While we're all patiently waiting to hear any sort of news regarding Sam Raimi's upcoming World of Warcraft movie, the latest episode of the 4 Guys 1UP podcast actually takes a look back at what the film could have been by talking to the original writer about his three drafts.

Raimi announced in October that "Saving Private Ryan" scribe Robert Rodat is on board to pen the WoW film. Former games journalist Gary Whitta was the movie's writer before Raimi was attached to the movie, and he told 1UP some general details about his proposed plot.

"I thought I did a good job that people who love the game would get a good account of the world. All the major races, all the major places, and some of the lesser known ones were in there. There were some cool Easter eggs if you really knew the game back to front," Whitta said. He also notes that Raimi had "a very different vision" for the film, so we'll just have to wait and see what the director has in mind for the WoW flick.

ZAM user axhed started a thread about this topic in our WoW general forum, so head over there to discuss the movie and interview.

Players who have ever needed customer support in a Friday night, only to discover that they'll have to wait until Monday will wait no longer! Blizzard has just announced that they have expanded their hours of operation for their phone support teams, and they will now be open seven days a week from 8 A.M. to 8 P.M. PST. So if any of you have been hacked over the weekend, you can rest easy and give Blizzard a call right away. As a reminder, Blizzard's support numbers are:

Billing and Account Services: 1-800-592-5499
Technical Support: 1-949-955-1382

You can also visit Blizzard's support website at http://us.blizzard.com/support/

As the MMO industry gets stuffed with more and more competition, and World of Warcraft keeps eating that competition (kidding!), it seems that all developer eyes are now focused on new paths of innovation to reach different demographics of the gaming world. We've already seen CCP's EVE Online suck up the unemployed Math graduate demographic, SOE's Free Realms and Kingisle Entertainment's Wizard101 are both steadily converting all of our younger gamers to MMO fiends, and I'm sure between BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic and Cryptic's Star Trek Online, most sci-fi gaming fans will be mighty pleased (this could have been you, Star Wars Galaxies!).

Interestingly, however, as other MMO developers think of some great new innovations to stay in the industry, like Funcom's The Secret World and Icarus Studios' Fallen Earth, there is another barely tested demographic that bigger game companies have now set their sights on, and it goes by the name that Final Fantasy XI players have rallied against every time they hear the dreaded issue of "PS2 Limitations." What we're talking about is the console MMO and how it seems to be the trendy new thing for MMO developers.

Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has been taking part in an interesting discussion on the official forums that focuses on health and healing in Cataclysm. Here's what he had to say on the subject:

"Health pools will be much larger in Cataclysm and healing will be lower. That should help address some of the overly binary feel of PvP and PvE encounters. You'll still be able to kill people as well as be able to heal them. The pace will just be a little slower and both healing and killing should require more than 1-2 buttons."

He elaborated on his comment a little later in the thread. Basically, efficiency among healers will matter more, while maximum health for tanks will matter less. Avoidance for tanks will become a little more important since it will allow healers to conserve mana.

What do you think about Ghostcrawler's comments? How do you think this will affect both PvE and PvP?

The eighth episode of The BFF Report is now live, and if you haven't watched The BFF Report yet, this is the best time to jump in!

In Episode 8 of The BFF Report, Fony gives a quick run-down of all the episodes thus far, which covers everything from Gizmo Duck, Soulja Boy, and some crash reports to Looney Tunes, the Air Lich, and raid inexperience. Somehwere in there, he also discusses the latest from Champions Online and World of Warcraft Patch 3.3. Also included: A dash of some scathing (and hilarious!) viewer feedback.

Don't wait - check it out!

As we reported, Blizzard recently created a mini-site in honor of the fifth anniversary of World of Warcraft and the 15th anniversary of the Warcraft franchise. While the interviews and BlizzCast sections haven't been updated yet, the first piece of the Battlecry Mosaic has been revealed due to the photograph submissions of WoW players.

In addition, an early piece of concept art for the Dark Portal in Outland has been added to the site. Zarhym also announced on the official forums that Blizzard "will unlock the original full art piece of the faction leaders seen in the background of that page" when the mosaic is revealed, so keep submitting your photos!

We'd also like to mention that the Battlecry Mosaic page was actually designed and built originally by Wowhead's Skosiris during an internship with Blizzard's web team. There's another reason to send in your picture!

According to a post by Zarhym, players on 38 realms will be credited with 24 hours of game time due to the extended periods of downtime that affected those servers from Nov. 23-25. You can find the full list of realms after the jump.

Are you one of the players getting a free day of game time? If so, were you affected by the downtime or is this just an early holiday present from Blizzard?

A few days ago, a particularly interesting piece of news circulated most World of Warcraft communities, about a Taiwanese player, 小灰, who had, literally, beaten the game. According to his armoury page, this particularly ambitious Druid is boasting a massive 986 out of a possible 986 achievements, having just finished up the most recent Thanksgiving Event achievements on Thursday. Interestingly, while this was a fairly spectacular accomplishment in itself, it's personal success stories like these that really show how well designed World of Warcraft has become and how it's managed to remain millions of subscribers ahead of any other popular MMORPG: through the power of (no pun intended here) achievability and reward.

It always seems very odd to say "beat the game" in the same sentence as MMORPG, because one of the cardinal rules of this genre is the belief that nobody should be able to truly "beat" an MMO. It's uncertain when a rule like this was established, but if you ask any dedicated player out there, chances are high that they'd note that MMOs are designed around progression, and a viable conclusion to that progression is typically seen as bad news for the game. What is interesting, however, lies in how the definition of "beating the game" has evolved from a simple "killing the last boss," to finishing a massive list of achievements across every aspect of World of Warcraft.

Back in August, Blizzard hopped on the social networking train by creating Twitter accounts for Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo. The company has been attempting to connect with players using this medium, which is evident from its recent World of Warcraft Twitter dev chat and its current WoW loot code giveaway for followers.

If that's not enough social networking for you, Blizzard has just created Facebook pages for Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo and Blizzard Entertainment. All of the pages mention that players will be able to comment on videos and pictures, learn about upcoming events and share memorable experiences, but we wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard tosses a contest or two in the mix once the pages have been around for awhile.

We've seen a huge amount of WoW coverage during the past week as Blizzard celebrates the MMO's five-year anniversary, including our own interview with Cory Stockton and Greg Street. The developers have participated in a staggering number of press events, as evidenced by the sheer volume of WoW-related features posted across the blogosphere. One of the most recent is the noteworthy coverage of the GFI (Game First International) carnival in Taiwan, where Blizzard gurus Jeffrey Kaplan, Shane Dabiri, Rob Pardo and Tom Chilton made an appearance.

The team over at MMOSite.com recently posted a commentary of Tom Chilton's interview at the event, in which he talks about the future of WoW, the upcoming patch 3.3 and the reason why players won't have the chance to wield Arthas' legendary Frostmourne sword (like everyone thought we would last year). Chilton said that "Frostmourne will absorb the player character's soul when picked up, and the player character will be gradually out of the player's control, which will finally lead to the truth that the Frostmourne will play WoW instead of the player," according to the story. However, the developers are looking into the possibility of introducing legendary armor into the game, once they figure out the logistics. The story also features a 9-minute video of the interview; check out the full piece here.