Crygil has announced some Arena rating system and requirement changes on the official forums. An in-game update will be improving 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 will increase from 2200 to 2350. Here's Blizzard's reasoning behind the change:

"As a result of the above improvements, this change will prevent an excessive number of players from reaching much higher ratings and acquiring the highest grade of weapons in-game. The increase in rating requirements is designed to keep the number of players able to obtain these arena weapons on par with the number of players who are able to obtain the same grade of weapons from Heroic Ulduar."

Once season 7 begins, Blizzard intends to bring the highest rated season 7 weapons back to 2200 and keep the difficulty of the brackets on par with each other.

If you read any sort of blog concerning World of Warcraft, and you're fairly enthusiastic about the arena e-Sport it's becoming, then it's extremely likely that you've heard of World of Ming. Founded by Terry 'Ming' White, World of Ming was a self-funded blog that saw Ming posting one article, every day, on something related to World of Warcraft PVP. In an era before anybody had even heard of 'arena,' Ming chatted endlessly about duelling, world PVP, battlegrounds, PVP videos and anything that related to his beloved 'Rogue' class. Today, World of Ming is the flagship blog, in partnership with Gameriot.com, and WoM is considered to be the PVP blog for competitive World of Warcraft.

These days, while Ming no longer has to post an article every day (he alternates with another blogger he hired), World of Ming continues to operate as part tabloid and part news source for players who want to stay 'in the know' about anything related to WoW arena. It's only in a blog like World of Ming where you'll find Naruto and NBA analogies used to describe World of Warcraft players, with Japanese titles affixed to the end of their names (Hafu-chan, Neilyo-kun and Serennia-sama for a small sample size). As well, it's only in World of Ming that you'll find the fairly innocuous title "3.1 Macros, PVE/PVP Gear Balancing a Big Step in the Right Direction" on one day, and the next article can just as easily be "Hafu-Chan finally Legal?"

WoW Insider recently had the opportunity to interview Lead Developer Tom Chilton, and in addition to confirming that animators are working on the new dances and druid forms that were promised in the past, he gives fans some insight into the next major content patch. Here's what Chilton had to say about 3.2 and beyond:

Well, I guess I can tell you there's a battleground and some more stuff in the Argent Crusade! I would say the biggest thing would actually be the [additional content coming to the] Argent Tournament itself so that would be one of those things to look towards. Also, inevitably, there's going to be Icecrown Citadel and the confrontation with Arthas further down the line.

Chilton also said "it's definitely very possible" they'll introduce more hero classes, but said they'd pace themselves so as not to go too far too quickly.

The folks over at WoWInterface are proud to announce their new AddON Updater MMOUI Minion, it is about to hit the beta phase in the near future. We hope you are as excited about it as we are!

More info on it after the jump.

Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has commented in the official forums that he doesn't expect the next several patches to contain nearly as many class changes to talents and mechanics as were implemented in patch 3.1. He then followed that statement up with this quote from the same thread:

There are a few classes or specs that will probably continue to see more changes than others. DKs as a new class have 5 years of player history to catch up to. The Ret rotation is something we already said we'd like to evolve further.

TLDR: don't expect 3.2 to have a list of class changes as epic as 3.1.

Then today in another thread, Ghostcrawler said changes will be made when needed. His reiterated his prediction that there won't be as many class changes needed, "but let’s see where things stand in a few more weeks."

The Wall Street Journal has posted a blog entry discussing World of Fight, a new game coming to China by The9 Ltd. The company is currently hosting World of Warcraft in China, but that contract officially ends in June. Activision Blizzard has awarded Netease the license for the next three years.

The layout and fonts used on the recently launched World of Fight Web site look similar to the Chinese WoW page. Also, the URL for World of Fight, www.wofchina.com, is only one letter off the Chinese WoW address, www.wowchina.com. According to the blog, "industry observers wonder whether The9 is launching a 'shanzhai,' or knockoff, World of Warcraft in hopes of keeping WoW players."

Can the "soon to come" World of Fight complete with World of Warcraft? Analyst Zhao Xufeng from Shanghai-based research firm iResearch said The9 can attract attention with this manuever, but ultimately doesn't have "the technical ability to copy WoW."

Today on the official forums Bornakk clarified the proc on the legendary hammer Val’anyr. Basically when you heal someone you have a 10% chance to be given a blessing. This blessing is given to the caster and then any heal after that for the next 15 seconds will give a damage shield to the person you are healing. The shield will not proc on overhealing and the shield can grow to 20,000 damage absorption. Bornakk has also posted some examples.

More info after the jump.

As per usual, this post contains all of our exclusive features for the past week, as well as all of our noteworthy news stories. Perhaps the most exciting news for us here at ZAM is the launch of our new Free Realms site to coincide with the release of Sonly Online Entertainment's kid-friendly game. Keep reading below and after the jump for all of the links.

ZAM Features

ZAM Launches Free Realms Site: We are happy to announce that our newest game portal is dedicted to SOE's ground-breaking new MMORPG, which just launched on April 28.

Free Realms: A Fresh New Direction for MMORPGs: If you're on the fence about whether you'd like to try out Free Realms, check out Christopher "Pwyff" Tom's review.

Total Customization: Craig Zinkievich, executive producer of Star Trek Online, has written an exclusive letter to the ZAM community about how ship customization will function within the game.

Five Years of Heroes: We spoke with C.W. Bennett, a senior engineer at Paragon Studios, about how it feels to have City of Heroes reach the fifth-anniversary mark.

For those of you trying to complete all the achievements associated with Children's Week, the "Daily Chores" one has changed to make it a little easier. Here's the information from Bornakk's announcement on the official forums:

The Children's Week achievement "Daily Chores" has been slightly altered from the text you will see in the achievement window. It now requires simply that you complete 5 daily quests with your orphan out. There is no longer an extra step in doing things over consecutive days.

So how many of you are going for the meta?

Bornakk has once again added to the growing list of in-game fixes, and the newest batch includes fixes for Children's Week.

• If a player loses their Orphan Whistle at any time during the in-game Children's Week event they can speak to a Matron in cities to receive a replacement.
• Players can now obtain another orphan whistle from an orphan matron, even if they have completed all the associated orphan's quests.
• Fixed an issue with the achievement "Daily Chores," which prevented players from getting credit for daily quests if they had already completed dailies without their orphan present.

The rest of the fixes can be found after the jump.