Players on the Ragnarok Online forums are calling out Aurora Blade, a web-based game entering closed beta this week, for ripping off aspects of other games, including World of Warcraft, Ragnarok Online, Maple Story and LaTale.

Kotaku has some more information, as well as some comparative screenshots. Also, Shacknews has some more comparison screenshots, including ones that compare Ragnarok and Aurora Blade creatures, and others that show the similarities between World of Warcraft and Aurora Blade class icons.

IGG has posted in the Aurora Blade forums to explain they only host the game, and another company developed it and reserves all copyrights to the designs and artwork. IGG further states that any discussion of this matter on the forums is against forum rules and could lead to bans for repeat offenders. The full post is after the jump.

Aurora Blade will be entering closed beta on Friday. You can receive an activation code here.

Wired has pointed World of Warcraft fans toward an April Fool's joke come to life: a version of Molten Core that looks like it was pulled off an Atari 2600 cartridge.

For those who don't remember, here's Blizzard's original joke. Well, Gamer's University ran with it and created a version of the raid that only takes up 2MB on a Windows machine. I think it's safe to say most gaming rigs can handle that. You can download it here.

Also, you don't need to hope 39 of your guildmates are on to try it out. This game's for two players only. Gamer's University highly recommends playing with a joystick to keep that Atari feeling. We should probably create an Allakhazam wiki page outlining boss strategies and cataloguing item drops for it.

Gamer University's main writer and site administrator explained how he created The Molten Core for anyone who's interested. Now somebody just needs to start working on Pong: The MMORPG.

The Child's Play Charity Dinner Auction will be held Dec. 9 at 6:30 p.m. at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle. Ticket sales end Friday, so hurry if you'd like to attend. Tickets cost $125 for the semi-formal dinner, which includes a $60 tax-deductible donation to Child's Play. The charity provides games and toys to children in more than 60 hospitals around the world, so it's certainly for a good cause.

According to a press release, a live auction will be held at the event, and one of the notable items up for bid is a bronze-cast World of Warcraft statue of an orc and wolf mount, given exclusively to Blizzard Entertainment employees.

A recent news post on the main page of the Child's Play Web site states total donations hit the $560,000 mark last week, which brings the charity well on its way to the $750,000 goal for this year. Child's Play was created in 2003 by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik of Penny Arcade.

Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has responded to a thread on the O-Boards regarding Warlock rotations to confirm that the dev team has been discussing some different tactics regarding the topic. Although it's too early to announce any definite changes, it's interesting to see their possible plans.

We have been talking about a couple of different approaches to warlock rotations. One is to try and make more of the dots last around the same duration so you aren't watching them quite so much. Another is just to lower the standard rotation from having so many dots. These are both things we are working on but it's too early to say what the changes will end up being.

So what do you warlocks think? Would you rather your dots have similar durations, less dots in your standard rotation, or something else entirely? You can discuss the topic in our warlock forum here.

You may have noticed on the WoW login screen that Blizzard performed restarts this morning on all servers.

We will be performing restarts on all US realms on Thursday, November 27, beginning at 5:00am PST and all Oceanic realms at 12:00pm PST (7:00am AEST, November 28). Each realm will be down for approximately 15 minutes and the overall process last about 1 hour.

According to Zarhym, this was to address a bug in Wintergrasp that was allowing one faction to dominate the other (free experience bonus, honor, shards, etc.). The PvP zone should be acting normally now.

Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has posted two similar threads in the damage dealing forum on the O-Boards regarding warlock and hunter arena issues. He's asking the community to summarize as concisely as possible what needs to be changed for each class in arena.

You don't have to play a lock/hunter to post here. But I am only interested in a discussion of mechanics, problems, ideas and solutions.

While there are obviously no concrete changes yet, this means that the dev team is looking to improve (or at least change) how these classes perform in arena. You can read the warlock thread here and the hunter thread here.

What do you think needs to be changed? Visit our hunter and warlock forums to dicuss the topic.

Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has outlined some changes that elemental shamans will be receiving in the next minor content patch. These changes are in addition to the previously mentioned AoE changes that will remove the threat component from Fire Nova Totem and Magma Totem and the increase the damage from Magma Totem.

Our goal was to streamline a few of the utility-based talents while giving shamans a little more damage scaling in later tiers of gear.

One of the changes is a Shamanism, a new 5-point talent. Your Lightning Bolt and Lava Burst gain an additional percentage of your bonus damage. Ghostcrawler said the numbers have not been finalized, but it will probably be around 10% for Lightning Bolt and 20% for Lava Burst at max ranks.

You can read the rest of the changes here or below.

According to Crygil on the O-Boards, the Archavon encounter in Wintergrasp is going to undergo some changes.

Due to the high quality of the items attainable through the Archavon encounter in Wintergrasp, we are going to be making some changes. To keep the encounter in line with the rewards, we have changed the Raid Lock from a 3-day to a 7-day timer. Additionally, we have raised Archavon’s hit points, in heroic, to keep the quality of item on par with the challenge of the encounter.

Top guilds Nihilum and SK Gaming joined forces under the name TwentyFifthNovember to demolish Wrath of the Lich King's content in a surprisingly short amount of time. Well, Nov. 25 is now here, and they have declared their official guild name to be Ensidia.

The first post on their new Web site, which will be updated to contain a guild web portal within the week, voices concern that WoW has become too easy.

Indeed Blizzard said the initial content will be easy. But how easy should it be? We need to ask ourselves if this is the route we want WoW to take. Everyone in the community owes it to themselves and Blizzard to put this game to the test and ask the right questions. Only then can we help them elevate the MMORPG gaming experience to its next level.

You can read the full blog post below. Honestly, I suppose any game would be easy if you had the drive and manpower to complete the content. Regardless, the "easy" level of WotLK has been a topic of debate since its release, and I'm sure will continue to be discussed as people try out the new end-game content.

If you've been watching Project Lore, you've been on the edge of your seat as the guys have been making their way through The Oculus. I was given the opportunity to catch Brandon "Juggybox" Sato during one of his breaks to talk with him about Project Lore, Wrath of the Lich King and the mystique behind Juggybox. As promised in my interview with Alex Albrecht, I'll be continuing my interviews with the guys behind Project Lore in December.

Tamat : Brandon Sato. The man, the myth, the ... amplifier. Thanks for coming out to talk with us about Project Lore, and anything else we might end up talking about!

Brandon : Anytime, it’s great to be here.

Tamat : Now your character on the show is somewhat mysterious because of that fact that you’re represented by a speaker. What’s the deal with that?

Brandon : It’s a fun mechanic that we came up with at the start of the show. The concept of the show was not only to show the instance but also the interaction between the players, since that is one of the biggest parts of grouping and doing instances together. Naturally, it’s easier to get four guys in one room and on a rectangular screen at once than it is five, and the whole Juggybox came out of a necessity. Plus, it adds another little touch that we’ve grown to adore.