Blizzard Devs to Meet Fans at Midnight Releases

Wrath of the Lich King will be available at midnight on Nov. 13 all around the globe, and Blizzard developers and executives will be on hand at four locations throughout the United States to sign copies and meet players. So if you're near New York City, Anaheim, San Francisco or Austin, prepare for some long lines.

In addition to these four US locations, similar events will be held internationally in Paris, London, Berlin, Madrid, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Mexico City, Taipei, and Seoul. Full details on the specific locations and plans for each of these events can be found at www.worldofwarcraft.com/es, www.wow-europe.com and www.worldofwarcraft.co.kr.

Copies of the game will be available on a first-come, first-served basis at midnight, so get to your stores early. Of course, the real question will be if the servers can even handle the rush.

Full information on the midnight releases, including addresses for the signings in the US, can be found here or below.

World of Warcraft: More Than an MMORPG

World of Warcraft has become much more than just an MMORPG. There's a board game, an upcoming miniatures game (as previewed by our editor-in-chief), a trading card game, comic books, and so on. There's an upcoming orchestral album coming out and ringtones/wallpapers available for your cell phone (only in the United States, however). And the passing of a young WoW player, Ezra Chatterton, has touched the whole community.

Keep reading after the jump for updates on some of these numerous WoW items, including Drums of War, the trading card game expansion that hit shelves yesterday.

Blizzard Updates Emotes Section of Game Guide

With the recent Echoes of Doom patch, many new emotes have been added to the World of Warcraft. Have you tried them all yet? If not, Blizzard has updated the emotes section of its game guide to include them.

The list also notes which emotes are animated and/or voiced by your character. There are currently 102 animated emotes and 59 voiced ones.

If you haven't done it yet, try /cower. It's hilarious on a gnome.

Attributes Menu to be Removed from Achievements

If you've been keeping track of your highest attributes in the new achievements window, you won't be able to do it much longer. Here's a post from Eyonix on the O-Boards on the subject:

In an effort to improve performance, in the next minor patch, we will be removing the “Attributes” section found under “Character” of the “Statistics” tab found in the Achievement system. While this could be made available again at some point in the future, there are currently no plans to do so.

We apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause, and we appreciate your understanding.

I never really look at that tab myself, and most posters in the thread found it contains incorrect information. Will any of you miss it? Did anyone find the information useful or correct?

Plague Phase 2 Under Way; New Kara Boss Coming?

Phase 2 of the zombie infestation is under way! Boxes o' plague are now found in capital cities, and roaches are helping spread the disease. You can discuss your zombie experiences in this thread in our WoW general forum.

Also, Allakhazam poster GodofMoo has pointed out an MMO-Champion article about an upcoming new boss in Karazhan, Prince Tenris Mirkblood, who is supposedly serving the Lich King. This is not on live servers yet. Could it be another phase of the WotLK zombie event, or something else entirely? Discuss it here in our forum.

Customize a Shirt with Your Guild/Character Info

If you've always wanted to represent your guild in real life, here's your answer: custom guild shirts.

SwagDog.com now carries officially licensed WoW apparel with your custom tabard emblazoned on it. The shirts and hoodies also contain your character name, guild name, realm battlegroup, faction and class.

So how many of you would want to wear your guild tabard? Personally, I'm not really attached to my guild's tabard. Depending on the character I either don't wear it since it covers my armor, it looks awful on the size of the toon, or it's covered by a beard, shield or cape.

The customization could make for good holiday/birthday presents for guild members, I suppose.

A Zombie Survival Guide

Argent Healers have popped up in every city and outpost across Azeroth and beyond, the Scourge have infected the citizens of both the Horde and Alliance and they have become ZOMBIES! Take part in this wonderful event that is going to lead up to WotLK. Read more about it on the official Blizzard forums here.

Upcoming Hunter Changes

Lead game systems designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has outlined some upcoming hunter changes on the O-Boards, mainly because the developers are "concerned that hunters of all 3 specs are doing damage that is clearly superior to other classes."

Here's one change you will likely see soon:

1) Ranged attacks no longer benefit from the haste effects of Windfury Totem and Improved Icy Talons. This is a nerf to hunter white damage.

The rest of his post, which outlines other changes, can be found here or after the jump.

DirecTV to Show Encore Presentation of BlizzCon

If you missed out on BlizzCon this year or want to relive it, DirecTV will be airing a pay per view encore presentation tomorrow, Oct. 23, beginning at 8 a.m. PST. It will run for more than 16 hours straight. Full information can be found on the DirecTV Web site.

Also, our BlizzCon 2008 wiki now has Allakhazam Editor-in-Chief Andrew "Tamat" Beegle's interview with the cast of "The Guild."

Update to Armory Allows Calendar Access

Blizzard has announced that you can now access the in-game player calendar through the Armory.

The Armory version of the calendar lets players browse events the same way that they can in the game. It also lets players respond to events and invitations from other players, which then become effective in-game.

This could make scheduling guild events even easier. Bored at work? Check out your raiding schedule for the week!

Also, players can now bookmark multiple character profiles in the Armory to easily keep track of them. For more information, refer to the Armory calendar features list, Armory calendar FAQ or updated Armory login FAQ.