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

Playing an MMORPG is a lot like living in Canada or the USA. While you may vote, the fact remains that your government has probably done a lot of things that you’re not particularly fond of (I’m looking at you, University tuition). There also remains the fact that there is very little you can do, aside from joining those hilariously drunk student gatherings where everyone rents a bus and goes ‘somewhere’ in order to demonstrate that they have no money to pay for school. In reality, this is about the same when it comes to our own MMORPGs. While it is true that there are very hard working developers who are constantly trawling the communities for ideas to bring back to their caves, chances are, the most significant changes that are added into an MMO are implemented according to the will of the parent company. I really can’t recall a time when I was asked “Would you like us to raise the level cap to 80?” in World of Warcraft. On the other hand, while I would be fairly flattered if I was asked this question, basing key development ideas off of my coin-toss decision making abilities is a great way to anger your fan base.

Blizzard poster Eyonix stated today on the official World of Warcraft general discussion forum that there will be two bugs in the next minor content patch, which is more affectionately known as 3.0.8.

When the next minor content patch is released players may notice two separate issues. The warlock spell Ritual of Summoning can only be used once every two minutes. Additionally, there are some human female animation errors, specifically when using two-handed weapons or shooting with a ranged weapon. Both of these issues are actively being addressed and we hope to have a fix available shortly after the patch releases.

Does this mean Tuesday, Jan. 20 will be patch day? Only time will tell since there has been no official announcement made, but you can start placing your bets.

For those of you who manage a group of people and are trying to get your people to collaborate and work as a team, there's now ink on exactly how World of Warcraft can make you a better team.

"Few executives have heard of this game, much less participated in it, despite the fact that over 10 million players are active in it around the world. Upon hearing this, most executives are likely to respond that "That's an awful lot of pimply teenagers," falling back on a conventional stereotype about video game players. In fact, the majority of the players is in the 23-39-year-old bracket and deeply engaged. The average player invests about 23 hours per week playing the game."

Honestly, this is really true. Blizzard rewards us by giving us an awesome J-Curve to learn, and makes us feel as if we have accomplished something. Thank you for pointing out such positive attributes to our favorite game, BusinessWeek!

Additionally, one of our users, Horsemouth, has posted a thread regarding this topic here. Check it out and contribute your thoughts!

Source: BusinessWeek

Allakhazam poster GryphonStalker has pointed out in our Druid forum that Titanguard, the weapon enchant that originally added 75 stamina to a melee weapon and was then reduced to 50 on the PTR, has been scrapped altogether. Blizzard's Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street explained the dev team's reasoning :

Had this enchant gone live it would have become THE enchant for nearly all tanks. It would not have been an interesting choice. We would have had to keep introducing higher tiers of the same enchant, or else players would just keep using this version for perpetuity. We put Stamina already on many items. We don't think your weapon needs one as well. I received messages from several tanks for very prominent guilds asking us to please not go forward with this enchant. They understood why it was bad for the game.

Death knights have access to superior enchants in part because they do not have a shield or ranged weapon slot and the stats provided by those items.

Blizzard poster Vaneras recently started a poll on the official European World of Warcraft raid and dungeons forum asking players, "What's the most challenging Heroic dungeon in WotLK?"

Oculus is currently in the lead with a whopping 44.91%, followed closely by Ahn'kahet with 16.78% and Halls of Lightning with 16.2%. Azjol-Nerub is the only other dungeon to reach double digits with 10.19%.

The poll goes until Jan. 23 if you'd still like to vote. So which Heroic dungeon do you think is the hardest? Or do you side with many of the O-Boards posters in the thread who said none of them are challenging?

As we all know, MMOs can be highly addictive, with some players spending more time in a virtual world than the real one. In attempt to avoid addiction in its gamers, the Chinese government will soon require MMO players to register their real names when they create their online accounts so their play time can be monitored. Ars Technica has the full story:

Zhang Yijun, director of the General Administration of Press and Publication's technology and digital publication department in China, said this week in Qingdao that the Chinese government will begin taking in personal information from any players who register to play MMO, free or otherwise. Gamers will need to register their names along with the code for their government-issued ID cards.

The program, which will start this year, will be open to the community so parents can check in on the gaming habits of their children. Yijun said Wednesday the operations of four online game companies were suspended because their software didn't have the mandatory anti-addiction system.

Chinese players will not have their in-game actions affected in any way. This program will only be used as a monitoring tool to see how much time each player spends in their MMOs. So what do you think? Is it a good idea or too much like Big Brother from 1984 ?

When Zarym said a new PvE server for new characters was coming soon, he wasn't kidding. Borean Tundra opened Friday (which is still today depending on your time zone), and here's Bornakk's official announcement :

We have opened a brand new PvE realm, Borean Tundra, for those players looking for a fresh start! As a fresh realm it will not be open to paid character transfers or Death Knight character creation (unless a player reaches level 55 with another character on this realm) for three months, and in-game events like the opening of Ahn’Qiraj will be waiting for players to be completed. This realm will be part of the Emberstorm battlegroup and set to the Central timezone.

If you're a newer player who missed the AQ world event or felt like you never got to experience vanilla WoW to the extent you wanted (although I'm sure many of you never want to do that again), now's your chance. I made an alt to see what the population was like and I haven't seen more players in a starting area since the influx of Draenei and Blood Elf toons with the launch of The Burning Crusade. And there wasn't a Death Knight in sight!

So will you be creating a character on the new server for a fresh start, or will you be sticking with your main as you look ahead?

We had an amazing time at the Consumer Electronics Show this year, as hopefully made obvious by our coverage. My single greatest regret was leaving the camera at our hotel when the Allakhazam team placed 2nd in the SanDisk Rock Band 2 tournament. Fortunately for you, you don't have to listen to me sing. That said, we still have a few videos that haven't been released quite yet. Namely the one you're about to see and our exclusive interview with Mia Rose (who's also an avid World of Warcraft player) which will be available for your viewing pleasure on Friday.

In the following video, we took a break from CES to pay a quick visit to the world famous AVN/AEE (Adult Entertainment Expo). While I can't convince you that gorgeous women wearing next to nothing wasn't a factor in our decision to make this video; my honest goal was to find gorgeous women wearing next to nothing that play video games! I'm happy to report that the mission was a success. To my dismay however, we weren't able to find any WoW players, but we did discover that Jesse Jane, Jenny Hendrix and Sinn Sage all play video games. I'll settle for that.

Check out the video where we ask "Do You Play Video Games", right after the jump.

With the tentative release of the latest patch for the largest online game in history at our doorstep, there is some need-to-know information being discussed over at MMO-Champion. If you have a class that you love playing and would hate to see nerfed yet again, you might want to check out the list of possible changes and discussion on each class. This patch is going to be incredibly significant in terms of what it changes and how it affects overall gameplay. This is an update of the latest changes, though. For a full list, check out the official World of Warcraft patchlog.

Source: MMO-Champion

Those of you who Facebook and play World of Warcraft might be surprised that there's a Facebook application (gasp) just for you! Not only that, but those of us nerdy enough to use both now number over 100,000. That's a force with which to be reckoned.

"This news is coming a few days late, but I'm really excited to announce that I Play WoW has crossed the 100,000 user mark! It's crazy to think that this application has been around for over a year and has collected so many users since then.

Here are some nifty stats:

* We have over 100,000 users (101,980 as of 11:30 on Jan 15 09).
* We are tracking over 260,000 characters.
* We have over 40,000 monthly active users (That is the unique number of users that visit and use the application every month).
* Over 70% of the people invited to use I Play WoW accept the invitation.
* It's been solely developed by me with community and customer service managed by my wife."

Considering it's just TWO people behind this Facebook Application, they've put together some seriously impressive statistics. Sounds like I'm going to have to try to remember my Facebook password, because I want to become a statistic, too. For those of you interested, the application can be found here.

Source: Facebook