World of Warcraft Showbiz and Celebrity Breaking News

World Of Warcraft next week (May 2), and ahead of its release, developers from Blizzard Entertainment have sat down with NME to discuss how it worked to make the “cowboy mole people” Niffen feel like a natural addition to Azeroth.Earlier in the week, Blizzard shared a video detailing everything that fans can expect from patch 10.1.Besides a new raid and an extra zone, the video showcased the introduction of a new race — the subterranean mole-like Niffen — and the return of a snail racing, which first appeared in the land of Highmountain.Speaking to NME, game director Ion Hazzikostas and lead quest designer Josh Augustine explored how Blizzard Entertainment worked to ensure the Niffen felt like they had always been living in the world of Azeroth.Augustine explained that the World Of Warcraft universe can have “everything from silly goblins to serious heart-wrenching stories,” and the discovery of a new area — such as Dragonflight 10.1’s Zaralek Cavern — offered a “great opportunity” to introduce new inhabitants to Azeroth.“A lot of times, with the Niffen for example, when we go to new places it’s really natural to think ‘who would be down here?’ It’s really natural to come up with a new race and culture, then start digging into…if they’ve been down here, how did they survive? What are their skills? What sort of traditions have they developed? It’s such a fun thought process to dig into.”“I remember the first time I saw they had cowboy hats,” Augustine recalled.

Blizzard Entertainment is raising funds with the help of Mila Kunis to support those in Ukraine through a new pack of companion pets for World of Warcraft. Sunny the golden retriever and Flurky the murloc are the new pets, and are yellow and blue to reflect the colours of the flag of Ukraine.

Activision Blizzard have accused the company of losing workers and “creating crisis maps” of what it can release, due to issues with the company’s remote working policy.In a series of tweets posted yesterday, World Of Warcraft game producer Adam ‘Glaxigrav’ claimed he has lost “yet another” employee this week.“Blizzard is losing amazing talent because someone in power doesn’t listen to the game directors who make his products,” wrote Adam, who said Blizzard can’t “make better Dragonflights […] If we get rid of everyone who made it”.“‘Some talent’ is undermining the point,” he continued. “We are creating crisis maps of what we can or cannot ship.

Blizzard has confirmed that World Of Warcraft: Wrath Of The Lich King Classic will release in September.Earlier this month the release date was revealed by Blizzard, only for the proper announcement to come yesterday (July 25) with a new trailer. Wrath Of The Lich King Classic will now (officially) be releasing on September 26 this year.Check out the date announcement trailer below:The re-release of the 2008 expansion will take place at 3PM PDT globally, or 11PM BST / 6PM PT.

World Of Warcraft exploit bug which buffed warlock players’ Felguard minion is being used in high-end Mythic+ runs.Last week, it was reported that a player accidentally discovered a bug in Shadowlands‘ replayable, roguelike instance Torghast. The bug made it so when a warlock’s summonable Felguard minion received buffs within the instance, it still retained them outside once completed.

World Of Warcraft: Dragonflight will be removing gendered language from its character creation menu, according to the newly released alpha.The Dragonflight alpha went live yesterday (July 15) and gave players the first glimpse at what to expect from the new expansion. This included the revamped character creation screen which will now exclude the use of gender-specific terminology.In the existing game, when creating a character players are presented with either ‘male’ or ‘female’.

World Of Warcraft: Dragonflight expansion will be released later this year, with pre-orders now live.The expansion was first confirmed back in April and today (June 22) Activision Blizzard has announced three digital versions of Dragonflight (Base, Heroic, and Epic, costing £40, £55, and £75 respectively) alongside a £130 physical release.Each digital release comes with its own perks, while the physical edition includes a hardcover art book and selection of pins. It’s also confirmed that the expansion will launch “on or before December 31, 2022”."World of Warcraft: Dragonflight will be available on or before December 31, 2022." pic.twitter.com/VY9keH5BZz— GG WoW (@GGWoW) June 21, 2022Dragonflight will add dragonriding to the MMO, which is an “all-new skill-based method of aerial movement that allows players to take to the skies on the back of their personal Dragon Isles Drake.

World Of Warcraft: Shadowlands‘ upcoming patch, Horde and Alliance members will be able to play together.Patch 9.2.5 is scheduled to arrive next week (May 31) and for the first time since the massively multiplayer online game (MMO) launched, players of opposite factions will be able to join together in the same party to complete dungeons and raids (via, PC Gamer).As a development update from January explains, players will be able to play together in PvP using matchmaking or inviting each other via BattleTags. Pre-made Groups in the Group Finder listings for Mythic dungeons, raids, or rated arenas will be open to both Horde and Alliance players, though the group leader may choose to restrict the listing to same-faction applicants if they wish.However, Guilds will remain single-faction, and random matchmade activities like Heroic dungeons, Skirmishes, or Random Battlegrounds will all remain same-faction as well.

World Of Warcraft: Wrath Of The Lich King Classic expansion has outlined how the game’s barbershop will be improved to add more inclusive customisation options.In an interview with PCGamesN, World Of Warcraft Classic lead producer Holly Longdale talked about how Blizzard Entertainment wants to keep in the spirit of the game’s original customisation options, but not be limited by the choices that were on offer when the expansion originally launched in 2008.“We knew we were going to bring the barbershop back, but when we were looking at it, it was literally a barbershop – you could only change your hair,” said Longdale.Back in the original Wrath Of The Lich King expansion, multiple barbershops were placed into the world, and here players could change their hair style, hair colour and facial features like beards and horns.“We’re not tied to that technical limitation that existed in 2008, so we looked at the spirit of what the barbershop was intended to do, which is to allow you to express yourself as you want to.”When the revamped World Of Warcraft Classic expansion launches this year, players will also be able to change their face and gender at the barbershop, for a small gold fee.Longdale also added that more recent additions, like when Black and Asian faces came to Shadowlands, are on the team’s list of customisation options to include.“One hundred percent, we want to invest in that. There’s a lot technically that we have to do to be able to bring that into Classic, but yeah, absolutely.” she said.“It may not be at launch, but that’s what we want to do.

Blizzard has officially revealed details about the long-awaited Dragonflight expansion for World Of Warcraft.Perhaps the biggest addition to World Of Warcraft is the rideable dragon mounts that Dragonflight brings to the game. Dragonriding is “an all-new skill-based method of aerial movement that allows players to take to the skies on the back of their personal Dragon Isles Drake.

Blizzard itself, the name and theme of the next World Of Warcraft expansion may have been revealed.Thanks to a public source code update on the official World Of Warcraft website, it appears as though the massively multiplayer online (MMO) game’s next expansion will be called “Dragonflight” (via Wowhead).This is supported by the mention of Base, Heroic and Epic purchase options for Dragonflight in the website’s public source code, as World Of Warcraft’s last expansion, Shadowlands, also has these three purchase options.The public source code also points to the website dragonflight.blizzard.com – which is currently inactive – and as Wowhead notes, this website appears to have been certified last week.Official news of the game’s next expansion will be coming soon, as Blizzard confirmed last month that it will be revealed on April 19, saying: “We’re excited to show you what we’ve been working on and where your adventures in Azeroth will go next.”This supposed Dragonflight expansion may be released in 2022, as since 2008’s Wrath Of the Lich King expansion for World Of Warcraft each expansion has been released two years apart. That said, the pandemic’s impact may have pushed the release back into 2023, and there’s no confirmed release date yet.Activision Blizzard is currently mired by misconduct allegations that surfaced in the middle of last year, and since Microsoft announced it was acquiring the company, multiple US Senators have accused the Xbox-owner of protecting Activision Blizzard’s CEO Bobby Kotick.Activision Blizzard also settled a federal lawsuit last month for around £13.7million, although it is still involved in other legal proceedings at this time.

World Of Warcraft‘s Sepulcher of the First Ones has been completed at Mythic difficulty by esports organisation Echo, after an 18-day race to become the first group to complete it.As reported by PCGamesN, Sepulcher of the First Ones recently received a Mythic mode – the hardest difficulty in the MMO – and it’s taken players and esports organisations alike weeks to complete due to its difficulty.As Squishei explains on Wowhead: “After an 18 day race and 277 pulls, Echo has claimed the world first Mythic Jailer and the world first clear of Mythic Sepulcher of First Ones! With this victory, Echo has secured their status as two time world first champions of Shadowlands!”You can check out the moment Echo wins the Sepulcher of the First Ones: World First below.The completion took so long due to the fact that this raid was not only more difficult, but because it takes so long – after being wiped by a boss, teams would need to begin again.Sepulcher of the First Ones is one of Shadowlands‘ final raids and features the final boss fight between the player and the expansion’s antagonist, The Jailer. According to the Wowhead statistics, this fight was the hardest because The Jailer would get 14.4 per cent of his health back, as well as a shield, at some point during the boss fight.Wowhead notes that one Echo player, Fraggou, had to switch his Fury Warrior for an Arms Warrior, which made a big difference in sealing the esports teams’ win.Elsewhere, Blizzard has announced that it’s bringing back the Mage Tower to World Of Warcraft, permanently.

Blizzard Entertainment has announced the release date for World Of Warcraft: Shadowlands’ next content update.The update, titled The Eternity’s End, will release on February 22 and will come out shortly after World Of Warcraft: Shadowlands Season 2 ends. With the season’s closing, it will no longer be possible to earn PvP seasonal rewards, titles, or Season 2 rankings, as revealed in a post by Blizzard.Blizzard recently revealed the details of a new raid coming with The Eternity’s End update: Sepulcher of the First Ones. The post provided a brief description of the new World Of Warcraft raid:“The Jailer has breached the Sepulcher, the mysterious heart of the Shadowlands.

Activision Blizzard has announced more Warcraft and World Of Warcraft is coming, some of which in the form of mobile content.As part of the company’s fourth quarter earnings results, a handful of Warcraft announcements were made. This included news that “Blizzard is planning substantial new content for the Warcraft franchise in 2022, including new experiences in World Of Warcraft and Hearthstone, and getting all-new mobile Warcraft content into players’ hands for the first time.”There has been no other mention of what this content will be as of yet, but according to Activision Blizzard the franchise was going strong in 2021 thanks to the inclusion of both the modern and classic game.The company does also note that it “continued to increase our developer headcount in the fourth quarter and added hundreds of talented professionals in 2021,” despite the fact that major layoffs to the Raven Software quality assurance department took place at the end of last year.This led to a strike lasting over a month and the formation of a new union, the Game Workers Alliance, which Activision Blizzard appears to be actively attempting to quash at every turn.

World Of Warcraft community has rallied behind a 70-year-old man who was banned for “playing the game a way that Blizzard assumes bots do,” and his six month ban has been overturned.On Friday (January 21), the children of a 70-year-old World Of Warcraft fan took to the MMO’s subreddit to ask for help in getting their father’s account unbanned. According to the post (via PCGamesN), he received a six month ban “for basically playing the game a way that Blizzard assumes bots do.”“He’s been playing WoW since the original launch of [Burning Crusade]. He’s a 70-year-old guy who loves to quest around and lvl new characters,” reads the post.

World Of Warcraft is bringing back class armour with the new Tier sets in the upcoming Shadowlands update, Eternity’s End.Blizzard has revealed that World of Warcraft is bringing back class armour with a whole new range of Tier gear available in the upcoming raid, Sepulcher Of The First Ones.During an interview with NME, lead game designer Morgan Day discussed the new class armour sets and how they might change the way you play.“When people think of class armour sets, they think of unique set

Blizzard has announced Eternity’s End, the final major content update for World of Warcraft: Shadowlands.According to Senior Games Designer, Steve Danuser, “The Shadowlands Story pulls together threads that started in Warcraft 3 and wove their way through many of our expansions.”“We approached it like a drama in three acts,” he continued.

New World, the colonial MMORPG from Amazon Game Studios features an oversight that allows players to send HTML code through the game’s chat box. Some have used this unintended feature to crash the game for players who hover their mouse over certain words or images.YouTuber Josh Strife Hayes discovered yesterday (October 29) that this was possible.

World Of Warcraft game designer, Chris Kaleiki, has announced that he has started his own studio called Notorious Studios.Earlier this week (October 25), Chris Kaleiki took to Twitter to share the news that he has created his own game studio Notorious Studios – established with other former developers of World Of Warcraft – focused on building the next role-playing game.“Deciding to leave Blizzard was one of the hardest decisions of my life, ” Kaleiki said on his Twitter thread.

Blizzard has teased an overhaul of the weather effects in World of Warcraft, which are set to arrive in the MMO as part of a forthcoming update.A post on the official Warcraft Twitter feed yesterday (October 25) opens with the surprisingly soothing sound of heavy rainfall, and a brief snippet of footage showing the weather effect in Stormwind, one of the game’s central locations.While it may seem somewhat simple at a glance, the scene appears to be well chosen, with the cascading water of the

Blizzard co-head Mike Ybarra and his guild sells raid boosts within World Of Warcraft, causing players to debate the ethics of trading in-game progress for money.As reported by TechRaptor, Mike Ybarra – who was promoted to Blizzard co-head along with Jen Oneal back in August – has revealed that he sells raid boosts in World Of Warcraft.On October 16, Ybarra tweeted he would be streaming a “heroic SoD sales run”.

Blizzard has renamed a quest-giving character in World of Warcraft after homophobic statements by the musician it was based on re-emerged.The character known initially as “Gorge the Corpsegrinder” was based on Cannibal Corpse vocalist George ‘Corpsegrinder’ Fisher.

Blizzard is continuing to clean up World of Warcraft, removing several risqué jokes and flirtatious lines of dialogue from the game.The changes appear to be live now on the Public Test Realm, or PTR, (as spotted by WoWHead) and come as part of the 9.1.5 patch.

World Of Warcraft nerf is to blame for the blockchain and resulting cryptocurrency he created.Spotted by PC Gamer, Buterin’s bio shares that World Of Warcraft is directly responsible for the Ethereum blockchain, which set off the Ether cryptocurrency and a large part of NFTs.To be precise, the exact moment was one day in 2010 when “Blizzard removed the damage component from my beloved Warlock’s Siphon Life spell.”Following the nerf, Buterin says he “cried myself to sleep” and, upon realising

World Of Warcraft Classic guild ‘APES’ has shut down, following guild leader Maitoz quitting the game after 15 years due to dissatisfaction with its current state.As spotted by Dexerto, Maitoz announced the closure of APES in a livestream on Thursday (September 9).  APES is a famous guild in the World Of Warcraft community, as it was the first group to clear the Molten Core and defeat Ragnaros in World Of Warcraft Classic back in 2019.Discussing his decision, Maitoz stated “enough is enough” and

World of Warcraft developer Blizzard Entertainment will be removing outdated and sexually tinged jokes from the game as part of an upcoming update.At least two jokes will be removed, both being the names of achievements for completing actions in-game. One currently called “My Sack is Gigantique” will be renamed to “My Storage is Gigantique”, while another, “Bros.

Blizzard Entertainment has confirmed that the upcoming World Of Warcraft update will remove developer names to “better reflect our shared values”.In a new tweet from the World Of Warcraft development team last night (August 27), Shadowlands update 9.1.5 will be going into the PTR next week and will introduce a bunch of changes to the game.“Over the past few weeks we shared an update, the WoW team has been focused on the immediate future – both for our players and workplace, and what’s next for

Twitch streamer Asmongold believes there are “massive” changes coming to World Of Warcraft to address the MMO’s decline in recent months.As reported in Dexerto, the streamer claimed that Blizzard‘s MMO is due for a major update that will change the game.“WoW needed this,” said Asmongold. “They needed this, because odds are the executives and the leadership that’s in charge of the game will see this and they will restructure the team.

Twitch streamer Zack “Asmongold” has called the current state of Amazon‘s upcoming MMO New World “boring” and “pathetic”.As reported in Dexerto, the streamer had a lot of criticisms for the MMO, with a focus on its “boring” combat.

Blizzard Entertainment employees – two key Diablo IV figures and a World Of Warcraft designer – are no longer with the company.Diablo IV game director Luis Barriga and its lead level designer Jesse McCree, as well as World of Warcraft designer Jonathan LeCraft, have left the video game company, reports Kotaku.

Blizzard Entertainment‘s games has fallen from 46million players to 26million.As reported in GameRant, the drastic decline of players of Blizzard’s games – which include World Of Warcraft, Overwatch and Hearthstone – was revealed during Activision Blizzard‘s latest earnings call, with a chart shared on Reddit.The studio hits its peak in Q2 2021 with 46million monthly active users, a year following the launch of both Overwatch and WoW‘s Legion expansion.This figure has however continued falling

Activision Blizzard investment group spoke out against the company’s response to the lawsuit over alleged sexual harassment.In an exclusive letter from SOC executive director Dieter Waizenegger to Axios, the Activision Blizzard shareholder says that recent promises don’t go “nearly far enough to address the deep and widespread issues with equity, inclusion, and human capital management.”“No changes have been announced with respect to executive pay,” the letter adds.“Either with respect to

World Of Warcraft streamer Asmongold says that the community is trash compared to Final Fantasy XIV’s.In a recent Twitch stream Asmongold, a prominent figure in World Of Warcraft’s community, has agreed with another streamer on opinions about the WoW community. He said that:“I saw a clip of Esfand talking about how the Final Fantasy community is a better community than the WoW community, in terms of like being supportive etc.

Activision Blizzard has confirmed that former World Of Warcraft creative director Alex Afrasiabi was fired for misconduct in 2020.After a report by Kotaku which detailed the alleged sexual harassment and misconduct surrounding the ‘Cosby Suite’, Activision Blizzard has confirmed that Alex Afrasiabi – the former creative director for World Of Warcraft who was named prominently in that report – was fired for misconduct in 2020.

Activision Blizzard has hired the renowned union-busting legal firm, WilmerHale, to review the company’s policies after a lawsuit accused the firm of subjecting employees to “constant sexual harassment, including groping, comments, and advances” in the workplace.Previously best known for its work with Amazon when it came to handling workers demanding better pay and working conditions, WilmerHale is generally considered to be an anti-union legal firm.

Activision Blizzard will be removing references that are “not appropriate” from its 17-year old MMO World Of Warcraft, in the wake of a slate of sexual harassment allegations that have been levied against the studio.In a message posted to its official forums, credited to the entire World Of Warcraft team, the developers say that “the past days have been a time of reflection”, as they “heed the brave women who have come forward to share their experiences.”The team goes on to say “we stand