One of the "smaller" pieces of news that came out of BlizzCon this year was the announcement that Blizzard will be licensing out an official World of Warcraft magazine. The first issue, due out sometime within the next few months, will be a 148-page quarterly print publication, "packed with fascinating features, in-depth interviews, expert analysis and player points-of-view covering all aspects of World of Warcraft," according to the preview description on the magazine's official website, which just launched recently.

The website is already accepting one- and two-year subscriptions. A one-year subscription is $39.95 USD, and the two-year subscription is $69.95. It appears to be a joint venture between Blizzard and Future US, Inc., a San Francisco-based subsidiary of the international publisher, Future plc. According to its website, Future US, Inc. is the current publisher of Nintendo Power, PC Gamer and Official Xbox Magazine, among others.

One could predict that the quality of the upcoming World of Warcraft magazine will be higher than many other fly-by-night video game rags you've probably seen on supermarket shelves, if for no other reason than it's been licensed out to a more reputable publisher than most. But like any other magazine, it's going to depend on the editors and writing team more than any other factor.

With all the talk of Cataclysm during BlizzCon, everybody's wondering when the explansion will launch and forever change the old Azeroth. Well, WoW.com has confirmed that Blizzard president and co-founder Mike Morhaime said Cataclysm is targeted for a 2010 release date during a DirecTV interview.

While I doubt many players actually expected such a huge expansion to launch by December, it's nice to have some sort of confirmation, however tentative it may be. For the record, Gamestop is listing Cataclysm's release date as Nov. 1, 2010, but take that with the biggest grain of salt you can find.

So whether you're excited for the coming of the new Azeroth or not, rest assured you still have quite a bit of time to run around and re-explore your old stomping grounds before they're destroyed (or view them for the first time if you're new to the game).

So BlizzCon has come to a close, but it sure went out with a bang! The concert held during the closing ceremony kicked off with opener Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftain, who said they're changing their name to The Artist Formerly Known As Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftain (or TAFKAL80ETC if you prefer) to protest the level cap being raised to 85 in Cataclysm. For those who don't know, the band is made up of Blizzard employees, including art director Sam Didier on vocals and president and co-founder Mike Morhaime on bass.

Then came the headliner, the Prince of Darkness himself, Ozzy Osbourne. He started things off with "Bark at the Moon" and performed songs like "Suicide Solution," "War Pigs" and "I Don't Know." The encore consisted of "Crazy Train" and "Paranoid" to close the set. The best part was when Yuto Miyazawa, a 9-year-old guitar prodigy, got onstage and played guitar for "Crazy Train." He met Ozzy, his rock idol, on the Ellen Degeneres Show in May after playing the song on the episode, and you can view their meeting on YouTube.

BlizzCon may be over, but we have more coverage coming your way! Keeping checking our BlizzCon section for updates, scroll through our Twitter feed to review our thoughts from the floor, and discuss everything in our WoW forum.

The classes, items and professions panel that was held today was exactly the same as yesterday's panel, but there were a few interesting extra tidbits announced. Upcoming fishing changes couldn't be discussed yesterday, but today Jon LeCraft revealed during the professions section that they want fishing to be "more fun," and may look to Animal Crossing for inspiration.

LeCraft said the team has been looking at different games that have fishing for ideas, and they liked Animal Crossing's style. He said they're posssibly going with a system where you'll see fish in the water and have to toss the bobber out and line it up to catch them. You'll see different sizes of fish swimming in th water, so you can pick what you want to catch.

The only other noticeable change to the panel was a brief mention that you'll be able to find artifacts through the new Archaeology gathering profession to help you customize your path in the Path of the Titans system, which was outlined during the systems panel. They couldn't discuss this in detail during yesterday's class panel because the Path of the Titans system hadn't been announced yet.

Keep reading after the jump for answers from the Q&A session.

I had a chance to sit up close and follow the WoW Dungeons & Raids Panel. You can read my rundown of the entire panel after the jump.

The second day of BlizzCon 2009 kicked off with an open World of Warcraft Q&A panel, and Tom Chilton revealed in response to a question that "we will be doing race changes, they're just coming after faction changes."

Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street said during the second class panel later in the day that you'll have to pay for the race change, just like you'll have to pay to change your faction. Throw in a barber shop and the newly announced race/class combos and it looks like players will soon have almost free rein to completely change their character whenever they wish. The only question you'll truly have to consider at the character creation screen is what class you want to level.

You can read more answers from the open Q&A after the jump.

For those of you just waking up, getting off work or getting online for the first time since BlizzCon 2009 began on Friday afternoon; I promised you a quick-and-easy round-up of the most important news and announcements from "day one" of the convention. The biggest news of the day for most fans was the confirmation of the World of Warcraft's upcoming third expansion, Cataclysm. It turns out the rumors and "leaked" info we've been reading about was spot-on, for the most part. The Old World of Azeroth will indeed be permanently changed forever; the landscape of many low-level zones like the Barrens and Darkshore will be completely altered by the event, as will the rest of Azeroth's zones, to some extent.

Our next two playable races will be the Goblins and Worgen, aligned with the Horde and Alliance, respectively. The level cap will be raised to 85, and professions will increase by another 75 points. Archaeology will be a new secondary profession that everyone can use, and Azeroth will be retro-fitted to allow flying mounts the ability to traverse the skies. You can read about all this and more at Blizzard's newly-launched, official Cataclysm website.

Blizzard also announced Diablo III's next playable class, the Monk. Attendees saw a video of the Monk in action, and had the chance to play the game shortly after the announcement. The StarCraft, Warcraft III and WoW Arena tournaments raged on as the developer discussion panels began...the Class, Item and Profession panel proved extremely interesting; Zam's own Togikagi attended and reported a recap of the panel. Finally, returning MC Jay Mohr closed out the night and hosted the costume, dance, and sound-alike contests. Check out a few pics of the winners and other contestants at Blizzard's own TwitPic photo stream.

Check out the official recap of BlizzCon 2009 "Day One" after the jump, with all the links you need to find out more.

As the first day of BlizzCon 2009 comes to a close, the live news reporting and blogging slows to a temporary halt, until tomorrow. For those of you just waking up, getting off work, or getting online for the first time for whatever reason, we will be posting a recap of today's BlizzCon 2009 events shortly. In the mean time, you can always bookmark and visit our BlizzCon 2009 news tag, which allows you to see all the convention-related news and media we've posted so far. We have to give credit to our BlizzCon 2009 reporting team, which did an excellent job of covering today's announcements and events.

After the jump, you'll find a brief list of some of the more notable media that other fansites and journalists across the blogosphere were able to capture today. Whether it's a video clip taken from a hand-held camera during a discussion panel or a collection of interesting screenshots, you can rest assured there will be even more media out there by this time tomorrow...

Blizzard posted a link to its own photos from the BlizzCon Costume Contest, via its Twitter page. You can check out the photos here, at its TwitPic feed. The online photo stream includes photos of this year's grand prize winner, "Mistress of Pain." A pretty cool-looking Kel'Thuzad costume took second place. The album feed features a few other random participant costumes, including Mother Shahraz and Bloodsail Buccaneer. You can also check out pictures of the crowd and some other nice shots by scrolling down through the feed.

The World of Warcraft classes, items and professions panel just wrapped up, and we learned that Cataclysm is bringing a ton of changes: warlock soul shards will now be part of the UI instead of being in your inventory; hunters will use focus instead of mana and ammo will no longer be an item; stats like attack power, defense, spell power, block value, MP5, and armor penetration are gone; talents that improve buffs are gone; Shadowmourne is the new legendary two-handed axe; abilities will now scale with level instead of using ranks; and you will be able to track more than one gathering profession at the same time. And that's just the most noteworthy stuff!

Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street started things off by discussing the goblin and worgen racial abilities. As I mentioned in my look at the goblin starting area, goblins get a rocket jump, rocket barrage attack, +15 to Alchemy, 1% increase to attack and casting speed, access to your bank on a 30-minute cooldown, and the best gold discount on all items.

For racials, worgens get Darkflight, which lets them increase their movement speed by 70% for six seconds every 3 minutes. They also get +1% damage, reduced duration of curses and diseases, and +15 to skinning without the need to use a knife. Changing worgen form is strictly visual; you can be human or worgen out of combat, but you're going to automatically change to worgen in combat.