Go ask any gamer to name one of the hottest MMORPGs to date, and definitely, without batting an eyelash, World of Warcraft will be one of the most mentioned. Ask them then, what things are they willing to do just to get a hold of the game's first expansion, The Burning Crusade. Anything, they would say.

The associates and families of Blizzard's employees wouldn't have to go to such lengths, though, because the gaming company  began a Burning Crusade Friends and Family Alpha Testing. Argh! Now, we dig up for old family photos and files to prove even the most remote of relation to Blizzard employees.

Before playing the much awaited expansion, testers must have to read and acknowledge an end user licence agreement first. The contract contains a clause that forbids strictly mention of the program's existence: "The existence of the Friends and Family Alpha Test and all elements thereof (including without limitation this Agreement) is confidential, and your agreement to maintain secrecy associated with the Friends and Family Alpha Test until such time that Blizzard releases such information publicly."

It is, however, ironic that the said agreement is posted in full at the game's official website. When the Burning Crusade comes out later this year, it will feature two new playable races, not to mention flying mounts, extended level caps and more.

You gotta love interviews, especially when they've got video for you to enjoy. Gametrailers has picked up a video interview of Jeff Kaplan, one of the Lead Game Designers for World of Warcraft.

In this interview, Kaplan talks about the changes The Burning Crusade expansion will bring in. While we've been talking about these issues for a while now, such as the opening of new portions of the world, as well as the enhancements to PVP, the LFG party-finding system (Barrens Chat Worldwide FTL.) and the race/class shift that will occur in the expansion, it's nice to actually hear and see someone talk about it, making it more or less official by any definition of the word.

What's more, interspersed in the video are snippets of action for the Burning Crusade. Some of it you may have seen before, such as the flying mounts of Outland, but the whole package ties it all in. The Burning Crusade will bring a lot of changes to the game, and we can only hope that they'll bring a ton of new blood into the game we know and love, Blood Elves notwithstanding.

Download: [The Burning Crusade: Jeff Kaplan Video Interview]

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]

Lead designer Jeff Kaplan is our inside man when it comes to exclusive behind-the-scenes update on World of Warcraft's first game expansion, The Burning Crusade. He reveals very interesting points on the addition of Blood Elves to the Horde race, adding Paladin as a choice for the Horde and Shaman choice for the Alliance, a new profession, jewelcrafting plus other juicy details. Just to give you a taste of what we mean by "juicy details" here's an excerpt from Robert Summa's interview.

Tell me (Joystiq) something that hasn't already been announced that is planned for the expansion?
The PvP system is the first big change that our players have been waiting to hear about for a long time. Basically, we recognized the flaws with the existing honor system. Our goal was not to create a system that involved a massive amount of time investment, it's counter to all of WoW's designer philosophy. We've never been focused on trying to be a time sink. Our PvP system in its current incarnation is very much like that, so what we've done is design a new PvP system that will go live with The Burning Crusade. It has three core components to it.

The first is the arena combat system. You'll be able to join a team: 2v2, 3v3, or 5v5. There are two different modes you can play: One is called practice mode to hone your skills and the other is competitive mode, which is level 70 only.

The rest of the interview awaits after the jump!

Attempting to enter the Caverns of Time in World of Warcraft is usually met with either certain death, bad glitches or a suspension from play. Players have speculated as to what the Brood of Nozdormu has kept hidden behind a gigantic door and an entourage of dragons. Now, it seems, the truth has finally been revealed.

Time travel.

Specifically, the Burning Crusade expansion will allow players to enter the Caverns of Time to relive, battle in, and maintain important historical turning points in Azeroth timeline. As the expansion website mentions,

For the first time, adventurers will enter the domain of the Timeless One, where they will undertake missions to prevent the sabotage of three key historical events:

Young Thrall's escape from Durnholde Keep, the first step on the path to his ascension as the greatest warchief the orcs have ever known...

The momentous Battle of Mount Hyjal, where Jaina, Thrall, Tyrande, and Malfurion succeeded in turning the tide against the dreaded demon, Archimonde...

And the opening of the original Dark Portal by the crazed wizard Medivh – an action that ushered in the First War and introduced the mighty orcs to the world of Azeroth.

There isn't any mention of whether Brood of Nozdormu reputation will be needed to enter the caverns, but it stands to reason that you may need some amount of reputation to ensure the brood doesn't kill you on sight beforehand. 

Keep checking QJ for more World of Warcraft updates as we get them.

Blizzard has taken measures to get cheaters and gold farmers permanently out of World of Warcraft. This time, approximately 59,000 accounts were banned during the month of June, relieving WoW's economy of 22 million gold.
 
The 59,000 accounts were banned due to violation of Blizzard's Terms Of Use. This primarily includes the use of third-party programs to mine gold and items. The Blizzard poster said, "We will continue to aggressively monitor all World of Warcraft realms in order to protect the service and our players from the harmful effects of cheating".

Merciless actions like this one are supposed to intimidate everyone who have plans of cheating. Blizzard's bans always stir up the fan community. Of course, again lots of people, trying to get their account reactivated, will plead innocent. Is there anyone who's actually right? We may never know. Instead, we watch World Of Warcraft growing and growing. 59,000 may seem like much, but compared to the 6 million total subscriptions...

The game's first expansion pack, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade will be released at the end of the year, perhaps attracting even more players to the unstoppable MMORPG. And more cheaters. Looking at Blizzard's recent ban-fests, they won't last long.

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, the much awaited game expansion for World of Warcraft will feature loads of features including a new Horde race, the new Alliance race, new dungeons and battlegrounds, and the addition of jewelcrafting to the professions list.

Jewelcrafting allows players to craft jewels that can be placed into items to augment the item's statistics, similar to the socketed items in Diablo II. The good thing the comes from this profession is that players are given a whole range of customizable weapons and items. Jewelcrafters are able to create beautiful jewelry and trinkets by extracting gems from the raw ore mined from the various deposits and mineral veins. Unlike the miners who sometimes find gems while gathering ore, jewelcrafters rely on their prospecting skills to get more of the precious stones.

Rings, amulets, and trinkets that were created have the same function as those that are already found in the game, with a few exceptions. For example, jewelcrafters can learn to create gemmed figurines, which can provide a little damage boost or a quick burst of extra healing power. Only jewelcrafters can do this trick.

Another trick of the trade is to cut the gems down for use in socketed items. A gem's cut determines the effect they will have.
The Azure Moonstone can be cut into a lustrous, stormy, solid, or sparkling pieces and each one of these cuts offers different bonuses when used in a socketable item. This allows players to customize their equipment to suit their play style or roles in their class. At higher levels, socketed items and specially cut gems play important part of an adventurer's "bag of tricks".

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade will also introduce new recipes for all the professions, including many recipes that let leatherworkers, blacksmiths, and tailors create socketed items.

Earlier, we reported about MS' Peter Moore's take on MMOs making a transition to the Xbox 360. He said that "there obviously is a resurgence driven by 'WOW' (World of Warcraft), and we love it because it's driving PC adoption. The question is, is it a console experience? They've never really done tremendously well on the consoles. There's a lot of stuff you need to do."

Mr. Moore also said the demands of MMOs in consoles, "the content constantly needs to be refreshed. There's patches, there's updates. We could do it ... but it's always been a keyboard-and-mouse, kind of lean-in experience. You look at 'Guild Wars,' you look at 'WOW,' obviously. ... Now, we're going to an MMO with Marvel. I think that is a nice bridge because it's familiar characters and a familiar environment, a kind of comic-book look and feel. But for a lot of people, still, MMOs are a little too intense and a little geeky at times (to make sense for a console)."

From that alone, it seems that WoW and other MMOs are not yet a good fit for the consoles...for now. And now, it was Blizzard's turn to say for the nth time that "no, we are not making Warcraft for Xbox 360". This again was caused by a Vivendi presentation wherein the WoW publisher and official rights-holder announced that all future Blizzard games would be massively multiplayer online games.

The denial continued with Blizzard saying that "we do not currently have any MMO development plans beyond the upcoming expansion for World of Warcraft...Furthermore, we don't have any intentions to focus on only one genre or platform with our future games." But you know what they say about rumors that don't die down - if there's smoke there's a fire. It may not be true for now, but in the future, we'll never know. Until then, we will keep you posted.