Calling all World of Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo fans. Blizzard is looking for beta testers to try out its new Battle.net client, which brings a number of tools to a native app on your desktop.

The client, which is eventually expected on Mac as well as PC, has been described as similar to an RSS reader when you first start it up, with a collated news feed showing the latest news updates from across the Blizzard universe.

For those of you only interested in one of the members of the pantheon, there are individual game hubs which keep you up to date on vital news specific to each title, like patches, maintenance, tournaments and DLC.

This will allow you a small degree of extra control over your game experience, as you can request to be alerted when updates arrive and opt-out of patches for games you’re not playing at the moment.

If you’re game, step on up to the beta section of your Battle.net profile and sign your name on the dotted line.

Source: PCGamesN

You don’t want to play with strangers, but you have too few or too many friends online to tackle your latest favourite raid. What is to be done? Do you tell Pete from Accounts to take a walk, or nag your boyfriend to log in even though he’s got a soccer match? Oh, the endless dilemmas of MMORPGs.

Blizzard feels your pain. In the next major World of Warcraft patch, the developer will introduce a “Flexible Raid System”, which will cater to pre-made groups. There’ll be no matchmaking service, like in Raid Finder, but instead the difficulty will scale to how many people you have in your group – from 10 to 25.

There will be no Item Level restrictions except those your social group agrees on, and loot will be slightly better than in Raid Finder but quite as good as Normal difficulty.

The system will have a gradual roll-out but turn up faster than Raid Finder. If you’re keen, visit Battle.net for a more detailed introduction.

Source: Battle.net

Late last week, we sat down with Blizzard’s lead encounter designer, Ion Hazzikostas. Aside from having an awesome superhero-style name, Ion also manages the raids, scenarios, and other encounters that make up Mists of Pandaria’s patch 5.3. Read on for all the details of the new scenarios, why Blizzard are cutting the XP required for the final five levels, and how he feels about WoW’s recent drop in subscriber numbers.

Blizzard is bringing a bunch of new content to World of Warcraft in upcoming Patch 5.3, with delicious new scenarios for Horde and Alliance alike.

Blood in the Snow is a story-driven scenario in which Alliance heroes assist Moira and the Dark Irons to pu down dwarven infighting. Dark Heart of Pandaria sends you to clean up after a crew of Goblin engineers who have uncovered a mysterious artifact. Both scenarios are part of the Battlefield Barrens storyline.

Secrets of Ragefire is another goblin-centric story, sending you to investigate the cause of missing scouts. Battle on the High Seas sens you onto the high seas in a factional battle.

Additionally, Blizzard has introduced a Heroic difficulty. It’s available for the four new scenarios listed above as well as for Crypt of Forgotten Kings and A Brewing Storm. To queue for Heroic mode, you’ll need an item level of 480 and two friends, but you’ll score Valor Points and a chance to obtain Raid Finder-quality items. A post on Battle.net has further details.

Source: Battle.net

If you’ve been playing World of Warcraft‘s surprisingly fun pet battles then you may have been annoyed at what seem to be entirely random inaccurate attacks, which can cause the entire combat to be a wash.

Well, worry no more: patch 5.3 is coming and Blizzard are working on clearing up the system. “Once patch 5.3 is live, you’ll see ‘hit chance’ listed for all abilities, and this value will update if the pet is affected by abilities that increase or reduce the chance to hit,” writes Crithto on Battle.net.

“In addition, we’ve removed the base 5% chance to dodge, and reduced the chance to miss opponents of higher levels from 5% per level to 2% per level. The end result should be that your attacks that should hit, will hit, and there’s greater incentive to get out there and fight higher-level pets for greater experience rewards.”

The same 5.3 patch will also bring big changes to the world of WoW PVP — read about those here.

Source: Battle.net

The Thunder King, patch 5.2 for World of Warcraft has just been released, and brings with it more raid content and more stuff to do than in any previous World of Warcraft patch. We sat down for a chat with Blizzard’s Dave Kosak, lead quest designer on the game, to talk about storytelling, solo scenarios that work for all classes, and how they can keep aggressively pushing out more content while making sure it doesn’t suck at the same time.

Blizzard have released a new trailer for the upcoming patch 5.2, The Thunder King. As well as showing off the key locations you’ll play in the upcoming patch, the video also shows clips from the new ‘Throne of Thunder’ raid, shots of the new world boss Nalak the Storm Lord, and of course, a whole pile of pandas. You can learn more about patch 5.2 by clickin’ right here.

There are a lot of silly stereotypes about gamers and anti-social tendencies, but for those who genuinely believe them, here’s a nice bit of counter-evidence: give gamers the chance to fork out a bit of cash for something special that marks them as a caring individual, and they’re all over that. Take World of Warcraft’s Cinder Kitten, which has totted up a whopping $2.3 million in sales.

The frankly adorable pet goes for $10, which is pretty hefty even for such a delightful little bundle. But when Blizzard announced hat all proceeds from purchases made before December 31 would directly benefit the Red Cross and its Hurricane Sandy relief efforts, the Battle.net community rallied around nicely. Maths isn’t my strong point, but surely that means about 230,000 players ponied up for the widdle bundle of wuv? Well done, everyone.

Source: Battle.net

I’ve been playing World of Warcraft on and off since the initial release of the game. Generally I get excited when hearing about details of an upcoming expansion pack — however with the details being released on Mists of Pandaria I wasn’t happy at all. I felt that jumping on the Kung Fu Panda bandwagon and releasing an expansion based on a small part of the lore of the world was a mistake, and it didn’t help that the released intro for the expansion had comedic elements to it. So I had decided this would be the first expansion I wasn’t going to play.

That was until someone decided it would make a good birthday gift.

The next World of Warcraft patch has been given a brief overview in this new trailer from Blizzard, showing off both the dinosaur mounts that you’ll be able to ride and the new environments you can clamber over in your quest for phatter lootz. Blizzard published list of all the things you can expect from 5.2 last week, but if you don’t want to read text then here is a video instead. Enjoy!

Blizzard have release patch 5.1 to their juggernaut World of Warcraft. The new patch, titled ‘Landfall’, ramps up the Horde v. Alliance quest with more daily quests in the Krasarang Wilds, adds two new factions with their own unique rewards, and five new Scenarios — two unique to each faction, and one playable by either.

The Pet Battle System has also been overhauled with much-requested upgrades, including a UI improvement and new rare pets. A new underground, invitation only ‘Brawlers Guild’ (the first rule is that you don’t talk about it) has been established too, providing gladiatorial PVE fights against some of Azeroth’s toughest creatures.

Raid groups are also no longer necessary to enter pre-Pandaria raid dungeons, and the next step in the Mists of Pandaria Black Prince legendary quest line has been opened up. For the full, enormous list of patch notes including class and balance tweaks, hit up Battle.net.

Still not sure on the latest expansion? Click here for our massive review of Pandaria.

Source: Press Release

World of Warcraft changed the MMO landscape forever when it launched on November 23, 2004 — and now, eight years later, Blizzard are offering a bunch of tasty free treats to players who log in to celebrate.

If you log in anytime between now and December 1st, you’ll get a unique Feat of Strength achievement and Celebration Package item. Opening your celebration package will launch commence the party times, granting a (purely cosmetic) tabard to your character, and giving you 8% bonus experience and reputation from any enemies defeated while active. Here’s a nice little trailer for you to play as you walk down memory lane:

Source: Battle.net