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Yesterday was the first day of BlizzCon 2008, a cornucopia of awesome for every World of Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo player on the planet. Though there wasn't the usual megaton announcement we've come to expect, there was a solid round of panels, interviews, and presentations for fans of Blizzard's numerous games. WoW Insider, Massively's big sister site, was onhand to get all the info you want to hear about. So ... here it is: BlizzCon Day 1.

	BlizzCon 2008 swag bag Fresh from the check-in lines at BlizzCon is our gallery of the all the contents of the goodies bag Blizzard gave us. Some real great things in there: special goo, a free authenticator, the special mount card, a beer bottle cooler, and either an inflatable frostmourne or inflatable bubble hearth beach ball.
	WoW Insider interviews J. Allen Brack Here at BlizzCon, we just got to sit down with the head honcho of our favorite game, J. Allen Brack, lead producer of World of Warcraft. And the biggest surprise of the interview wasn't a nice tidbit about the future of WoW (and its battlegrounds) or how class changes are made, though we did talk about both of those things.
	Class panel liveblog WoW Insider is doing a lot of coverage today here at BlizzCon in Anaheim, C.A. We've already live-blogged the opening ceremony, the U.I. panel and discussion, and up next will be the live blog of the class panel at 4:30 EDT / 1:30 PDT.
	BlizzCon 2008: The costumes The best part of coming to a convention like BlizzCon? Sure, the news is great, and it's fun to meet the devs and fellow WoW players, but let's be serious: everyone comes to see the costumes.

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	One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!

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	One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!

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	One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!

38 Studios, the Boston-based MMO development company started by Curt Schilling, is working on a brand new, highly-publicized MMO project, code-named Copernicus. What does this have to do with World of Warcraft and the Azeroth Advisor newsletter? That's what we're trying to figure out.

In a recent interview with WoW Insider, the company's CEO, Brett Close, discussed the reasoning behind 38 Studios' purchase of the Azeroth Advisor and how they plan to use it in the future. According to Close, it's not an elaborate scheme to close down their competition by buying out their fansites and tools, but instead, they realize that in order to let the genre thrive, they need to work together. WoW's success ultimately means 38 Studios' success, and the success of other MMO developers. Plus, they plan to use the proprietary technology behind the Azeroth Advisor for other unnamed future projects.

There exists a very close relationship between MMOs and table-top games.

Yesterday saw the launch of Ethernauts, the fifth expansion to EverQuest-related collectible trading card game Legends of Norrath. LoN is digital, but gameplay-wise, it's totally a table-top game. World of Warcraft has an entirely material trading card game. Warhammer Online is of course based on the Warhammer miniatures game, and WoW is getting a miniatures game of its own. And of course, the RPG genre originated on the table-top with Dungeons & Dragons.

We're wondering: how much crossover is there between digital and table-top games? How many of our readers play them? Tell us! What do you think of table-top games?

Blizzcon starts tomorrow in Anaheim, CA, and WoW Insider and Massively are already on-site to provide the best coverage we can! If you're in town, we want to invite you to the WoW Insider meetup tonight at 8:00 PM Anaheim time. You'll have chances to win cool prizes and swag if you know your World of Warcraft trivia, and the WoW Insider podcast will be taped in front of a live audience, so you can be a part of that mayhem as well.

The meetup will be at The Lost Bar at 1150 W. Magic Way, near the Disneyland Hotel. The party will go on through much of the night, so even if you're not getting in until after 8:00, feel free to show up late and relax with the WoW Insider crew post-flight or drive.

When Burning Crusade first came out, people at endgame started out in (generally) a pretty decently matched set of raiding or quested gear. Within a few levels, most looked like they'd been hitting Bob's Discount Armor and Party Supplies for gear. While it's not true of all quest armor that you pick up, Deadend sent in this screenshot to show that apparently Blizzard decided to go more towards a more uniform look in Wrath quest armor. Beats looking like an overblown pinata again, eh?

If you're in Wrath, if you're in regular World of Warcraft, or if you're playing another non-Blizzard MMO altogether, we'd love to see your screenshots. Just snag some and send them to us here at oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name/server/group and a quick description of what we're seeing. We'll post it out here for everyone else to enjoy and give you the credit.

The system specs have just been announced for World of Warcraft's upcoming expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. While the specs are a bit higher than the original game and The Burning Crusade expansion, that's to be expected these days. Will it be enough to deter players, though? Probably not.

As you can see from our comparison chart between the two expansions after the jump below, the PC specs didn't increase by much from The Burning Crusade, but they seemed to make a significant jump on the Mac side. Still, compared to most recent games, these comparatively low system specs will prove beneficial to the continued growth of the game. Besides, if you don't have at least 1GB of RAM in your PC already, you have bigger problems than not being able to play a Death Knight.

Planning on creating a Death Knight when Wrath of the Lich King comes out next month? Blizzard posted a Death Knight creation FAQ at the EU World of Warcraft forums in an effort to reduce the number of question and answer threads popping up. It's short but sweet.

It's so short, in fact, that we can give you most of the info right here. You'll be able to create a Death Knight on any realm on which you already have an level 55 or higher character. Eventually, you'll be able to create one on a different server, but for now the only way to get a Death Knight to a totally new realm is to create it on your current realm and then do a paid transfer.

Don't worry -- there's good news too! If your level 55 is Horde, you'll be able to start up an Alliance Death Knight and vice versa, so long as you're not playing on a PvP realm. You're only allowed one Death Knight per realm though.

[Via WoW Insider]

Last week I wrote about Blizzard's Recruit-a-Friend program and my experience leveling through World of Warcraft with triple XP. The Recruit-a-Friend program is a seemingly brilliant strategy on Blizzard's part. In addition to recruiting new players, it also serves as way of keeping existing players occupied while waiting for Wrath of the Lich King; players that might otherwise divert their attention to Warhammer: Age of Reckoning. Who can resist the allure of triple XP, right? My friend Rob couldn't and for a while we enjoyed the rush of leveling as fast as we could.

But the thrill of light-speed-leveling wasn't enough to hold his attention for long. It was still the same content we'd run through time after time. An astute reader of mine, Jeromai, left the following comment about my last article, "There's a sidelong danger to power-leveling fast. All the content you once enjoyed as content now becomes a means to an end. It's a headlong race right towards the burnout phase of a game." Jeromai couldn't have been more right.

I logged into WoW a few nights ago, ready to blast through another level or two with my friend. He never showed. A few days later I called him up and realized I'd lost him to WAR.

If you've ever felt like you've experienced everything there is to do in World of Warcraft, and you're looking for something more, we may have the solution. The 3rd Space Vest from TN Games is a game accessory that players wear to let them feel damage as their characters receive hits. Fitted with eight pneumatic cells across the surface of the vest that push air at varying force levels, this peripheral literally lets you feel the pain, if you're into that.

This vest was first announced back in March, but this is the first time we're told it will actually be compatible with an MMO. What better MMO to dish out the pain than the one with the most players? This vest is only available in the UK currently, at the price of £149.99.

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	One of Azeroth's millions of citizens? Check out our ongoing coverage of the World of Warcraft, and be sure to touch base with our sister site WoW Insider for all your Lich King needs!

So – Altdorf is burning. That didn't take long, did it? Fifteen days to hit the end-game of one of the most hotly-anticipated MMOs in recent memory? I know I shouldn't lol, but I did, and heartily. The more I thought about it though, the more I worried that it's simply symptomatic of the way we approach and play MMOs just now.

Is this what we've come to? I started World of Warcraft a little late in its lifetime, but I'm pretty sure that the end-game target/ideal/objective hadn't been reached and breached two weeks after the first players logged on. Such does not seem to be the case with Warhammer Online.

There's more than one reason behind the speed with which this happened. From what I'm seeing, it's partly due to the Destruction players in question making use of (exploiting?) a bug wherein they gained access to the central part of Altdorf via the 'back door'. Said door is supposed to only be accessible by Order players. Not only that, but the raid took place late at night, when most players are logged off, taking full advantage of the fact that Destruction players seem to outnumber Order players as a rule. Apparently, it was little more than a gank-fest as the Destruction players rolled over what little PC defence there was.

Massively's sister site WoW Insider is reporting that the upcoming mega-patch to World of Warcraft will include nerfs. But not to your precious Hunter or Warlock ... no, the nerfs are hitting the bosses of the Burning Crusade and Outlands. Major changes to the way fundamental game mechanics work have resulted in bosses that are significantly more challenging than they were intended to be when the BC expansion was released. To combat this, every boss in Outlands has had their health reduced by (in some circumstances) up to 30%.

Blogger Alex Ziebart runs down the numerous 'old style' raid tactics that, now deprecated, the Blizzard developers had to tune for. "Shaman stacking", and "Shadow Priest mana batteries" were just two of the tactics that neccessitated these changes. Alex views these changes as "an absolutely required retuning", and we're inclined to agree. Check out the discussion of the latest PTR patch to World of Warcraft, and plenty of analysis, at WoW Insider.

The BBC is reporting that the WoW Glider case (MDY vs. Blizzard) is moving closer to resolution. If you'll recall, the court found in favor of Blizzard Entertainnment back in July, awarding them victory in their long-running feud with 'botting' software. WoW Glider is the best known 'bot software packages, allowing World of Warcraft players to automate their AFK play. Now a damages reward has been awarded to the software developer, to the tune of $US 6 million. The article notes that damages could have been even greater had MDY not won some legal arguments during the court battle.

The piece continues, "The damages award could be delayed if Blizzard appeals against the judgement which threw out its claim to double or triple the cash settlement. The case is due to go to court again in January 2009 when the remaining issues in the legal conflict look likely to be settled." Massively will continue to follow this case as it moves (slowly) towards conclusion.