World of Warcraft''s Wrath of the Lich King expansion is sure to usher in an epic new era in the virtual world forged by Blizzard. One of the new things in this expansion is the implementation of Achievements that will give players bragging rights. Lead game designer Jeffrey Kaplan tells us a little something about it in the full article up ahead.

If you've been spending time on the World of Warcraft Public Test Realm (PTR) you may have realized that the pitlord Brutallus is too strong. For those who haven't gone up against this raid boss, the problem seems to come from the Burn skill which ticks at about 4,000 damage per second. Well, you may want to know that this will be fixed in the next PTR push. Check out the full article for more details.

Tigole dropped by the World of Warcraft Test Realm Forums to give this head's up: The Sunwell raid will be disabled until the next PTR patch. The Blizzard poster also gave updates on how testing is going on the raid's bosses. Check out the full article for more details.

One of the most annoying things in any MMORPG is having a player block your view of an NPC that you're trying to click on. With the battlemaster blocking going on in World of Warcraft, a curious Blizzard forum member by the name of Mythomania decided to clarify the issue of sitting on top of a battlemaster... and got an interesting set of responses as a result.

Find out more about how the issue "sits" with both Blizzard and other WoW players after the jump.

Blizzard Lead Designer Jeffrey Kaplan (Tigole) was recently interviewed by Warcry.com regarding the World of Warcraft expansion Wrath of the Lich King. He gave details about the Death Knight class, reputation, and the further development of all the racial storylines.

Kaplan gives a general overview of what players can expect to get when they pick up Wrath of the Lich King. If you want to find out more about the upcoming expansion, head on over to the full article.

Excited over patch 2.3 and the upcoming zone Zul'Aman? Well, there's more to be excited about: under development is another area called the Sunwell Plateau. Players at the World of Warcraft Forums asked for an ETA for the new area.

Here's what Tigole (better known as Blizzard dev Jeffrey Kaplan) said:

Sunwell is coming along nicely. It will be on the PTR shortly after 2.3 goes to the live realms. We still need to perfect 2.3 a bit on the PTR.

The 5 person dungeon is complete and the 25 person raid instance is progressing nicely. There's also a cool "public" area featuring brand new daily quests called Sunwell Isle.

For those who haven't been following WoW current events, the Sunwell Plateau will consist of a 25-man raid and a 5-man (as Tigole said), heroic and normal. According to some speculations, Kael'thas might be there for another round while Kil'jaeden might also be waiting there to fry our asses.

Anyway, keep checking back for more news regarding the Sunwell Plateau as we'll be keeping our eyes peeled for them.

As if it just turned flavor of the month yesterday, World of Warcraft continues to expand its user base to millions of gamers worldwide. Blizzard's venture to the MMORPG space has proven to be extremely successful, and now it has built a community bigger than some real world countries. The question is, will Blizzard broaden its horizons? WoW lead designer Jeffrey Kaplan sat down with CVG to talk about the company's future.

Before the MMORPG craze, Blizzard was known for widely popular titles like Diablo 2 and StarCraft. The company, according to Kaplan, is "interested in further exploring the MMO space." Whether it'll be Diablo Online or WoW 2, we do not know. As of now, there's nothing official from Blizzard about any MMO game in development.

Blizzard is "definitely looking towards the future as well," said Kaplan. With the smashing success World of Warcraft is experiencing though, it's not likely to see some major migration from one world to another anytime soon.

CVG recently scored an interview with Blizzard's Jeffrey Kaplan and Sam Didier. Both gave out some pretty juicy bits of info about Wrath of the Lich King, the second expansion for World of Warcraft.

While the spotlight is currently on the Death Knight Hero class, the base classes in WoW will also be getting another set of spells and abilities as well as talent points.

The new expansion will also bring its own share of new instances. Kaplan revealed that Blizzard will begin progression in the ten-person raid game for players.

Those looking for a bigger raid can also look forward to 25-person raids and the heroic dungeons. According to Kaplan, the raids will be bigger, "meaning more like Naxxramas with lots of bosses rather than the smaller ones like Tempest Keep."

WoW players who prefer to do quests by themselves will also get more daily quests and end-game content. To lessen the repetitiveness of the daily quests, Blizzard is also working on implementing randomization. PvP fans, on the other hand, will also get more incentive in the form of a new arena as well as new arena rewards.

Here's more news about Wrath of the Lich King, the next expansion for Blizzard's World of Warcraft MMORPG, straight from the Leipzig Games Convention. If you're a long-time Warcraft fanatic, you'll probably be happy to hear that Northrend will be "a little bit darker and a little bit more Hardcore", bringing the popular MMO's vibe closer to that in the original series that spawned it.

Speaking to video game news website CVG, lead game designer Jeffrey Kaplan promised a return to the more "hardcore" roots of World of Warcraft. "It's kind of a reaction to how high fantasy we got for the last expansion - going to space and some of the stuff that strayed from the feel of Warcraft and some of that hardcore fantasy vibe," said Kaplan.

Kaplan pointed to the new Death Knight class as an example of how the expansion will do just that. "The Death Knight armour is very dark with spikes and skulls, and then we have the 15-foot tall Vikings who are going to be very prevalent in this cold environment."

The MMO Gamer recently had a chat with Jeffrey Kaplan, lead designer for Blizzard's World of Warcraft, and he brought up a rather interesting idea about the future of one of the video game's least visited dungeons: Naxxramas.

When asked about raids, and about how it seems the game is catering to a small, vocal minority, rather than the majority of casual players, Kaplan cited Karazhan as one of the most popular instances in the game, and mentioned the possibility of seeing Naxxramas as the Karazhan of Northrend in the future. Said Kaplan,

So what I want to do in Northrend is to take Naxxramas in all of its glory, scale it down to the 25 man raid size, and then take the difficulty and retune it - obviously we’d tune for level 80, it would no longer be tuned for level 60, since that would be a little silly and it wouldn’t be a lot of fun for people at that point—but I want to put rewards in there that are very exciting to level 80 players, but make it the entry-level raid, very accessible, tune the encounters so that there’s something for everybody to do, and let the majority get a chance to see that content that they hadn’t seen before.

The idea of resurrecting Naxxramas for the expansion seems like a great idea. Lore-wise, it gives us the perfect excuse to pick up a new and improved Ashbringer as well as make some death knight-related quests. Other than that, it lets us experience some old-world content in a new-world setting, which is logically possible since Naxx is more or less a floating necropolis in the sky.

In any case, if you want to read or listen to the full interview with Jeffrey Kaplan, feel free to check the read link below.