Bornakk has announced on the official forums that an upcoming hotfix, which could go live as early as this afternoon, "will make the Paladin talent Vindication no longer reduce Intelligence or Stamina from the target it is applied to."

According to the post, this change is meant to balance out the ability without reducing PvE DPS for Retribution Paladins. The tooltip will not be corrected until the next major content patch. Bornakk's full post can be found after the jump.

SK Gaming has won the 3-on-3 WoW Arena tournament at the Major League Gaming event in Columbus, earning $9,000 for the victory using a rogue/mage/priest trio. eMazing Gaming came in second with $4,500, followed by Ensidia with $2,250.

Boubouille has posted the bracket results from the two-day event at MMO-Champion if you'd like to see how the teams fared against each other. GotFrag also has profiles on all eight of the teams.

As many of you experienced first-hand, a bunch of realms were down for an extended period of time on Tuesday for maintenance. Well, Blizzard has decided to compensate players on these servers for the mishap: "Given that these realms were not playable for a period of time that exceeded our expectations, we will be crediting all accounts with characters on these realms with 24 hours of game time within the next two weeks."

You can find a full list of the servers after the jump.

Are you the type of player who likes a quick and easy visual representation of the location of bosses in an instance? Well, you're probably going to enjoy the Bosstiary, the newest addition to the official World of Warcraft site.

The first entry is for Ulduar, and you can check out the map here. All you need to do is hover your mouse over a boss to get some background on the enemy. And no, the Bosstiary doesn't include loot tables or anything of that nature.

On the official forums, Bornakk said, "We do hope to expand on this in the future, past dungeons are a maybe but I definitely hope we can do this for future ones."

Zaryhm has provided more information on the new Druid textures that will become available in the next major content patch. You can find the full list of Tauren skin tones and Night Elf hair colors after the jump.

Zaryhm also made some interesting comments further down in the thread. When a player said the colors are hard to distinguish from the supplied screenshots, Zarhym replied, "It's hard to really get a feel for their exact appearance in a frozen shot with only one type of lighting. I think you'll see certain tones that may not be as apparent in the screen shots come out more in-game, especially with the night elf forms where there are very subtle variations in tone throughout each cat and bear model to give them that Darnassian look."

As for a suggestion made to preview the forms in the barber shop, Zaryhm said, "Allowing additional UI features in the barber shop so druids can preview forms is a great idea. It has been brought up, but that doesn't mean it's something that's going to happen in the next patch. The current implementation is made as such that it can be expanded upon in the future. As of right now, it's the most streamlined and sensible way of allowing druids a chance to strut their new styles as soon as possible."

Within the first three months of this year, Activision Blizzard raked in nearly a billion dollars. The company's first-quarter revenues in 2009 netted $981 million, more than it expected. Retailers sold 2.8 million copies of Wrath of the Lich King within 24 hours, making it the fastest-selling PC game in history. While the U.S. economy is frantically trying to claw its way out of a recession, consumers keep shelling out hard-earned cash on video games. Almost paradoxically, they continue fueling one of the most cunningly-crafted business machines the gaming industry has ever known; the MMOG market. Perhaps it's just a creature comfort that consumers aren't willing to part with. Or maybe $15 per month is a pittance in exchange for the ability to escape the real-life, econo-political "monsters" stalking us at every turn, if only for a couple hours. Whatever the case, the numbers don't lie…it's a good time to be Blizzard.

And just beyond the horizon, the highly-anticipated Starcraft II and Diablo III are nearing the final and post-production phases, respectively. Fans obediently surrender to the rabid, mouth-foaming frenzy of the hype machine, hunting rumors down like prey and eagerly devouring even the smallest scrap of news tossed from the table. So today, during the final hours of the 2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo, as publishers tear down their elaborate displays and send their scantily-clad "gamer-girls" back to their modeling agencies, the question of both journalists and fans alike still hangs in the air: "Where the hell was Blizzard?"

On the World of Warcraft Under Devlopment page the Night Elf cat models have been previewed. You can view the new model below and check the other models out here.

Ensidia has defeated the 25-man version of Algalon, giving the high-profile guild the world first for the accomplishment. According to Ensidia's Web site, "It is not an easy fight, it's highly gear dependent and is a significant difficulty increase over the 10 man version." Information on the loot is available on MMO-Champion.

Zaryhm has also been quite active in this thread on the kill, discussing how Blizzard reacts to these noteworthy fights. After congratulating Ensidia, Zarhym said, "It's quite high profile if a guild is about to be the first in the world to kill a boss, and we occasionally might check it out to see how they're doing and what in the encounter, if anything, might need additional review."

The blue poster said that if a bug was ever noticed during a world-first fight, the goal is to fix the bug, not to intervene and change the outcome of the attempt. "And for those wondering, none of the raid groups ever know we're watching. It was a situation where someone was keeping tabs and called a few others into the office to check it out," Zarhym said. 

Last week, Blizzard revealed the new textures for the Tauren and Night Elf bear forms that are coming in the next major content patch. Yesterday, the team showed off the upcoming Tauren cat textures. But what about the Night Elf cats?

Well, according to Zarhym, we'll see the new NE cat forms "tomorrow later in the day." So keep checking ZAM on Thursday and we'll be sure to post an update with the art. While you wait, feel free to head over to our Druid forum to discuss the new textures.

If you're in Europe and looking to make your Battle.net account a little more secure, you can now download the Battle.net Mobile Authenticator for free for your iPhone or iPod Touch. According to a post by Ancilorn, versions for other mobile phones are also in the works for the future.

If you've never seen or used an authenticator, it generates a one-time password you use in addition to your regular username and password to log in to your Battle.net account and WoW. With the mobile authenticator, you create the password on your phone. If you have any questions, you can read the FAQ here, and Ancilorn's full post can be found after the jump.

If the physical authenticator for your keychain is more to your liking, that's available in Europe, too. You can discuss all of this in this thread on our general forum.