While World of Warcraft China remains in turmoil, the government has loosened their grip on the game slightly, allowing former account holders to jump back into Azeroth once more.

The Chinese government has given NetEase, the new operator of World of Warcraft, the ok to re-open the servers on July 30th. This relaunch is being labeled as a "testing phase," however, as no new accounts will be allowed until the government completes their review of the game. NetEase is also barred from changing the cost of the subscriptions during this phase to ensure a smooth transition from the former operator, The9.

For the citizens of China, Azeroth is silent. During the transition from The9 to NetEase, the servers have been taken offline leaving millions of people with nothing to do. There are other MMOs, plenty in fact. Some from the west and loads with that distinctly eastern vibe. Yet I'm sure WoW has the vast majority of the Chinese MMO player base suffering major withdrawal and pining for Azeroth. Of course, many will have transferred to Taiwanese servers where Wrath is already live, up to date and there is no downtime but the vast majority will be left waiting.

The most contact we have with Chinese players is usually through whispers asking if you want to buy gold, gnome corpses in Ironforge linking to websites, phishing scams and bots. I admit, I've noticed a marked decrease on my own server and the corpses have moved to Stormwind instead. Gold farmers aren't exactly the most positive form of contact and most Chinese players seem to be branded gold farmers regardless (guilty until proven innocent) and treated with disdain. So readers, how have you found the last couple of weeks in Azeroth? What do you think of the forced downtime? How do you think this will effect Chinese players (and I mean players, not farmers or bots)? Do you play on a Chinese realm? Have you migrated and rerolled or are you playing the waiting game?

Blizzard community manager Nethaera has announced some more details of the new battleground coming to World of Warcraft with Patch 3.2, Call of the Crusade.The "Isle of Conquest" will be a new place for Horde and Alliance to face off in forty-vs.-forty PvP across different locations offering their own unique challenges and rewards.

Blizzard has put together a preview site for the Isle of Conquest explaining about the battleground and its objectives and resources that the Horde and Alliance will struggle over. Each location will have a certain advantage, ranging from Glaive Throwers and Catapults to an airship that allows players to parachute into the enemy keep. Have a look at the Isle of Conquest preview site for more on what to expect from Call of the Crusade's battleground.

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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!

Druids all over the planet (including my night elf Serisa and WoW.com's Allison Robert) are currently squeeing with delight. Blizzard have just announced that the long awaited, much talked about druid forms will be dropping with the next major content patch 3.2 (aka Call of the Crusade). Blue Zahrym made the announcement a short time ago on the forums and Blizzard also updated their development pages, revealing the first look at the six choices tauren will have for their bears. A peek are the night elf forms is incoming 'soon' and Druids will also be able to get new cat forms as well.

The development page also explains how the new forms will work: "In our next major content patch, druids will find a host of new textures for two major forms, cat and bear. There will be five different designs for each of these forms for the Horde and Alliance. Night elves can choose to change their cat and bear look at any time by visiting the barber shop and changing their character's hair color, while tauren will be able to change which look they use by switching skin tones in the barber shop -- a new feature for tauren in the next major content patch. Given that there are more hair colors and skin tones than unique form looks, some colors and tones will overlap with these new textures. The hair and skin colors chosen will, in most cases, correspond with the color seen in the look of each form. Some similar colors that may share a particular cat texture will not necessarily share the same bear texture."

Blizzard has announced that the next major content patch in the works for World of Warcraft is Patch 3.2: Call of the Crusade. Patch 3.2 will expand upon the features of Wrath of the Lich King, and Blizzard lists a few highlights:

• The Argent Tournament expands: With the help of Azeroth's heroes, the Argent Crusade will finish the Argent Coliseum just in time to call for all brave citizens to prepare for battle with the Lich King. New dailies, rewards, and more will be available at the Argent Tournament grounds to lure adventurers into the coliseum.

• Crusader's Coliseum: In order to prepare for a siege on Icecrown Citadel, players will be called by the Argent Crusade to test their mettle in the Coliseum. 5-player, 10-player, and 25-player challenges await inside.

• New Battleground: Isle of Conquest, a new large-scale siege Battleground, will be open. The Horde and Alliance will battle head-to-head for control of strategic resources to lay siege to the keeps of their opponents.

• New Arena Season: Season 7 will officially start, paving the way for all-new items and challenges.

The full details of Call of the Crusade, as they stand right now, can be found in the public test realm patch notes. We'll keep you informed when more details of World of Warcraft's Patch 3.2 are released.

[Via VG247]

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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!

Develop Magazine releases a list every year of the 100 most bankable game studios in the world, known as the Develop 100. The list for 2009 has just gone out, and guess who has moved up in the world? Going from #47 last year all the way to the top this year is Blizzard Entertainment -- you know, those chaps that are responsible for World of Warcraft, among other things. Fellow money-printing outfit Nintendo was relegated to second place due to this mighty ascension.

Our sister-site WoW Insider did a bit of digging to find out why Blizzard jumped so much in a single year. It seems to be due to a few things combined; Blizzard's Activision merger, the release of Wrath of the Lich King, and a change in the way Develop is calculating their figures, particularly in relation to MMOs. Here's a summary of the judging standards found on the Develop 100 page:

Develop 100 ranks the world's most bankable games development studios based on a variety of key criteria including sales data, critical success and industry standing.

Things get a bit wonky when it comes to sales data and MMOs, due to significant revenue coming from subscriptions and online purchases instead of retail sales. WotLK's release and resulting retail sales undoubtedly had a great deal to do with Blizzard's new number one standing, and we wonder how old Blizz' would have fared on the Develop 100 without a new box to put on store shelves. Regardless, they're the champions for 2009. For those interested, the top 5 in order are: Blizzard Entertainment, Nintendo, Rockstar North, EA Canada, and Capcom.

Yesterday, we reported the rumor that it looked like Chinese World of Warcraft operator The9 might be losing the licensing rights to a competitor, and today we can confirm that rumor to be 100% true. Rival company NetEase has purchased the rights to operate World of Warcraft in China, starting once The9's current contract is up with Blizzard on June 8th.

NetEase is already the operator of Battle.net in China, supporting Warcraft III and the to-be-released Starcraft II. They have been operating with Blizzard since last August, when they acquired all of the rights to the other Blizzard games. This acquisition only brings NetEase and Blizzard closer together in their business arrangement.

What is still up in the air, however, is the fate of Wrath of the Lich King. DoNews, a Chinese news site, has reported that Wrath has been licensed by NetEase, although no formal announcement has yet been made.

[Via JLM Pacific Epoch]

Massively's sister site WoW Insider pointed out some news regarding Blizzard today. WoW Insider's Mike Schramm writes that Blizzard Entertainment seems to have made a big impact on the MI6 Conference, which is focused on the marketing and monetization of games. Blizzard is a nominee in six award categories for the 2009 MI6 Awards, most of them for World of Warcraft:

OUTSTANDING TV OR THEATRICAL AD
Ozzy Osborne – "Prince of Darkness"

OUTSTANDING TV OR THEATRICAL CAMPAIGN
World of Warcraft 2008 "What's your Game?" TV Campaign

BEST WRAPPING - PRODUCT PACKAGING
Wrath of the Lich King Standard Edition

OUTSTANDING OVERALL MARKETING CAMPAIGN
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Launch Campaign

SHARPEST PEN AWARD - BEST COPYWRITING/TV OR THEATRICAL
Ozzy Osborne – "Prince of Darkness"

BEST PRODUCT LOGO DESIGN
Diablo 3 Animated Logo

The MI6 Conference will be held on April 8th in San Francisco.

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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!

As we've reported on earlier, Wrath of the Lich King isn't heading towards a speedy approval for Chinese audiences, leading to problems for The9 if they can't get Wrath approved by the government. However, unlike The9, Blizzard is downplaying the issues Wrath may be facing.

Blizzard has told GamesIndustry.biz that "World of Warcraft continues to operate as normal in mainland China, and we're continuing to work with our local partner, The9, toward the launch of Wrath of the Lich King there. An official announcement will be made once it's ready to go."

It seems that everything is on track for Wrath's launch in China according to the company, but only time will ultimately tell when Wrath will be able to get away from the new stringent regulations holding it back.

We reported the other day on the issues that The9 is having with getting the Wrath of the Lich King expansion released in China. The government is unwilling to approve the World of Warcraft expansion, citing 'health' and decency concerns about the game's content. The9 is the licensed operator of World of Warcraft in China, and the company paid a significant amount in licensing fees to Blizzard Entertainment in April of 2008 to secure the rights to operate Wrath, according to Shanghai-based JLM Pacific Epoch.

Although the Chinese regulatory body, the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP), is chiefly concerned with removing "unhealthy" content from the game, their stance could prove disastrous for The9. If GAPP doesn't green light the Wrath of the Lich King expansion in China, The9 will not be able to recoup their losses and may face bankruptcy.

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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!

Continuing on in that upward ascension toward MMO godhood, Blizzard's Wrath of the Lich King expansion for World of Warcraft has proven to be popular with the Death Knight crowd in Western markets. "Popular" is an understatement, of course. Millions of MMO gamers have bought the expansion to date. Despite its success in Western markets, Wrath of the Lich King still hasn't been released in China, where the title has a significant playerbase. Why? Regulatory issues and censorship.

China-based JLM Pacific Epoch reports: "The government has rejected two applications by the second expansion for The9's (Nasdaq: NCTY) licensed MMORPG World of Warcraft, "Wrath of the Lich King," [...] The applications were rejected due to content that didn't meet requirements, including a city raid and skeleton characters; the submitted version did not contain WLK's Death Knight first hero class..."

Tipa is wondering if the upcoming 2009 MMO titles will make this year the best yet for MMOs. EVE Online will be receiving its highly anticipated Apocrypha expansion pleasing the "impact PvP" crowd. Free Realms will soon launch to the delight of families around the world, providing another option in the "kid friendly" category. Champions Online will be zipping up its latex suit to compete in the superhero sub-genre. Cryptic has another potential hit on their hands with Star Trek Online, which may ride the hype wave generated by the blockbuster film coming out this summer.

And those are just the big titles we're pretty certain are releasing in 2009. There could be even more (Darkfall Online is already out and doing fairly well)! Many people thought 2008 would be the best year for MMOs but the new titles fell somewhat short of expectations. Pirates of the Burning Sea never really left port and while Warhammer Online and Age of Conan sold nearly 1M copies each, their subscription retention rate was quite dismal. It seems expansions were the biggest winners last year with Wrath of the Lich King for WoW and the Mines of Moria for LotRO.

When the weekend comes, there's nothing better than kicking back, gathering up some friends (online or in meatspace) and getting your game on. Well, if you're the World of Warcraft player who already has just about everything there is to have, there's a new item on the market. Blizzard and 3 Point Entertainment are offering a brand new Wrath of the Lich King themed stein for your frosty weekend beverage enjoyment - or for just sitting on a shelf. Your choice.

The previous two steins for the Alliance and the Horde, with artwork designed by Glenn Rane and Samwise Didier, sold like wildfire at BlizzCon last year. Considering that, it's likely the base $90 model will do well among the devoted Blizz fans who absolutely love to collect game memorabilia. Of course, If that's not cool (read: expensive) enough for you, there's also a $175 limited-edition model which is signed by Alex Horley, the artist who designed this new bit of functional collector's kipple. If you're into decorative steins and can afford it, be sure to get your order in soon; they ship them in late April/early May. This mere mortal will stick with her beloved (read: cheap) coffee cup.

If it feels like World of Warcraft may be losing its luster for your, then chances are that you feel the game has become too easy. Since the launch of Wrath of the Lich King, a large chunk of the game population has hit 80, done the heroic dungeons, and even entered into the raids with ease. Has the game become too easy?

GameSpy editor Gerald Villoria has dedicated one of his columns to just some of the ways that Warcraft might have become too easy for everyone. While he points his finger at both the player community and the developers, his main point comes from the newly introduced heirloom items that come from the endgame emblem vendors. With enough emblems lying around to fill a bathtub, Gerald was able to equip a new rogue with three heirloom items and effectively outclass almost everything in the lower levels including blue item drops.

At this point, it seems that any higher class player, or any player who enters the game through the recruit-a-friend program, can develop a character that can completely skip through low-end content without giving it a thought. You don't need to get excited about rare drops in early dungeons, or even really pay attention to the item drop system anymore. Has the game become so easy that it's no longer fun?

Big news is coming out of Blizzard today as Jeffrey Kaplan, lead designer on World of Warcraft, is moving onto the company's next-gen MMO full-time. His announcement was made via a personal post on the official forums, and included a promise to both play and stay involved with WoW while leaving the day-to-day responsibilities to Tom Chilton and J. Allen Brack.

Kaplan has definitely been involved with the project before now, but we can't stop from wondering whether this is a sign of development ramping up in a big way for Blizzard's sophomore MMO effort, because you don't move over the main dude working on your biggest property unless it's time to kick it up several notches.

And what does this mean for the next expansion in terms of direction and overall design philosophy? Well, knowing Blizzard we won't see a drop in quality, but with a changing of the guard there's always a chance for new directions to be taken.

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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!