Have you ever come across a blog that was a great read and you wondered why it didn’t have more followers? How about one you started, that you think the members here would find interesting; or one written by a friend or guild mate perhaps?

Well here’s your chance to get it more publicity. We’re looking to highlight blogs that have caught our reader’s attention. Not just any blog will do; there are a few criteria that it should meet after the jump:

Recently Blizzard gave us more information on changes in the upcoming Cataclysm expansion; Game designers Craig Amai and Dave Kosak give us some inside views on the overall design and  revamping  of Azshara.

It's great to see that no zone is safe. In other interviews we saw that quests and pieces of a zone change, a typhoon or vortex here, new quests sprinkled about, or new story lines.  But here, we see Blizzard isn't afraid to completely wipe the zone and start fresh. They've choosen to keep a few things familiar so it still feels like the old zone, using the same color palette and a few choice landmarks. The familiarity is comforting amidst the massive amount of new content.

Ok, Blizzard fans, now we're getting somewhere. If you attend BlizzCon or buy a BlizzCon virtual ticket you will unlock a couple murloc themed prizes to use in World of Warcraft and StarCraft II. World of Warcraft players will unlock Deathy, a debatably cute murloc companion dressed up like the dragon Deathwing.

StarCraft II players will unlock a Murloc marine portrait as well as a pair of "deep sea decals" to put on your units, each with a different design from the 3 playable races: terran, protoss and zerg.

So what do you think about all this Murloc madness? Go here to see a picture of Deathy.

For those who may not know Gevlon, creator of the Greedy Goblin blog, has taken on the challenge of trying to clear as much WotLK raid content in possible while only wearing blue (rare) armor, with minor exceptions. His guild “Undergeared” of EU-Arathor spent much of the spring and summer clearing content despite the self-imposed handicap.

However as the summer has dragged on the group has fizzled somewhat, as many guilds do. They are planning one last attempt to clear some additional content this coming week, but other than that it appears this great experiment is coming to a close.

So what is the end result? The guild ended up clearing a large portion of the game’s 10-man content. Barring some additional success in the coming week; the group ended up clearing 8 out of the 12 bosses in Icecrown Citadel, including the first wing, plus Rotface, Festergut, Valithria Dreamwalker and Blood Princes. All of Trial of the Crusader and Naxxramas encounters were cleared, and all but two bosses in Ulduar (Yogg-Saron and Assembly of Iron). In addition they also cleared all of the 5-man heroic content.

Interestingly enough the group found the Trial of the Crusader (ToC) raid to be easier than Ulduar wearing the same gear, despite the fact that ToC was released later in the expansion. Whether or not they clear any additional content, the guild went a long way toward showing what a sufficiently skilled group can accomplish; kudos to them.

-- someproteinguy

We still don't have a release date for Blizzard's next World of Warcraft expansion, Cataclysm... but we do have details about what's included in the "Collector's Edition" box! In a press release earlier this week, Blizzard announced the limited-release Collector's Edition of Cataclysm, the third and upcoming expansion for WoW. The package will only be available at retail stores with a suggested price of $79.99, according to the press release.

The collector's edition includes the following "exclusive bonus items" in addition to the game disc: a 176-page artwork book titled "Art of the Cataclysm," a " Lil' Deathwing" in-game vanity pet, a behind-the-scenes DVD, a Cataclysm soundtrack CD, a Deathwing-themed mouse pad and a set of World of Warcraft Trading Card Game cards. The card set includes a 60-card starter deck from the Wrathgate series, two extended-art cards, and two Collector's Edition-exclusive hero cards, marking the first appearance of goblin and worgen heroes in the TCG.

Read the full Cataclysm collector's edition press release after the jump. Be sure to check out ZAM and Wowhead's Cataclysm Beta Key Contest for your chance to preview the upcoming expansion before it hits store shelves, and visit our World of Warcraft portal site for more Cataclysm news and information.

While piracy in MMO gaming isn't as prevalent as in other video game markets, Activision-Blizzard and other publishers remain aggressive in their hunt for operators of rogue, "private servers." Last week World of Warcraft publisher Blizzard made headlines across the blogosphere after the company was awarded more than $88 million in damages in federal court; the complaint was originally filed in October 2009, alleging Alyson Reeves—the defendant and operator of a popular "Scapegaming" private server—broke the company's EULA by hosting the illegal server and selling in-game items for real money via PayPal.

The recent lawsuit is one of the most extreme cases of piracy in the MMO industry; Scapegaming hosted 427,393 total users, with 32,000 to 40,000 players online each day, according to the court order [via THR, Esq.]. But is piracy in MMOs a widespread problem for most of today's publishers? Or is online gaming, by nature, more prohibitive to "digital theft" than traditional video games? Some publishers are taking cues from the cloud-based nature of online gaming, adopting new forms of digital rights management (DRM) for single-player or "offline" games that rely on users' Internet connections to constantly validate their usage rights.

Blizzcon might still seem very far off, but that doesn't mean that the excitement has to wait.  Blizzard just announced the start of the Blizzcon contests!

There are several categories to choose from:

• unique fan art contest
• song contest
• movie contest

We have some talented people at ZAM.com so put your creative caps on and go win some prizes. Be sure to come here afterwards and share your work with us; we'd all love to see it.

Sadly Blizzard does not, at the moment, have a writing contest specifically for Blizzcon, however, if you have a short story you'd like to share with people we have a story thread in the WoW general forums, and it'd be great to get more people involved.

- Xsarus