Erik Estavillo, a gamer in San Jose, California is suing Blizzard because he believes that World of Warcraft ruined his social life. He argues that Blizzard's World of Warcraft is a "harmful virtual environment," and that much of its design is "sneaky and deceitful." In particular, this oddball plaintiff believes that World of Warcraft has the highest subscription fee of any MMORPG ($14.99 USD monthly), and that portions of the game, like having to walk to one's corpse and a lack of mounts at lower levels, are all designed to waste his monthly fee.

Hilariously enough, the gamer is also subpoenaing Depeche Mode musician Martine Gore and actor Winona Ryder because they both understand what it's like to be lonely and anti-social. Gore was chosen because "he himself has been known to be sad, lonely, and alienated, as can be seen in the songs he writes," and Ryder was named because of her acting role in J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. Previous to this lawsuit, Estavillo also sued Sony for banning him from their Playstation Network while he was playing Resistance: Fall of Man. The case was dismissed in September, but Estavillo has now appealed it, and is also suing Microsoft and Nintendo because a broken Xbox 360 caused him "undue stress," and a Wii update that blocked access to a third-party program interfered with his inalienable right to pursue happiness.

As you may have noticed, this week at ZAM is all about World of Warcraft in celebration of their amazing fifth anniversary while boasting some of the highest subscription numbers of all time. In a previous article, we discussed the past six months of competitive World of Warcraft, so this time, with Blizzard's next expansion peeking around the corner, perhaps it's also best to see what's in store for the future of World of Warcraft PvP.

If we look at past World of Warcraft expansions, it's interesting to see key focal points of each addition. The Burning Crusade, for example, really focused on emphasizing arena PvP without adding much in terms of battlegrounds. Wrath of the Lich King, on the other hand, was a little bit more balanced in its PvP focus, as it introduced the massive Lake Wintergrasp battleground while also bringing a few new arena maps for competitive fans. Now, with Cataclysm set to come out at some time in the next year, the new PvP buzzword on everyone's mind is Blizzard's promised "rated battlegrounds."

In honor of World of Warcaft's fifth anniversary, Blizzard will be giving out rare loot codes to followers of the WoW Twitter page from Nov. 30 to Dec. 11. According to Zarhym, these prizes could include codes for pets like the Robotic Homing Chicken, Baby Hippogryph, Ethereal Plunderer and Baby Monkey, or mounts like the Area 51 Rocket, Riding Turtle, Spectral Tiger and Rooster mount.

If you're already one of the 47,000+ people following the WoW Twitter, all you need to do is sit back and see if you're randomly selected during the event. If you're not a follower yet, this is certainly a good reason to create a Twitter account if you'd like the chance to earn one of those codes.

If you'd like to get your holiday shopping done early, Blizzard is selling digital and physical copies of the original World of Warcraft for only $5 from Nov. 27-29 through the Blizzard Online Store. If you'd rather get vanilla WoW and the Burning Crusade expansion in the same package, then you'll be happy to know the World of Warcraft Battle Chest is also on sale this weekend for only $19.99, which is 50% off the original price.

Zarhym mentioned that all brick-and-mortar stores should be selling these products for the same discounted price this weekend if they have them in stock. Of course, some of the physical copies of the game could be purchased and returned with an invalidated authentication key, so Zarhym recommends purchasing the games directly through the Blizzard Online Store to be safe.

As everyone is probably aware, World of Warcraft just turned five this week, and it seems as though the entire MMO gaming world is celebrating this momentous anniversary. Beneath these celebrations, however, one particular portion of the World of Warcraft community may be waiting until January 30th to celebrate the three-year anniversary of an even more momentous event in WoW history - the birth of competitive World of Warcraft Arena PvP!

While Tom "Kalgan" Chilton, game director and the self proclaimed World of Warcraft "PvP guru" notes that only about 20-25% of World of Warcraft players engage in Arena PvP, at least 40-50% of the WoW population are active participants in the widely appealing battlegrounds, like Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, Alterac Valley and Lake Wintergrasp. Either way, it's been almost three years since the possibility of being a professional World of Warcrafter became a very real possibility, so it seems suitable to bring everyone up to date on where the world is in competitive World of Warcraft.

Blizzard has created an anniversary mini-site in honor of the fifth anniversary of the World of Warcraft and the 15th anniversary of the Warcraft franchise, and it currently contains a series of video interviews with Blizzard employees and the start of the Battlecry Mosaic. The company is asking players to submit photos of themselves holding their faction's emblem to be a part of the mosaic. As photos are submitted, Blizzard will release iconic WoW art.

More interviews with developers and community members will be posted to the mini-site in the coming weeks, along with a special edition BlizzCast episode that focuses exclusively on the 15th anniversary of the Warcraft franchise.

In case you missed it, check out our interview with Blizzard's Cory Stockton and Greg Street as they look back at five years of WoW. Also, be sure to log into the game by Dec. 6 to get your Onyxian Whelpling anniversary pet.

A little more than a year ago, we came across a post by Tobold (of the popular Tobold's MMORPG Blog) called "Horizontal expansions to vertical games," in which he explored the differences between "horizontal" and "vertical" expansion in MMOs. His blog was actually inspired by an earlier one by SerialGanker about horizontal expansions, pointing out Blizzard's apparent knack for "invalidating game content that subscribers have spent considerable effort to achieve," as he put it. The video game concept of "horizontal vs. vertical" isn't just about expansions; the notion applies to things like gameplay and progression as well.

In the context of MMO expansions and content though, "vertical expansion" is best described as expansions or game content that further the endgame by increasing a hard power cap (or maximum character level, in World of Warcraft's case). As Tobold pointed out, WoW is a traditionally-accurate example of the vertical expansion model; each of its expansions raised the level cap by 10, and the raid content released in-between always introduced more powerful gear. But for the first time in five years, Blizzard is developing Cataclysm—WoW's next major release—by using horizontal expansion (in part, at least).

Celebrating the fifth anniversary of World of Warcraft is a surreal experience. Only yesterday, many of us were searching through store shelves in places like Target and Best Buy, yearning to find the world’s most coveted MMO. Now it’s five years and two expansions later, and people from all over the world are still seeking out the fantastical world of Azeroth.

Even though the game remains fresh through constant content updates, it has gone through a number of changes to its gameplay throughout the years. To learn more about these changes and the history of WoW, we interviewed Blizzard’s Cory Stockton and Greg Street, a pair of individuals who were pivotal in the creation of the conflict between the Alliance and Horde.

If you plan on taking a stab at the 5-player Frozen Halls dungeon when patch 3.3 launches, you may want to check out the new Icecrown Dungeon Bosstiary page that Blizzard has added to the game's official site. The Bosstiary contains maps and boss information for all three wings: the Forge of Souls, the Pit of Saron and the Halls of Reflection.

The Bosstiary doesn't include loot tables or tactics, but it does provide some lore on each of the bosses. You can also follow along with Fony as he explores these dungeons in his weekly BFF Report. He already hit the Forge of Souls and the Pit of Saron in the first two episodes of his 3.3 series, and he'll tackle the Halls of Reflection in this week's episode.

Patch 3.3 still might be a month away from going live, but Blizzard recently posted a informative developer interview about the upcoming endgame in Icecrown Citadel to help tide us over, for the time being. Titled "The Heart and Souls of Icecrown Citadel," Blizzard chats with Lead Content Designer Cory Stockton and Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street about the design process behind the upcoming, multi-winged dungeon.

Stockton and Street talk about the significance of Icecrown Citadel and the Arthas encounter from a lore perspective, admitting they had their work cut out for them in presenting this chapter of the Lich King saga. "When we first sat down to discuss the layout of the raid itself, we immediately went back to Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne to think about how the spire from the ending cinematic could be translated into World of Warcraft," Stockton said. "We decided to actually build Icecrown Citadel around the original spire to pull players even more into the storyline."

The pair also talk about gear itemization in patch 3.3; they mention that new raid content is a perpetual learning experience for the developers, and that they've learned "what differences there should be between 10- and 25-player itemization, the role of tradeskill recipes, and what kinds of items to place with badge vendors," according to Street. He briefly mentions the new "Ashen Verdict" faction debuting in 3.3, and explains why the upcoming Tier 10 armor sets are such a substantial improvement over Tiers 8 and 9. It's a pretty insightful interview, which also features the duo answering questions about Icecrown's graphical design, its boss encounters and how the upcoming Cataclysm expansion influenced the dungeon's development. Check out the full interview here, then drop us a comment to let us know what you're  looking forward to the most in 3.3.