Last week, Blizzard announced its plans to launch a new World of Warcraft community site in preparation for the launch of Cataclysm. Well, you can now check out all the changes in the live preview of the new WoW site! It's a work in progress, and Blizzard welcomes feedback on bugs and feature requests.

So what's your gut reaction to the new WoW community site? Do you approve?

As part of Blizzard’s raiding redesign in Cataclysm, they have changed how combat resurrection works. No longer can we use 25 soulstones on the raid, or achieve essential immortality by using a raid of all druids.  Blizzard explains in this blue post that resurrections will now be limited to one per combat in a 10-man raid and three per combat in a 25-man raid.  They are considering making soulstone castable on a dead target, which would be a welcome change.

While I know there have been certain fights that my guild has beaten for the first time using quite a few battle rebirths, in the end I like this change. In any fight with a mechanic that would instantly kill a player, bringing more druids was almost always a good idea, and this penalized raids that couldn't stack druids. What do you think?

Blizzard remains coy about how and if this will affect a shaman's ankh, saying only that they will get back to us.

Is everyone thoroughly excited for World of Wacraft's new Cataclysm launch? Yes? What about the new revamped leveling experience, thanks to Blizzard's complete rehaul of Azeroth? If that's also something that tickles your fancy, then you'll certainly want to check out Mike B. aka Fony's latest BFF Report, Episode 45, where Mike explores the various Alliance starting zones set to be released in Cataclysm. Get some help in figuring out where you want to start off first!

Also included: loud music, one-shotting bosses and ninja tactics.

Episode 3 of the Legendary WoW video podcast has been posted, and this one covers all sorts of topics. Tune in to listen to GameBreaker TV's Gary Gannon, ZAM's Mike B. aka Fony and TankSpot's Josh "Lore" Allen talk about patch 4.0.3, the elemental invasion, Deathwing sightings, worgen dances, the Red Shirt Guy, Halloween costumes and more!

You can watch episode 3 after the jump. If you missed the first two episodes, you should definitely check them out. What are your thoughts on the new podcast?

So IceFrog has finally launched the official DotA 2 blog, and with it, he also included a nice FAQ of user-submitted questions. Some of his answers are actually quite thorough, and for anyone who still loves to play DotA, these additions promise to enliven the experience. Included in the FAQ are questions regarding problems that have always plagued DotA and prevented it from really growing as a globally dominant game. Things like having a rewind function in viewing replays, to reconnecting on dropped games, to playing intercontinentally without lag or server delay, all the way to training maps, spectator abilities and the direction of the new DotA 2 game, which was announced a few weeks ago.

The answers, by the way, pretty much confirm that DotA 2 will be an essential remake of DotA the original, but this time around with a lot more sustainability and a lot more technical support from the back end. There still remains the question of how IceFrog plans to implement certain engine-restricted concepts, like model delay (Warcraft III models were designed to play with around 250 ms, and this was included in their model animations), but the FAQ does cover some of the more technical questions that users had for DotA 2.

Our friends over at Wowhead just confirmed that the elemental invasion has started as a part of the Cataclysm pre-launch event. There are new quests available in major cities like Stormwind and Orgrimmar, and elementals are spawning in various zones. You can destroy one of each type of elemental rift during the event to earn a feat of strength.

As if that wasn't enough, Twilight Cultists are causing problems in most of the major cities. For more details on the event, check out Wowhead's Cataclysm guide. Let us know how you fare in the elemental invasion in our WoW general forum.

This week’s blog takes a slightly different turn from past features, and showcases a blog dedicated to World of Warcraft’s crafting professions and tradeskills. Kaliope's WoW Crafting blog got started in 2006 and original posts featured previews of the Jewelcrafting Profession and pointers on getting skills above the 300 mark.

Over time the blog has remained true to its roots. Recent threads are mostly dedicated to the soon-to-be-released archeology profession. There are estimates for experience gains, and general impressions about the new profession, with a leveling guide in the works.

The winners of Blizzard's eighth annual pumpkin-carving contest have been announced, and they're pretty awesome. The Deathwing that you see above is actually so big that his body is on a second pumpkin. Also, there's a night elf mohawk thrown in there for good measure. All the winners are definitely worth a look.

Did you carve any game-related pumpkins this year?

UPDATE: Cataclysm Digital pre-orders are now available through Blizzard!

At the BlizzCon opening ceremony, President and CEO Mike Morhaime announced that players will be able to pre-order Cataclysm directly through Blizzard and download the expansion in advance of the launch. Well, Slorkuz just posted a short digital pre-sale FAQ on the European WoW forums that sheds a little more light on the process.

Players will not be able to pre-order physical copies or the Collector's edition through Blizzard. Physical boxes and the CE must be pre-ordered through retailers. If you go through Blizzard, you'll simply get a digital copy of the stand edition of the expansion.

Once you place your pre-order, you'll be eligible to begin receiving Cataclysm data when it's available. It will download in the background while you're playing, just like when you currently pre-download patches. For more details, read the full FAQ after the jump.

If you're going to pre-order Cataclysm, will you do it digitally through Blizzard or physically through a retailer?

We've posted a video on the ZAMOffical YouTube channel that confirms female worgens in Cataclysm will be doing the dance from Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" video. The video shows a female worgen on the test sever doing her best Gaga, which includes some heavy petting, appropriate for a werewolf.

Little monsters be prepared... Lady Gaga is everywhere, and now, she's in your Azeroth. Watch the full video after the jump.