Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has stated on the official World of Warcraft forum the dev team is concerned elemental shaman DPS is "a little low," so an upcoming hotfix will improve the chance for the Lightning Overload talent to cast the half-damage Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning.

"We think this will provide a roughly 5% dps increase for say the raid-buffed level 80 Elemental shaman, but we will closely monitor the damage being done after this change. Note that the tooltip of the talent will not change from this hotfix – the talent will proc 33% of the time with 3 ranks, even though the tooltip says 20%. We will get the tooltip updated in a future client patch."

So what do you think, ZAM shamans?

Activision Blizzard has announced that anyone attending BlizzCon 2009 - or purchasing the pay-per-view event - will receive the exclusive in-game pet Grunty, the murloc marine. According to WoW's official website, Grunty "is fully armored and comes equipped with a gauss rifle, which he’ll occasionally fire into the air to make sure no invisible spacecraft are swooping in to attack".

I dare you to take a look at the image and tell me that Grunty's not made of pure Awesome.

Blizzard is making a change to how dailies work in Wintergrasp, they no longer will be "daily" but available once a week starting Tuesday at 3:00AM server time. This should help alleviate some stress issues in Wintergrasp. Also rewards will be increased to compensate to only being able to do them once a week.

More info after the jump.

Develop 100, a respected annual list of the world's 100 most successful game developers published by the editorial team behind Develop magazine, was released today, and Blizzard Entertainment has taken the top spot. The company behind World of Warcraft was able to knock Nintendo, which earned the top spot last year, down to number two.

The full list of developers is available here, and you can read exactly what it is about Blizzard that impressed the Develop staff members in their analysis of the top 10 companies. While the monthly revenues topping $100 million a month from subscriptions alone helped Blizzard claim the crown, the editorial team also commented on Wrath of the Lich King's major success as a big draw for the company.

If you missed the announcement, tickets for BlizzCon go on sale this Saturday, May 16, and another batch will be released on May 30. The convention will be held Aug. 21-22 in Anaheim, Calif., and Blizzard poster Zarhym has provided links to all sorts of BlizzCon information in case you're still deciding on whether you'd like to attend.

First off, tickets will be purchased this year using a new automated queue system to avoid past problems of the site being overwhelemed with high traffic. As for actual events at the convention, there will be contests ranging from costumes to movies; developer panels for World of Warcraft, Diablo III and StarCraft II; and Warcraft III and WoW Arena tournaments where gamers will compete for the top prize of $25,000 per player.

And if you can't attend, you can still watch more than 16 hours of coverage on DirecTV for $39.95. Or you'll be able to keep track of BlizzCon coverage right here on ZAM since members of our staff will be at the convention!

Here's our regular recap of the past week's ZAM features and noteworthy news stories. You can find more links after the jump. There's even more news where this came from, so head over to our news archive where you can search by tag if you'd like to see everything that happened this week on ZAM.

ZAM Features

SWG: Being a Jedi has Never Been Easier: Christopher "Pwyff" Tom takes a look at the current state of Star Wars Galaxies following its turbulent history of massive changes.

Chinese MMOs: Ripping off WoW?: With the newly announced World of Fight looking like a copy of World of Warcraft, Sam "azerian" Maxted asks if Chinese MMO developers are just copying the West.

The Birth of Millennium City: Jack Emmert, chief creative officer at Cryptic, gives us an exclusive look at the story behind Champion Online's Millennium City.

Exclusive Champions Online Media: In addition to Emmert's story, Cryptic also sent us some exclusive screenshots of Millennium City.

Talking with Terry 'Ming' White of WorldOfMing.com: Pwyff speaks with one of the biggest names in competitive World of Warcraft.

Spoils of War, the first expansion for the World of Warcraft Miniatures Game, is now in stores. Upper Deck has added 51 new prepainted miniatures to the lineup, including such characters as Lady Vashj, Lady Jaina Proudmoore and Prince Kael’thas Sunstrider.

In addition to the new characters, Spoils of War adds new Action Bar cards to the mix. For example, Shamans can now use Chain Heal or a Wrath of Air totem, while Druids can buff their allies with Mark of the Wild. Custom equipment will also help your characters prepare for battle.

Booster packs containing three random figures are now available for a suggested retail price of $14.99. Each minis booster pack also comes with a free pack of cards from the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game. More information on the expansion can be found after the jump.

For those who missed it earlier this week, Chinese company "The9 Ltd" announced a new MMO called World of Fight. Some of you may be thinking "so what?", but if you look deeper into things, the whole situation starts looking dodgy. You see, The9's contract to run World of Warcraft in China expires next month, with rival company NetEase set to replace them. It was only after this was revealed that The9 announced World of Fight, which has an almost identical URL to WoW's Chinese website. Only one letter separates the two URLs, which it might have been possible to say was coincidence if it wasn't for the other available evidence.

If you take a look at World of Fight's website, one of the first things you'll notice is the font it uses. It looks a lot like the title font for World of Warcraft, doesn't it? Also, as reported by WoWInsider, The9 won't be transferring its WoW servers over to the new operator. This makes me wonder what else they have planned for them. Rather than take over the existing servers, NetEase will need to set up its own, making what would be an already-difficult transition even trickier.

Crygil has added four in-game fixes to the running list that's being maintained over on the official forums. The fixes include a change to the sell value of Nerubian Legguards. According to the post, "the material costs used to create this item were unintentionally low, and we were prompted to make changes to minimize the impact on the game's economy."

Other fixes include a change so only the tank will be hit by the Impale ability used by the Iron Ring Guards in the Thorim encounter; the damage done by Swamplord Musel’ek’s Aimed Shot ability has been reduced; and Holy Mending no longer costs additional mana in the two-piece set bonus for the Paladin set, Conqueror’s Aegis.

Activision Blizzard has released its earnings for the first quarter of 2009, and according to an article on Kotaku, the company "pulled in $981 million in revenue in the first quarter of this year ending March 31. That's up from the company's projected $860 million."

CEO Bobby Kotick contributed the results to the sales of World of Warcraft and the Guitar Hero and Call of Duty franchises. With Wrath of the Lich King topping the PC sales charts and Guitar Hero gaining popularity in Europe, it's not surprising the company earned more than expected, even during these tough economic times.