BlizzCon is less than a month away, and that means the global finals for the Warcraft III and World of Warcraft Arena tournaments are right around the corner. Nethaera announced in a post on the official forums that the first-round brackets for both tournaments have been released. Competitors are fighting for the top prize of $25,000 per player, so these should be some interesting matches.

For the WoW tourney, x6tence will be taking on the Button Bashers, while DKP faces TSG. SK Gaming is against Woah, and Shipit will fight All Pass. You can view the full Arena bracker and team profiles here. You can also check out the Warcraft III bracket on this page of the BlizzCon site.

Also, members of the ZAM team will be at BlizzCon, so keep an eye on ZAM.com during the event for news and photos from the floor.

Hunters, it's your turn to be featured in the ongoing class Q&A series. Eyonix posted the interview with Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street and the World of Warcraft Community Team on the official forums today, and it kicks off with a list of objectives they want to accomplish. They want PvP hunters to be as good in Arenas as they are in battlegrounds; they want to focus on survival and crowd control since they feel damage is sufficient; they want to increase PvE utlity, such as making traps a more viable crowd control method; they want to figure out exactly what a hunter could do in melee; and they want to clean up both the pet control UI and what pets do in battle.

Whew. And that's all in the first question. Ghostcrawler goes on to say the devs aren't sure when they'll get non-consumable ammo right, but it definitely won't be in patch 3.2. They really want feedback on possible melee changes, such as a model where hunters don't run away most of the time, but instead switch to melee attacks. He also said the team is working on a system where certain PvE attacks won't hurt pets so players aren't punished for pet AI.

Ghostcrawler hints that Hunter cooldowns and other long-term plans could be discussed at BlizzCon. You can read the full Q&A below and discuss it in this thread on our Hunter forum.

Our sister site, Wowhead.com introduced Premium Features today.  If you have ever used Wowhead, like me, you know how awesome the site is. Well now, boys and girls, Wowhead has goodies! These goodies are not a mandatory purchase, nor is premium required for your Wowhead browsing enjoyment. You will still be able to search and use Wowhead just as you have done all along. Some of the new features include removal of ads and the captcha and the use of custom forum avatars. You can read the entire list of additions after the break!

And for those of you who are already ZAM premium subscribers, Wowhead is now in your arsenal for top notch information about World of Warcraft.

One more great addition, with the roll-out of the premium features at Wowhead, is the "Refer-a-friend." This is not just at Wowhead; you can use this feature, right here, on ZAM.com. That's right folks, refer a friend, a guildmate, or your mom to purchase a premium subscription and you will receive ONE month FREE premium. Not only can you enjoy your two favorite sites ad free, but earn a FREE month as well for telling your friends!

Per Malgayne on Wowhead's newest addition:

You all may remember just how many problems WoW China has gone through over these past few months, most notably being the recent suspicions of illegal joint ventures and indefinite delays on WoW's second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. Well, according to MMOsite.com, it appears as though, almost a year after its release, China will finally be seeing WotLK under Blizzard's new China publishers, NetEase. In an interesting turn of events, however, it seems that NetEase will be releasing World of Warcraft in closed beta on July 30th, with free access granted to anyone who was already a registered member of WoW China. While Chinese WoW players may be heaving a sigh of relief at seeing any kind of progression towards an updated World of Warcraft, other sources indicate that a China WotLK expansion may not be everything they've hoped for, as we all know just how censure heavy the Chinese government can get.

Can you say WotLK without... Death Knights?

Yes we had even more stuff in store for you than just adding achievements!

n00bCraft is a web comic written and put together by Fewyn. It is all done in good humor about some of the noobiest things that may or may not happen to you along the way or just down right funny stuff. Feel free to check out our first strip ever after the jump!

According to a post made today by Eyonix, the rusted and ironbound proto-drake rewards for the normal and heroic Glory of the Ulduar Raider meta achievements will remain in place when patch 3.2. goes live, and there are currently no plans to remove them in the forseeable future. Bornakk had announced last month the drakes would be removed, but it the team changed its mind "after further discussion."

If the team ever decides to remove the rewards, Eyonix said players will get a one-month warning so you can make a final attempt at earning the drakes.

The Warrior and Druid Q&As were released last week, but members of the World of Warcraft community team have posted some answers to follow-up questions for both classes due to player feedback.

Warriors now have answers to two more questions that focus on Heroic Strike and the gear dependency. The team doesn't like the way Heroic Strike works or they way rage generation works, but hasn't changed either yet.

Druids get answers to six more questions about topics such as shred, bear and cat charge, Warstomp, interrupts and stuns. As far as Balance and Feral is concerned in PvP, the team feels they're underperforming but hasn't buffed them because Druids have a great PvP spec and they don't want to give everyone the ability to chain CC or escape mechanisms.

You can read both the Warrior and Druid Q&A additions below.

Sam Raimi, the director of the Spider-Man films and the Evil Dead series, is directing the World of Warcraft movie! Blizzard and Legendary Pictures made the announcement today. "The Dark Knight" producer Charles Roven is also on board, and Chris Metzen, Blizzard's senior vice president of creative development, is a co-producer.

Paul Sams, the chief operating officer at Blizzard, seems excited Raimi's taking the helm of the movie. "From our first conversation with Sam, we could tell he was the perfect choice," he said. "Sam knows how to simultaneously satisfy the enthusiasts and the mainstream audience that might be experiencing that content for the first time. We're looking forward to working with him to achieve that here."

There's no information on casting or a release date yet, but you can read the full announcement below. So what do you think about Raimi being selected as director? He most recently wrote and directed "Drag Me to Hell," which I haven't seen yet. Do you think he has what it takes to bring WoW to life? You can discuss the movie in this thread in our general forum.

You asked for it, we delivered! The WoW Content team has been hard at work adding in those wonderful things we all go crazy for in game. I refer, of course, to Achievements. We have taken the time to go in and add every category and subcategory currently in game for you to peruse via our wiki. In fact, we have gone so far as to include sections in each of them in case our community wants to pop in and add anything.

Just yesterday, Ghostcrawler answered a few questions on the forum concerning key aspects of the game. In particular, the poster grilled GC on things like 'Pure' versus 'Hybrid' DPS, Caster versus Melee classes in PvP, Spellpower on Plate drops, Tri Specs and a 'use' for Achievement Points. While Ghostcrawler's first two answers were fairly vague and uninformative, it's still good to know Blizzard's stance on Spellpower Plate, Tri Speccing and Achievement Points. You can check out all of the questions and answers after the jump, but if you're looking for 'real' answers to the first two questions, you may be sad to see that there isn't much.