Blizzard announced today that the forthcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion will be published by The9 in mainland China, and Soft-World in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. The9 and Soft-World have brought both the original WoW and Burning Crusade to their respective regions, so it's not surprising that they'll be handling Wrath as well. Release dates, of course, are still TBA, there as here.

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This should help to satisfy some of that prestige that people wanted.
It also means that teams may be more active in S4, at least until they get their shoulders. May help to reduce the so called "dead" top end of the ladder in different battlegroups.

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Here's an eBay auction that might be worth watching: A rather spiffy looking bronze statue of an Orcish Wolf Rider. While the statue looks pretty awesome on its own, what's intriguing is the source: the seller claims that this is the statue created exclusively for Blizzard by WETA employed sculptors Eden Small and Daniel Cockersell. You may recall this article in the OC Register (Alex Ziebart reported on it for WoW Insider here), which mentions the commission of a 12 foot high version of this statue for the courtyard of their new headquarters, to be installed this summer.

Certainly, the statue looks pretty good, and it has an impressive pedigree. Daniel Cockersell himself has also created some pretty good looking Warhammer scultures, and Small and Cockersell have also worked together on official merchandise for the upcoming Prince Caspian Movie and Doctor Who, among other things.


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We've seen all sorts of fan-made World of Warcraft crafts from clay sculptures to tiny felt dolls. Now, a fan from China has come up with some interesting paper sculptures of WoW characters. Posting on a forum, a fan showed some mad papercraft skills with paper renditions of familiar Warcraft NPCs such as Keeper Remulos, Gordo, and Baron Rivendare. The crafter also seems to be more of a Warcraft III fan as one of his works is an Acolyte unit from the popular RTS, as well as a Crypt Lord and some ships from the scenarios. Come to think of it, most of his sculptures look more like War3 units than WoW-themed, but they certainly look nice enough. Besides, they all belong to same World, anyway.

Gallery: World of Papercraft

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Here's another user-made iPhone theme featuring the icons from World of Warcraft, made and sent to us by Nathum of Garithos, Hordeside. We covered one of these almost a year ago when the iPhone first came out, but this one is apparently made from scratch, and features the new iTunes store as well as an icon for the Installer.app (man, today is just a Mac gear day on WoW Insider, isn't it? I feel like I'm blogging for TUAW).

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Gamers on the Street logs onto U.S. servers to get the word from the front on what's going on in and around the World of Warcraft.

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Earlier this morning, Blizzard poster Nethaera announced in the World of Warcraft forums that some of the realms in the game went down so that they can investigate some issues. Downtime went on for some hours, but the realms are now back up.

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Here at WoW Insider, we've noticed an usual and disturbing glut of people having trouble with being keylogged or otherwise hacked soon after installing new addons lately (which wouldn't be a surprise -- lots of people were grabbing addons after patch 2.4, so that makes them a likely route for attackers). While it's too early to make any definite connections, It seems like there's one new lead that's just popped up: popular addon site wowui.incgamers.com (not linked for obvious reasons) is apparently passing off bad files, according to reports from Stopbadware.org and other anonymous sources.

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A few times now, I've had the opportunity to laser etch some of my tech stuff, and yeah, I've always thought it would be cool to get a neat pic on my iPhone or my old Powerbook. But I've never had a good enough idea to etch into metal. Of course, if I'd seen this Dark Portal laser etching, though, I might have thought of some Warcraft-y ideas.

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Well, well, well, who doesn't love a surprise ending? Despite rampant and on going accusations that I have fixed this deathmatch series in Illidan's favor since the beginning (which is laughable because I only took over the feature a few months ago), it looks like Scourge of the Outland was, say it with me now, "not prepared."

Kel'Thuzad, the Archlich of the Plaguelands, trusted lieutenant of Arthas, final boss of Naxxramas and of pre-BC WoW, laid the smack down on all the haters. Two bosses may have entered, but only one has left. Final results below.

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We've heard before about lots of trouble with WoW players in the UK experiencing lags, disconnects, and high latency (though the problem seems to be all over lately), and reader Hugh sent us this possible reason: Virgin Media, which is a large internet service provider in the UK, has had their CEO spouting off about net neutrality lately, calling it a "load of bollocks," and claiming that if content providers (like Blizzard) don't pay up, he'll be happy to stick them in the "bus lane."

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Do you think Epic gems in Blizzard's World of Warcraft are a bit too expensive? Well, rumor has it that Epic gems will be available for 10 badges each, a significant drop from the 15 badges that the gems are listed at.

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WoW Rookie is brought to our readers to help our newest players get acclimated to the game. Make sure you send a note to WoW Insider if you have suggestions for what new players need to know.

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MMO-Champion was able to take a sneak peek at some items released on the official WoW Armory and discovered some truly brutal news: if the items go live as they appeared on the armory, the new personal rating requirement to wear Season 4 shoulder pieces will now be 2200. This is a steep ratings increase from Season 3, where shoulder pieces required a personal rating of 2000. As of this writing, the two items that MMO-Champion was able to scope out cannot be searched for on the official WoW Armory -- either hidden from searches or removed from the database entirely. The Brutal Gladiator's Mooncloth Mantle and Brutal Gladiator's Ornamented Spaulders no longer appear in the item database although MMO-Champion was quick to take screenshots. [EDIT: Apparently, the items are viewable in the EU Armory, you can view the Mooncloth shoulders and healing plate shoulders. - Thanks, BaboonNL!]

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I actually considered asking my boss if this post could be the first in a new series called "Stupid WoW Criminals," but honestly, I'd prefer to think that this guy is one of kind.

So, here's the deal: A young Warlock named Kiranth of the Aman'thul server (Who has since deleted his post, but you find it quoted a couple posts down from the top in the thread) came to the customer service forums, and in this thread here, claimed that he somehow lost his epic flying skill after buying it on a Monday and playing until Tuesday morning maintenance. He claimed that he'd been trying to contact the GMs for months in order to get the skill back, and that he was incredibly frustrated and about to cancel his 3 accounts if he didn't get the skill.

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The saga of the Rampage and Shadowburn (US) battlegroups continues. All realms in those battlegroups have been down since at least 11:00 AM EDT this morning. Blizzard says they're working on it, but so far all we've seen is an ETA given, which was promptly missed -- that ETA was 1:30 EDT. The new word is to expect an update roughly now; I'll be keeping my eye on it and will update this post if there's any news.

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The official armory has been full of surprises lately (See Today's news about the epic gems prices) and we heard about a few interesting potential changes to the 2.4 patch.

This time, the news is much bigger, according to two season 4 items activated on the official armory, the personal rating requirements on shoulders has been increased to 2200. For the moment we don't know yet if it's a definitive change, or if the requirements on weapons have been increased as well.

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Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

Welcome to the part 2 of my ongoing, in-depth, casual raiding how-to! For part 1, click here. Last time I talked about filling the all-important raid leader position and choosing the right loot system. Based on the responses I got last week, most of you seem to think I'm on the right track, so I'll keep going with this topic. In this column, I'm going to talk about two crucial intangibles that you need to address before you even set foot past a swirly green wall instance portal.

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Starting at least half an hour ago, and continuing through to now, 36 US realms, comprising the battlegroups Rampage and Shadowburn, are down. Blizzard notes that they are "currently unavailable and are being worked on," and that they don't have an ETA right now, but will give us an update around 8:50 AM PDT/11:50 AM EDT. So we should hear more about this in 15 minutes or so, at which point I'll update the post with any new information.

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The reception to Darrowshire has been so great that I wanted to highlight Big Blue Dress, the Warcraftmovies recommended film with over three million views on YouTube. Cranius didn't need a fancy Model or Map Viewer program. He was able to capture footage in-game that conveyed what he needed to for the scenes over two years ago, yet the movie is still popular to this day.

If you liked this video, you can download it on Filefront or get the song from the Collective Order website. An interesting tidbit to note is that Olibith responded to this video with his first ever machinima, Olibith the Urban Spaceman!

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The tale of the Sword in the Stone is famous. A sword is stuck in a stone for ages, and whoever pulls it out will be the true king of England. On New Year's Day, a tournament is held for all who wish to try to pull out the sword. At the tournament, an arrogant knight realizes he has left his own sword in the inn, and sends his squire back to get it in time for the jousting competition. However, the boy can't get into the inn, and instead takes this sword that was just lying around stuck in a rock or something. The squire is crowned king, and goes on to become the legendary King Arthur.

This appears to be WoW's very own version of the sword in the stone, found by Lessaya of Dragonblight on the border between Nagrand and Zangarmarsh. Actually, wouldn't WoW's version of the sword in the stone be Arthas and Frostmourne? It's kind of the same story, except with the evil and the soul loss. Anyway, it's a nice reference, and I bet whoever pulls that thing out will get a nice epic one-hander.

Do you have any unusual World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We'd love to see it on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!

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Welcome to today's edition of Ask WoW Insider, in which we publish your questions for dissection by the peanut gallery -- now with extra snark and commentary by one of our writers. This week a Swedish teacher writes in:

Dear WoWI,
I am a teacher in Sweden, teaching kids aged thirteen to fourteen. I am also a WoW player, something that has both pros and cons when dealing with my students. Among my students a great deal of the boys are playing WoW and most of the time, not a day passes by without they not discussing the latest content, the coolest instance and the best gear. This is a huge dilemma, especially when most of the boys don't do anything else but talk about WoW.

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A lot of questions are floating about now that the first phase of World of Warcraft's Arena Tournament for this year are well underway. For one, some of you are probably wondering what the tournament's policies are with regards to mods.

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Phael from the Nordrassil realm wondered if there are going to be new levels for the riding skills (375 and 450) when Wrath of the Lich King is unleashed for World of Warcraft.

He cited that Blizzard did introduce two levels for the 225 and 300 riding skills. Given the case, he thought that there's a possibility that new levels could actually become a reality.

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Phase 4 reached by Proudmoore (US)



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US-Proudmoore first realm to reach the 4th phase of the offensive
That's it, US-Proudmoore unlocked the last part of Quel'danas, including Shaani, the NPC selling epic gems for 15 (10 ? See below) badges, and all the epic gem patterns rewarded by the Shattered Sun Offensive !

Sadly, they can't buy them yet, they have to rebuild the Alchemy Lab first before Shaani starts selling all her items. (Pretty much like Smith Hauthaa and the Anvil during the 3rd Phase)

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I'm currently working through Zangarmarsh on my Hunter, and this weekend I spent a lot of time grinding two completely different kinds of mobs. The Withered Bog Lords in northern Zangarmarsh were cake for my Hunter -- they weren't exactly gentle with my pet, but he was able to eat the damage, and I could have grinded right away on them all day. At the exact opposite end of the grinding scale, however, were those stupid Umbrafen Eels -- not only were they under water (always annoying), but they've got this on-hit electrical damage thing that just drove me nuts. I stayed to play with the Bog Lords for a long time, racking up the XP, but as soon as I was done with the Eels, I got out of the water and stayed out.

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Transferring PvE characters to existing PvP realms might be a tad too difficult, according to Soluna from the Bronzebeard realm in World of Warcraft.

As a way to resolve things, she wondered if Blizzard could make specific realms wherein PvE transferring would enable equal footing among the players, instead of using existing PvP realms in the game.

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Weeks ago, shamans encountered issues with mage spellstolen buffs and a bug of its trademark Bloodlust spell. The frustration with the Shaman class hasn't stopped yet - at least with World of Warcraft gamer Solliant.

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