Will players say xx is an AION clone instead of WOW clone in the future?" they ask.

Don't mistake the article for calling Aion a "WoW clone;" the real question is whether or not new MMOs like Aion will set a precedent like WoW did, all those years ago (and perhaps, like Everquest before it). It's written in MMOSite's usual media-rich format, which offers an interesting read and an eyeful of screenshots and videos to check out.

By now, almost every World of Warcraft fan has heard the news about Cataclysm, the upcoming expansion announced at BlizzCon. Due out sometime in 2010, WoW: Cataclysm promises to alter the game world of Azeroth on a massive scale, reshaping whole continents and changing even the most familiar of starting zones. In an effort to catalog the upcoming changes, our pals over at MMOSite.com put together a killer video and gallery series called WoW: Multiple Comparison of Azeroth's Change by Cataclysm. It's a seven-page series, featuring a video of the main Cataclysm panel from BlizzCon 2009, with commentary and screen caps from the website team. If you've been looking for more Cataclysm info, or just a great video copy of the Cataclysm preview panel, you'll want to check it out.

At BlizzCon 2009 members of the press were able to attend a private conference with World of Warcraft Production Director J. Allen Brack and Diablo 3 Game Director Jay Wilson, and the duo had interesting things to say about both games. For example, Brack emphasized there are absolutely no current plans to reach a final level cap in WoW, and the team doesn't look much past the next two expansions since they're constantly learning from their development experiences.

Also, there's been a lot of talk about updating the WoW character models, especially with the addition of new races. It may or may not happen for Cataclysm, but when it does, you might have the option to select the original or new models. Oh, and the WoW team was initially angry when the Cataclysm announcement was leaked, but was ultimately just happy that fans seem excited about the new expansion.

The full Q&A from the press conference can be found after the jump.

A couple weeks ago, Crygil posted an update on the instance creations issues in plaguing servers in World of Warcraft. In that post, Crygil said Blizzard was optimizing its infrastructure to help ease the problem, and more than 40 percent of of North American servers had been optimized at the time.

Well, Crygil just added more servers to the optimization list. You can view the updated list after the jump. Remember, as Crygil said in the thread, "If your realm is not listed there, then it has yet to be reconfigured and we are working toward getting there."

According to a blue post by Daelo, the lead encounter designer, two bug fixes to Val'kyr Twins were just deployed to increase the difficulty of the encounter. The first fix makes it so Surge of Light and Surge of Darkness are cast properly on normal difficulties, and the second addresses the fact that Light Vortex was doing less damage than Dark Vortex.

In addition, the rate at which Concentrated Light and Concentrated Darkness spawns has increased.

Members of the Diablo 3 team gathered on the main stage at BlizzCon for a Q&A session with fans who were eager to learn as much as possible about the upcoming game. The panel was held after the announcement that the monk is the fourth class and players got the chance to try out the demo on the floor.

The team members on the panel were Game Director Jay Wilson, Lead Programmer Jason Regier, Senior Game Producer Steve Parker, Art Director Christian Lichtner, Lead World Designer Leonard Boyarsky, Lead Level Designer Dave Adams, Game Designer Michael Chu and Lead Sound Designer Joseph Lawrence.

Keep reading after the jump for a point-by-point summary of the Q&A. One of the answers that received the most applause was a comment that all items in Diablo 3 will drop on a per-player basis. This means a boss will drop loot for every player in the game, but you can only pick up your own items. This will keep other players from stealing your loot.

It looks like patch 3.2.2 build 10357 is now live on the test realms, and you can find the full patch notes here or after the jump. Dresorull has started a a list of known issues with the build, and there are currently two that players may encounter: a button for changing your race will appear on the character select screen, and character models are enlarged when mounted on several drake style mounts. So just to be clear, you can't change your race yet, although that option will be coming after paid faction changes are implemented.

As we've reported, Onyxia will be revamped for level 80 in the patch to help celebrate the fifth anniversary of World of Warcraft. Well, MMO-Champion has posted a list of new achievements for the new raid, and they include one called More Dots! You have to defeat Onyxia in less than five minutes to earn this achievement, and there will be both 10-player and 25-player versions.

Also, it looks like the level 60 Onyxia achievement is becoming a Feat of Strength, so you may want to consider taking down the brood mother before she changes forever if you haven't yet.

An interesting little feature popped up on Kotaku.com earlier today; it's called "StarCraft: Ghost Lives On In StarCraft II," by Mike Fahey. The story features an interview with StarCraft II art director Sam Didier, in which Fahey sarcastically asks when StarCraft: Ghost is coming out. The reason I say "sarcastically" is because StarCraft: Ghost is widely-known throughout Blizzard's die-hard fans to be one of the biggest let-downs in the company's history. Originally announced back in 2002 as a spin-off of the original StarCraft, the game was meant to be a stealthy, third-person shooter released in a variety of console formats. But year after year, StarCraft: Ghost's development kept falling behind as console technology advanced; the game made Wired's annual Vaporware Awards in 2005. In 2006, Blizzard finally announced it was on "indefinite hold."

But in the recent Kotaku interview, Didier offered a little insight into the graphical design process that implies we might be seeing elements of StarCraft: Ghost in the upcoming StarCraft II:

"We actually looked at a lot of the art assets so we could include them in specific missions in the game, or if there was a specific installation in Ghost that we wanted to include in StarCraft II. We look at all our assets."

Didier also alludes that influences from the StarCraft: Ghosts novel that was published back in 2006 might appear in StarCraft II. "[...] we're definitely not throwing away the lore," he told Kotaku. If you thought you'd never even see a trace of StarCraft: Ghosts, you might be wrong. At the very least, we might see a little of the blood, sweat and tears that went into the game's development at some point in the upcoming StarCraft II trilogy.

As covered live by the ZAM.com reporting team, BlizzCon 2009 ended with a roaring thunder of a performance by Ozzy Osbourne and BlizzCon-regulars Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftain. After two days of new and exciting announcements, fun contests and fan-driven celebrations, around 25,000 people left Anaheim, California as the convention came to a close.

The news and announcements that came out of BlizzCon 2009 will be dissected, analyzed and refined by the media and fan community for months to come. Even though BlizzCon 2009 provided a finite amount of information, nearly every piece of it will be examined with a fine-tooth comb, leading to almost infinite speculation and pondering. New questions spawn from the answers we received, and this is just the beginning.

World of Warcraft is headed to a new era; the upcoming expansion, Cataclysm, will forever change the world’s most popular MMO. Blizzard’s new-and-improved Battle.net system is poised to change the way we play upcoming games like StarCraft II and Diablo III; possibly impacting the market as substantially as services like XBox Live. If you weren't able to find out what happened at BlizzCon until now, don’t worry; you'll be reading about it for months to come. In the meantime, here’s a succinct recap of the most important news and announcements that came out of BlizzCon 2009.