The Warlock and Shaman class changes were announced early yesterday, Now it is time for the priest changes. Later today will be the Warrior, Death Knight and Rogue. From the blue post:

Have you played Farmville yet? Judging by its popularity—which includes a player base of 69 million people, according to Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg—it's a safe bet that at least some of ZAM's readers have tried it out. As Zuckerberg noted, more people play Farmville than those who use Twitter, let alone Blizzard's world-dominating MMO, World of Warcraft, with 11.5 million players.

As many bloggers have pointed out, if Farmville was an honest-to-goodness MMO instead of a Facebook app, it would have WoW's player base beat by almost a 6:1 ratio. However, can Farmville and other "social games" like Mafia Wars—developed by the industry-leading Zynga—really be compared with what most gamers consider "true" MMOs like EverQuest, WoW and Final Fantasy XI? It's an issue that's inspired occasional debates in our own forums from time to time; many MMO players consider social gaming a passing fad that owes its recent popularity to mind-numbing simplicity. On the other hand, it's difficult to ignore the sheer success of the genre, and wonder if this new gaming platform might change the face of the MMO industry as we know it.

Aren't holidays the best? The above picture is the winner of the Blizzard Fan Art Calandar Contest, put on to commemorate Azeroth's best days of the year. The grand-prize winner, Sumeet Lall, will receive a Wacom Cintiq 12WX pen input tablet. He and the 11 other runners-up will also have the honor of having their art in the 2011 World of Warcraft Daily Calander.

Blizzard has posted the art by the runners-up as well and they are certainly worth checking out, especially the ones featuring Brewfest! They kind of make you wish for nationalized holiday equivalent, don't they?

Blizzard has decided to kick off Wednesday with a bang, as they will be posting some in-depth class previews of the changes that will be coming for players in the new Cataclysm Expansion. Currently speaking, there are plans to cover three class previews per day, for the next three days, and then to cover the Paladin class, which is still deep in development, on April 16th. Today is the day for Shamans, Priests and Warlocks, although Blizzard has yet to post the new Priest previews, tomorrow they plan to discuss the Warrior, Death Knight and Rogue class, and on Friday, they plan to address the Hunter, Druid and Mage classes.

In regards to Shamans for Cataclysm, Blizzard has made some new additions to the Shaman's AoE arsenal, both in regards to offensive and defensive, with the addition of Earthquake, a deep Elemental Talent for "targeted and persistent AoE," and Healing Rain, an AoE Heal-over-Time spell that "calls down rain in a selected area, healing all players within it." Elemental Shamans will be cheering about Totem of Wrath replacing Flametongue Totem for all Shamans, and Elemental Shamans will be able to get a talent that lets all Fire Totems provide +10% spell power, thus allowing them to drop Searing, Magma or Fire Elemental Totems without losing their spell-damage buff. Finally, Enhancement Shamans will see some love as well, as the team hopes to "free up Enhancement global cooldowns to make the spec more dynamic to play." One interesting addition will be the new Unleash Weapon ability, which will provide the Shaman with another instant damage / heal spell, as well as give a buff to the Shaman; the effects of both are dependent on what Weapon Enchant spell the Shaman currently has on his or her weapon.

For Warlocks in Cataclysm, they will be receiving some interesting mobility-oriented spells and abilities that will bolster their offensive arsenal while also giving them more spell options. Specifically, the addition of Fel Flame will certainly bring a smile to the face of most Warlocks, as this new spell is instant and it will refresh the duration of Immolation and Unstable Affliction. Of course, with Cataclysm also comes the much-promised Soul Shard system overhaul, and Blizzard has delivered on that promise. Warlocks will now have three Soul Shards to be used in combat, and they will have the opportunity to use one of these three Soul Shards to bolster the effects of their next spell. You can read about some of these effects in the Class Preview post, but this basically means that Warlocks will have to be more creative in their choice of spells and what three spells they choose to use with their Soul Shards.

Of course, with so many changes to be implemented in Cataclysm, there are a massive amount of new changes that we haven't even gotten to, so be sure to check out the specific Class Previews to see just what exactly Blizzard has in store for your class! You can also read about these class previews after the jump.

Eyonix has left the building , as many regular WoW forum-readers may have already noticed this weekend. In a forum post entitled "My Goodbye Post," Eyonix announced on April 2 that he will be leaving Bizzard after his six-year run as a community manager to "explore opportunities outside of Blizzard," according to the post. Eyonix may not have achieved the level of popularity as Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street, but longtime WoW fans will remember Eyonix for his unwavering forum presence, as well as his frank and sincere interaction with the player community. Here's what Eyonix wrote in his succinct goodbye-post:

"For nearly six years, we've shared our thoughts with one and other, we've laughed, we've argued, and we've cried -- the crying part was just me wasn't it? Those times, I'm afraid must come to an end as I've made the decision to explore opportunities outside of Blizzard.

It has very honestly been a huge pleasure, and I thank you all for allowing 'Eyonix' to always remain a very fond memory as I move on."

Just a quick reminder for all you World of Warcraft players; if you're not too stuffed from cramming down chocolate-shaped bunnies and pastel-colored eggs today, you can log in tonight and begin doing the same thing with your virtual avatars. Noblegarden 2010 officially kicked off today, April 4 at 3:00 a.m. and lasts until next Sunday, April 11 at 3:00 a.m. Veteran players might remember a time when this WoW in-game holiday was nothing more than a simple egg hunt with mediocre rewards that only took place one day out of the year, on Easter Sunday. Blizzard finally spruced-up the holiday by extending it to a full week, adding more-enticing rewards, quests and applicable achievements. To view the full list, take a look at our Noblegarden quests and achievements wiki.

Our sister site, Wowhead, also published its annual guide to Noblegarden 2010, which offers a great summary of all the quests and achievements available, as well as applicable rewards like the Spring Rabbit's Foot and everyone's favorite Playboy Bunny-looking Spring Circlet. So far, it doesn't look like Blizzard added anything new this year (personally, we at ZAM were hoping for some kind of giant, killer-rabbit holiday boss). Still, the Noble Gardner meta-achievement is required for the What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been world event, so you'll need to complete most of the Noblegarden achievements to score your Violet Proto Drake. It's definitely doable in less than a week, but be prepared to do some traveling for achievements like Desert Rose. When it comes to gathering those pesky eggs every day, you can use a helpful addon like HandyEggFinder or LookFor2 (if you don't mind taking advantage of a little...ahem..."mechanics shortcut"). Have fun during the festivities; we'll keep you updated if anything new pops up this year!

While a roleplaying section is already present on the World of Warcraft forums, Blizzard has decided to also add the "story" section to the World of Warcraft forums, where players can "discuss the storylines of the Warcraft universe, as told in-game and through the novels, manga, comics, and short stories that Blizzard publishes." In other words, while the roleplaying forums are specifically for players' in-game experiences, the story forums are more reserved for World of Warcraft related literature and the like. Of particular interest, Blizzard notes that they're trying to "give the community a chance to influence the development of upcoming stories," so it would certainly be awesome if the World of Warcraft Community could really affect the lore of WoW!

You can check out the story forums and discuss your favourite Warcraft literature here!

Every gamer loves his canned and bottled beverages. Whether its Mountain Dew or Jack Daniel’s, we’ve never met someone that has a penchant for gaming who avoided processed drinks. Still, every gamer has his or her own drink of choice and sometimes that drink of choice isn’t exactly the most… shall we say “dwarven”… of beverage selections. Believe it or not, we do have individuals on our staff that love to play through their favorite MMO with a nice cup of hot cocoa in hand.

So how does a gamer hide his love of the frou-frou drink? With a World of Warcraft stein! Of course, there are lots of other reasons to get one of the epically emblazoned, three pound monsters if you have the money to spare, but the ZAM staff thought it would be reasonable to check out each of the Taverncraft products and help discover the item that’s best for you!

We've examined the steins from Taverncraft's Epic Collection along with their Tankard O' Terror replica, broken them down, and have selected our own favorites out of the entire mix! Read on for our final talley on each product!

When last week's patch dropped, we updated our "WoW Patch 3.3.3 Changes Explained" guide to reflect a few post-launch bugs that players reported, like Wintergrasp crumbling down and strange respawn issues with Dalaran cooking dailies. A few of our users also reported an inability log into servers using the Mac game client, along with some of the more common "patch day" issues (hanging at the log-in screen, for example). After a series of rolling restarts, Blizzard was still pushing hotfixes to the game client last week, as we reported the other day in "WoW Servers Keep Restarting," which included a list of all fixes applied up to March 24.

Recently, Blizzard deployed another round of hotfixes, announced by Bornakk in the official forums. The latest in-game hotfixes address nine more items, including Endless Healing potions in Arenas, the buffs from Warmasters in Alterac Valley, faster respawns for cheese items in Dalaran and the Kvaldir Berserkers in Icecrown, and more. For the complete details about the latest round of hotfixes, including a listing of all the updates deployed since last Tuesday, click past the jump. In the mean time, let us know how patch 3.3.3 is treating you this week. Does Blizzard finally have a grip on stability, or are you still experiencing bugs and other client issues in WoW?

Celebrations all around! It looks like the elite raiding team, Paragon, has, after a staggering 170+ attempts, managed to bring down the 25-person Heroic Mode Lich King! Not only is the entire guild enjoying the accolades that come with a World First kill, but their lucky Warlock, Tsukky, also got to walk away with Arthas' Invincible Mount, the first of its kind in the World of Warcraft.

Interestingly enough, the team notes that this raid encounter is "definitely the most challenging boss in WoW history," and this includes notoriously difficult encounters like the Four Horsemen in pre-TBC 40-person Naxxramas. They also tip their hats to Blizzard's fine development team when they note that this 25-person Lich King fight is "Quite simply the perfect end-boss to finish the expansion with," and they "couldn't have hoped for more." Let's see if Blizzard can keep this up going into Cataclysm! Congratulations to Paragon!