It's hard to believe January is over. As we begin the second month of 2009, let's take a look back at some of the most noteworthy news stories and Allakhazam features of the past week. There's more links after the jump.

Allakhazam Features

Wizard101: Our First Look : Allakhazam editor Christopher "Pwyff" Tom supplies a first-hand look at Wizard101, a children’s MMORPG with "collectible card magic, wizard duels, and far off worlds."

Champions Online Interview with Bill Roper : We sat down to talk to Roper about Champions Online, the vision that he brings to the team, and what he learned from Hellgate: London.

Talking Vanguard with Jason "Ikik" Weinmann : We talked with Weimann, a programmer on Vanguard, about some of the changes that he's made to the game's tools as well as some of his secret projects on the side.

Blizzard opened the Borean Tundra realm earlier this month for players who wanted a fresh start, and now they've done it again. Thundgot posted all the relevant information on the new PvE Saurfang server, which launched yesterday, over on the official European World of Warcraft boards:

We're opening a new English Normal/PvE realm, named Saurfang, in the Misery Battlegroup. This is a fresh realm, thus no migration will be allowed to the realms during the first 90 days. Also, the Ahn'Qiraj gates and Sunwell will be closed, and you can't create a Death Knight on the realm until you have another level 55 character there (or 90 days have passed).

Please note that the starting areas may be quite flooded in the beginning, and the population cap is intentionally set a bit lower than normal to not have them even more flooded. The cap will be raised over the coming days as the population spreads out more.

In addition to all of the blue Arena discussions that were recently posted on the official World of Warcraft front page, some changes to the rating system are now in effect. Below is the basic list, but Kalgan posted more details in the original thread.

1. Personal Ratings will now always trend toward Team Ratings (instead of the internal matchmaking rating).

2. You will now gain or lose around 12 points when winning or losing to teams of roughly equivalent matchmaking rating to your own team (previously this number was 8).

3. The rating scale has been extended to a range of 240 to about 2800 to more accurately reflect what was possible under the old system.

4. Players with less than 1500 rating will still get the same number of points as players at 1500.

Blue posts from Blizzard developers and community leaders never seem to make it to the official World of Warcraft front page very often, but there's actually a substantial collection of posts up on the site now regarding the recent Arena matchmaking changes introduced in Patch 3.0.8.

This post focuses mainly on an overview of the new system, including its purpose: "The primary goal of the new Arena matchmaking system is to match players against opponents of similar skill, regardless of your or your opponents’ team rating." This post then goes into more details about the team, personal and matchmaking ratings.

Lastly, this post discusses some of the design philosophy behind the change and offers some clarification, such as "The new system uses a bayesian prior distribution in order to prevent inflation, which in simpler terms means there's math that enforces that players won't have ratings outside of some range."

So what has your Arena experience been like since Patch 3.0.8 went live? What are your thoughts on the matchmaking system?

Those of you hoping to deck your character out in the latest and greatest gear in World of Warcraft only have a small amount of time to prepare: Blizzard has been teasing and tantalizing us about it and it is enough to drive a sane massively multiplayer gamer totally bonkers. Although they will not be available until 3.1 goes live on the servers, they are still something to look at and they are still nothing but impressive. Check out the YouTube video and prepare, young challengers, for soon, you will have them. Happy practice-raiding in the meantime!

Patch 3.0.8.9506, also known as Patch 3.0.8a, is now live with some minor bug fixes. Nethaera posted the patch notes on the official World of Warcraft forums, and they fix glitches related to a human female animation, Death Knights' Howling Blast, Hunter aspects and Warlocks' Ritual of Summoning.

But wait! Ghostcrawler has posted in a separate thread that Ritual of Summoning isn't actually fixed yet, but it will be done today.

We are still on target to get this fixed today (Tue, Jan 27). I did not mean to imply that it would be fixed when the servers came back up.

Regardless, you can read the brief patch notes after the jump.

Three nominations for World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, for Best Musical Score, Best Game of the Year and Best Massively Multiplayer game from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, a non-profit organization consisting of gaming industry professionals.

These peer-based awards recognize the outstanding products, talented individuals and development teams that have contributed to the advancement of the multi-billion dollar worldwide entertainment software industry.

In the massively multiplayer category, Warcraft is also up against EVE Online, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Warhammer and Passively Multiplayer Online Game, but it is the only massively multiplayer game to be in the “Game of the Year” category. The competition is fierce, and no matter what, the greatest game will always win.

The following editorial contains views that are the opinion of the author and not necessarily the views of Allakhazam.com

I have a hypothetical scenario for you. Let's say you just got off work and decide to meet up with your friends who are currently eating at a restaurant. Of course, everyone else seems to have the same idea as you weave through rush hour traffic worse than the “Office Space” opening scene. You finally get to the establishment and walk toward the entrance, noticing a line has formed. Actually, scratch that. It’s more of a mammoth throng of people vanishing into the distance, waiting to get inside. It’s a bloody queue.

You go up to the greeter and ask how long it'll be until it's your turn. “Five minutes,” she says. Then she pauses. “No, wait, make that two hours.” Another pause, “45 minutes maybe?”

You sigh. You probably should have expected this since it this is the most popular restaurant in town (hell, it's so good that most people try to copy it), but it’s ridiculous to think you should arrive early every time you want to eat. You've asked the management in the past if there’s anything that can be done about the wait time, and you keep getting the same response.

“We've been opening up new locations. There's no wait at most of them. In fact, they're pretty empty right now. Why don't you go try one of them out?”

The time of year has come again. No, not tax season: Chinese New Year. And while we go from the Year of the Rat to the Year of the Ox, it also marks the time when World of Warcraft players celebrate the Lunar Festival.

The Lunar Festival consists of festivities that are based off of the Burning Legion being defeated all those centuries ago. Omen, a demigod red-eyed wolf with two heads, spawns around this time of year in Moonglade. Along with the constant-partying comes questing, and there are quite a few of those. Regardless, it is now time to whip out the fireworks and enjoy the shows in Stormwind, Thunder Bluff and Booty Bay when Chinese New Year hits, as they Blizzard makes them correlate as much as possible.

For those of you in the questing sort of mood, check out the festival guide over at our sister site, Wowhead. It can be a difficult series for even the most seasoned of veterans, so the advice for them is welcome and necessary. This year is going to be quite the shindig, to say the least!

The following editorial contains views that are the opinion of the author and not necessarily the views of Allakhazam.com

Depending on where you live and where you come from, you’ve probably heard of the growing community of professional e-gamers; cyber athletes who rake in the cash by playing the games that they love (or end up hating because they play them so much). I say depending on where you live and where you come from in this case because if we imagine that you hail from, say, Korea, the country that invented the “I-can’t-see-your-fingers-they-are-moving-too-fast” syndrome and the ailment known as “I-can-micromanage-better-than-a-computer-itis”, then you’re probably more than well aware of what I’m talking about. If, on the other hand, you’ve just emerged from your rock, blinking and confused at this internet substance, then I’m willing to bet that video game athletes aren’t something that you saw coming.

Either way, this article is not aimed at discussing the growing market that comes from professional FPS or RTS gaming. Rather, it is aimed at the new, acronym-awkward professional MMO PVP athlete (I might as well just say World of Warcraft e-athlete). In particular, this article is aimed towards answering the real question: is MMO PVP a viable path in e-athleticism, or is it simply an awkward date-my-daughter scenario being forced on us by some very influential people? I say influential people in this case because it’s very difficult to ignore a path that is being padded and endorsed by guys like Intel, Blizzard, Dell and NVIDIA. The awkward daughter-date, of course, is our charmingly self-titled “30 second lifespan” World of Warcraft Arena PVP.