The official European World of Warcraft Web site has been updated with a new under development page for the Crusaders' Coliseum. While information on this upcoming raid was released on the official U.S. forums last week, the European page does includes some new details, including confirmation its setup is similar to the Ring of Blood quest line. You'll have to keep defeating bosses to move onto the next one.

To try out the Heroic mode, you're going to need to beat either the 10-man or 25-man normal modes first. You'll only have a limited number of attempts in hard mode for each raid lockout period, so wipes will be more costly. "After you have dealt the killing blow to the coliseum's final heroic mode boss will you be able to collect the Crusaders' Tribute, and the fewer attempts you needed to complete the Trial of the Grand Crusader, the better your reward will be."

According to the under development page, you'll face a magnataur and two jormungar wyrms for your first challenge. You'll also have to fight members of the Scourge.

There have been some reports of bugs and various other issues with the new Midsummer Festival in World of Warcraft. A recent post by Syndri over at the O-boards confirms that they are aware of the problems and are working on a fix for players.

If you're an anxious fan waiting for the release of Diablo III, you might be interested to know that "Overthrown," the first premium statue in the game's collectible series, is now available for pre-order from Sideshow Collectibles. The polystone diorama depicts a barbarian wielding dual axes as he stands atop the defeated Diablo.

The prototype of the statue was unveiled at San Diego Comic-Con 2008, so the fact that's it's now available for pre-order after a year and a half in development is big news for collectible fans. Each piece stands 18 inches tall, weighs 15 pounds and is individually painted and numbered. The statue will be available in the fall and costs $299.

While you wait for the release of the diorama, you can download a wallpaper of the barbarian in action. So are you the type of collector who drops $300 on this unique type or memorabilia, or does it cost too much?

Every year the Midsummer Fire Festival arrives in the summer. With it comes a lot of fun events and enjoyment for everyone. Bonfires will be lit across Azeroth and Outland that players will be able to visit and honor or desecrate the flames. You will also be able to venture into Slave Pens in Zangarmash's Coilfang Reservoir and try your hand at defeating Ahune, the Frost Lord, who has some interesting items that he drops including a pet! This year the holiday begins on Sunday, June 21st and continuing until July 5th.

You can find out more about the Midsummer Fire Festival on Blizzard's official page here.

The World of Warcraft Community Team has released the next installment of its class Q&A series, and this one focuses on the Mage. The questions are answered by Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street and the development team.

The questions cover numerous topics, many of which focus on the role of the class in general. As far as mana efficiency is concerned, the team generally feels that damage-dealing classes should have enough mana to do their jobs. Instead of updating mana recovery capabilities, they are more likely to lower the mana costs of the main nukes.

As for Spell Steal, they may change it so it only steals spells that benefit the mage, or may create a glyph that lets the spell take two buffs at a time. They do have plans to improve Fire in PvP, and mentioned Dragon's Breath as a candidate for improvement. They'd also like to buff Frost in PvE through Ice Lance. Threat reduction for Fire Mages is a concern, and Ghostcrawler said "one way we’d like to fix this is through Invisibility."

You can read the full Q&A below and discuss it in this thread in our Mage forum.

Blizzard recently announced two major, related changes to the pre-80 game. The first is that players will receive experience for battlegrounds, which should put an end to twinks ruining games for characters that are actually leveling. However, to still allow for the possibility of twinks, they will get siphoned off into their own category of battlegrounds if they enable a special "No experience" mode.

That "no experience" mode (NXP) is going to also add a new wrinkle to how players view PvE, I think. In the past, people have asked about servers where they could play just to level 60 and stop...while those people wouldn't be accommodated by the rest of the server population, at least they *CAN* legitimately stop at level 60 and run Molten Core and Zul'Gurub to their hearts' content.

We just received a report from Bashiok that there is a new contest in the works at Blizzard. Three contests are being introduced and we have a direct link to the post for you. Read on...

The World of Warcraft community team has posted an interview with Lead Content Designer Cory Stockton on the official WoW site that focuses on the future of battlegrounds. In contains a ton of information, but perhaps the most notable is that you'll be able to gain experience in BGs in patch 3.2 by obtaining honor through actions, such as capturing a flag in Warsong Gulch, but not through kills. Gaining experience in BGs will be a bit slower than questing at the same level.

So what about twinks or players who don't want to level in BGs? You'll have the option to turn of experience gains in both PvE and PvP by speaking to an NPC in Orgrimmar or Stormwind and paying 10 gold to turn it on or off. If you turn experience off, you'll only compete against other players in BGs who have done the same thing. Nethaera also suggests using this feature so "Old World" guilds can cap their levels for classic raiding.

Stockton also gives more details on the Isle of Conquest, the upcoming epic siege-style battleground. More information on the isle, as well as new screenshots, can be found on the preview page. He finished the interview by saying, "We are planning to implement rated Battlegrounds in a future patch." More details on that will be released at BlizzCon.

Keep reading below for the full interview. Ryneguy has started a thread in our general forum on this topic saying twinks will be heavily nerfed by this change. What do you think?

Zarhym on the offical Blizzard forums just posted an update saying the current PTR patch notes are out for 3.2. You can find the post here or you can read the notes after the jump.

UPDATE: Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has made a post explaining the differences between the old and new Seal of Command and Seal of Vengeance/Corruption in the Retribution tree.

Eyonix has posted a bunch of big changes coming in patch 3.2 for Paladins. As always, these updates are subject to change as they are tested on the PTR. Also, "don’t expect that every class will see this many changes." It looks like Blizzard felt Paladins had a lot of issues that needed to be addressed in all three trees.

For Protection pallies, Ardent Defender has received two buffs to help tanks. "The first is that the damage can no longer 'skip over' the 35% health level – it will always be reduced. Secondly, it has a new effect that if a blow would kill you, it instead sets you to 30% health." Blessing of Sanctuary will likely boost Stamina, and the effect of bonus block value on items will be doubled.

For Holy, Flash of Light will place an HoT effect on any target with Sacred Shield on them. Also, Beacon of Light is getting buffed to allow for more total healing. "To adjust for this, we are going to reduce the amount of mana returned by Illumination," Eyonix said.

For Retribution, Exorcism can be used on players again; Art of War will make not only Flash of Light instant, but also Exorcism; the cooldown and damage of Crusader Strike has been lowered to four seconds from six seconds; Seal of Blood and Seal of the Martyr will be removed; and "we are replacing the current effect of Vindication with an attack power debuff that works like Demoralizing Shout."

Eyonix's full post can be found below. You can discuss the changes in this thread in our Paladin forum.