It was announced earlier this month that The9 Ltd. was losing its license to host World of Warcraft in China, and in response the company started up a Web site for a game called World of Fight, which looked like a WoW/Warhammer clone from the teaser page. Sam "azerian" Maxted even wrote an editorial on companies taking "inspiration" from Western MMOs.

Well, as WoW.com has noticed, The9 has changed the game's name to World of Fighter and the site's teaser page shows characters from Capcom's Street Fighter series, as well as other Capcom and SNK characters. So it looks like World of Fighter won't have ties to WoW, after all.

Yesterday, we posted images of the new textures for the Tauren druid bear form that are in the works. Well, Bornakk just posted on the official forums that images of the new Night Elf bear textures have been released, as well. You can read all about the changes on the under development page. It looks like we can expect a preview of cat form art next week.

You can discuss the new art for druid forms on our general forum in this thread. What do you think? Are you excited to change up your forms or are you underwhelmed?

Wryxian has made two informative posts today on the official European forums that may be of interest to our European readers. The first is that the Battle.net account features are now completely live in Europe, which means players can merge their WoW accounts into their Battle.net account to log into the forums, the Armory, and the game using their Battle.net account.

Also, the first cross-language battlegroups have been created today, which combine battlegroups of different languages into one pool of players. So far, two cross-language battlegroups have been created: English and Spanish players will play together in Cruelty/Crueldad, and French and German players are united in Embuscade/Hinterhalt.

The patch notes for 3.1.3, the next minor content patch, have been posted on the official forums. This patch will not be made available on the PTR, but the notes are subject to revision until the update's official release.

You can read the full patch notes below. DarkHybridX has already started a thread on 3.1.3 in our general forum, so head on over and let us know what you think.

All you druids out there rejoice, Zarhym just posted information about new art work for druid forms that are in the works. It'll be a change of what the bear and cat forms look like where the colours will change depending on your hair colour. Which you can change at any time at the barber shops. So far they have only released pictures of the Tauren bear form.

More info after the jump.

Blizzard has given us a preview of what we can expect to see in Patch 3.2: Call of the Crusade on the Under Development page on the official Web site. In the next major content patch, you can expect to see the expansion of the Argent Dawn tournament with new dailies and rewards; the Crusaders' Coliseum, which will include challenges for 5, 10 and 25 players; the new Isle of Conquest battleground; and the start of Arena season 7.

According to Zarhym, the battleground will be like "Wintergrasp combined with Alterac Valley with a few more twists." Of course, no dates have been released for when the patch will make it to the PTR or go live.

GryphonStalker has already started a thread on Call of the Crusade in our WoW general forum, so feel free to add to the discussion. You can keep reading after the jump for the full text from the Under Development page.

Bornakk has announced an upcoming jewelcrafting change that will be implemented in the next major content patch. Blizzard will be removing the prismatic quality of the jewelcrafter-only Dragon’s Eye gems.

"Like other gems, they will have to match the socket color to receive a socket bonus. When this change occurs, players with qualifying jewelcrafting skill will be provided a yet to be determined amount of Dalaran Jewelecrafter Tokens as compensation."

RPZip has already started a thread in our WoW general forum regarding the incoming jewelcrafting nerf, so feel free to add to the discussion. You can also let us know what you think in the comments section below.

About two weeks ago, Crygil announced some Arena rating system and requirement changes on the official forums. Well, according to Bornakk, the update to the 3v3 and 5v5 brackets are now active.

You can read about the changes in our previous article, but basically Blizzard has changed the rating system of the 3v3 and 5v5 brackets to make it so a similar number of players will be able to have comparable ratings to those in the 2v2 bracket. Also, the personal and team rating requirements for the item level 239 weapons have increased from 2200 to 2350.

Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has posed a question on the official healing forum regarding the Druid Tree of Life form. He said the dev team has been discussing lately whether the form is fun, and he wants the feedback of players. Ghostcrawler's comment explains why the team wants some input on the topic:

"We think cat and bear forms are fun. They have very clear roles and unique abilities. Tree of Life has no unique abilities. It essentially forces you to give up a portion of your class abilities in order to be as good a healer as other classes. In PvP it lets you tank a little, but again with the downside of giving away a good deal of your mobility, damage and crowd control."

While Ghostcrawler emphasizes that no huge changes are coming to the form and there's a chance they never will, it certainly seems from his comment the team is questioning the form's design. So, fellow druids, what do you think?

If you've been hoping Blizzard would implement a more direct route to Thunder Bluff, you're getting your wish. According to a post by Kisirani in the official forums, "The Zephyr is getting set to transport players between Orgrimmar and Thunder Bluff in an upcoming patch."

The statement was made in a thread by a player saying that Thunder Bluff was too remote to visit on a regular basis. The player asked Blizzard to fix this by adding a zeppelin stop since it's an elevated city, to which Kisirani initially replied simply with "Okay." The Blizzard poster then popped back into the thread to explain that the Zephyr actually will be flying to Thunder Bluff in the future.