If you're still stewing in your seat thinking about attending BlizzCon 2009, you're too late. Don't worry too much, though, you're not the only one. You know those 20,000 tickets for the event? Well, they were all sold out...in just eight minutes.

Blizzard has announced that the Burning Crusade expansion for World of Warcraft has gone live in the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. The expansion's launch in mainland China is still being prepared, and localization of the MMORPG into Simplified Chinese is currently.

The Blizzard Online Store also has a couple of new items this month. First is BradyGames' official strategy guide for Burning Crusade. The strategy guide includes a lot of info on the new races and weapons found in the expansion. It also has a pretty in-depth look at the Hellfire Citadel and the Outland itself.

Those looking for some tips about the new PvP system in World of Warcraft will also get the lowdown on each of the new PvP zones. The strategy guide also covers every single recipe for every crafting profession. From 1 to 400, it's all in the guide. If that's not enough for you, there are also exclusive new World of Warcraft comics from Penny Arcade included in the guide.

The second new item is the Onyxia's Lair Raid Deck for the World of Warcraft TCG. The new deck comes with everything a player needs to control the iconic dragon and incinerate others into oblivion. In addition to a full Onyxia monster deck, each Raid Deck comes with Whelp tokens, oversize Onyxia hero cards, and a treasure pack with foil cards exclusive to this raid - not to mention a higher frequency of Loot cards.

Okay, so maybe this piece find you a little too early, but what the heck. We're going to be celebrating Christmas dinner and ripping up presents in a few hours or minutes (depending on what part of the globe you're in), with a fresh new year waiting for us in six to seven days. You know what that means, people...consider this a bit of quiet time for some of the older among us.

It's been a crazy year for a lot of us, and we're not even getting to the part of the console launches. For one, we've been looking at congress attempt to wangle new (and queer) legislation, like the ill-fated "Truth in Video Game Ratings Act" from way back. Good thing that never took off. Then there's the ESRB...which has enough coverage that we won't be mentioning 'em any more.

Moving on to the more stranger side of the year, there's our all-time favorite lawyer, Phoenix Wright Jack Thompson. We're at a loss of how to describe him. On one hand, he's been dissing off anything that is Rockstar, be it the GTA franchise or Bully. On the other hand, though, we found ourselves agreeing ever-so-slightly to some of his points, along with the other surveys that say violent gaming might spur violent behavior (Key word: might).

How is this so? It shows in our language, and most prominently, in the way we've balked at Thompson's statements in the blogs - by way of flaming. "Violence begets violence," as the old saying goes, and maybe the more intolerant we are of his statements, the more fired up his kind gets. With over six billion people (correct me if I'm wrong) on earth, you can't expect everybody to agree with you.

Well, now that we've gotten some of this bad karma off our chest, let's look at the brighter side of things, after this jump

In the latest issue of WoW Insider, the Insider tells us what's been going on this past month for the game, including a recap of the planned additions in 1.12, the upcoming trading card game, as well as a contest and an important interview.

Let's get started, shall we?

First, 1.12 is coming out with new additions to the PvP experience. While the time sink we know as PvP still remains, they're adding cross-realm battleground action, as well as world PvP objectives. They haven't expressly mentioned anything about how these new outdoor PvP objectives will play out on non-PvP servers, but if there's honor involved, you can be sure people will be flocking to these new game additions to see just how far these new features go in long-term honor farming.

1.12 will also play host to the rogue talent review, which will improve existing talents, as well as shift some talents earlier into their trees to offer more versatility and utility in build combinations. While we do wonder what you're going to do with improved garrote, there's probably going to be a lot of people praising the re-spec as much as there will be people getting annoyed by the changes.

This month also sees new avenues for people to enjoy Blizzard's franchises. First is a new Blizzard Art Contest for aspiring 2D and 3D artists. With categories including Best Cinematic Art, Best Diablo Art, Best StarCraft Art, and Best Warcraft Art and a $10,000 purse, it sounds like there will be tough competition, especially if being especially outstanding can lead an artist into working for their favorite company. Also, they're bringing out the buzz on the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game, which allows you to set up your own hero through his fighting deck to take on different enemies, with everything from newbie nightmare Hogger to Lady Katrina Prestor, aka Onyxia.

Leeroy Jenkins will also be making an appearance, featuring art from Penny Arcade artist Gabe. There better be an in-game buff for shouting his name in battle, or the game will lose its charm immediately!

Lastly, one of the more important developments for this new installment of the Insider is an interview with Tom Chilton, Lead Game Designer for WoW. In the audio interview, he discusses the intended direction of PvP in the future, which will try to bring the fun back into the system to replace the honor grinding that occurs today. Besides the introduction of new outdoor PvP objectives and cross-realm battles in 1.12, additions planned for the expansion want to focus on the quality of the PvP being played, rather than the quantity. Of these future additions, Arena Combat looks to be very promising:

Yes, one of our major features for the expansion that we're just now talking about is the Arena System. It's essentially a system of gladiatorial combat where players are going to be able to go into arenas in teams of two on two or three on three or five on five (at least that's what we're planning to start with) and duke it out on a ladder-based system to get some pretty cool rewards.

We've added the audio interview for you to listen to, and our source link also provides a text transcript of the interview. All in all, we hope that it brings some new blood into WoW that we haven't seen in a while.

Download: [WoW Insider: Interview with Tom Chilton]