GFraizer has posted on the Official WoW forums that the new beta release window will not be in Q3, but it will now be in Q4.. meaning sometime in October, November or even December ).

From the "gods" @ Blizzard comes more good news about World of Warcraft.

Want to Join the World of Warcraft Team?
Blizzard Entertainment has announced three more playable races for World of Warcraft: Undead, Trolls, and Gnomes. The Undead and Trolls join the Orcs and Tauren as members of the Horde, and the Gnomes round out the Alliance, joining the Humans, Dwarves, and Night Elves. Three new classes have also been revealed: Priest, Rogue, and Paladin.

Stay tuned to our Web site to learn more about the game in the weeks ahead. Also, be sure to check out the latest issue of Computer Gaming World magazine, which has a huge new article on World of Warcraft. In addition to offering an in-depth look at Blizzard’s upcoming MMORPG, their exclusive reveals more info about the new races and classes. The issue has reached many subscribers already and will be available on newsstands everywhere starting September 2nd! Check out the cover, featuring brand new art from Blizzard!

Undead Site Launched
See the Undead yourself on our new Undead section. This section features biographical info, new screenshots, and more!

Want to Join the World of Warcraft Team?

We have three new Blizzard jobs available: Community Manager, Senior Game Master, and Game Master.

This month's (October) Computer Gaming World features a huge article on World of Warcraft, revealing more exclusive information than ever before. There are 3 new races announced: Trolls, Gnomes, and Undead. They also reveal 3 classes: Priest, Rogue and paladin, as well as one high-level specialization class, the hero.

WarcraftCentral featured this on their news today, and included 4 article scans from CGW. One of them is the magazine cover, featuring a huge undead character (see below). Check out their site for the other scans and coverage. Battle.Net forums also have an ongoing coverage, with members posting their comments and some information.

Blizzard, the creaters of the anticipated game World of Warcraft have put out 4 new screen shots on their main site!

*The dwarf foraging
*Foraging again
*A tavern
*Peaceful night shot

Head over here to look at them! http://www.blizzard.com/wow/ScreenShot.aspx?ImageIndex=1&Set=0

Or head to homepage at www.blizzard.com/wow

Today is a great day,  the Beastiary has been udated!  Furbolgs and Harpies are here to view.  Check out their animations and hear how they sound!!!  Blizzard has also added some more information to the Kalidar region about the Night Elf capital of Darnassus.

                            

 

Another section has been added to The Town Hall on the Official Website!

"Off Kalimdor's northern coast lies the island of Kalidar, the new home of the reclusive Night Elves and a stunning testament to the power of their magic and their connection with nature. After the cataclysmic events that followed the invasion of the Burning Legion, the Circle of Ancients and powerful druids combined their powers to grow an immense new world tree on Kalidar. They called the tree Teldrassil, meaning "crown of the earth" in their native tongue. The night elves made their new home in the boughs of Teldrassil, creating a forest of mighty trees and flowing rivers, bathed in the endless night that fell over the lands of the elves from the dawn of time. However, the calm of the enchanted forest has slowly fallen into the shadow of a sinister presence. Crazed furbolgs and fouler beasts have appeared in Kalidar, and it occupies all the attention of the vigilant Sentinels and the wise druids to ensure the safety of their new home."

There are 13 brand new screenshots of the island along with a mp3 music sample!  New beasts?  Special thanks to one of the most up to date website's WarCraftCentral.Com for letting us know :)

Blizzard has released another awesome backround for your PC.  Download your size here...

If you want to check out where this came from,  head over to The Inquirer for this news and many more.

In the cut-throat world of computer game publishing a company's entire future can ride on the outcome and popularity of a single game. Titles like Daikatana doomed ION Storm while Half-Life threw Valve's prospects into the stratosphere. Producing quality software isn't easy, and most every company has at least a couple of not-so-great titles under its belt. LucasArts might have backed the incredibly popular Jedi Knight series, but that doesn't mean Rebel Assault never existed. For the big companies a lousy title can be an embarrassment, but for shoestring operations it can doom the entire company.
In an industry more known for the constant stream of mediocre titles over the few gems that appear every year, Blizzard has remained a consistent source of incredibly popular games. Of their first few titles only BlackThorne was a major hit, but since their release of the first Warcraft the company has seen only slam dunk after slam dunk. Most companies are lucky to have one major cash-cow of a franchise—Blizzard has three in the form of Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo, and while two of them are RTS worlds, the company has done a fine job of vastly distinguishing the look and feel of the two 'craft series.

Blizzard, it would seem, has the golden touch - which is why it's so puzzling that four of its senior members (Erich Schaefer, Max Schaefer, David Brevik, and Bill Roper) have chosen to leave the company. Roper, especially, was a major force behind both Diablo and Warcraft III, is well known in the gaming industry, and well on his way to achieving the fame of a Sid Meier or a Will Wright. The four state they wish Blizzard all the best and are wanting to pursue "other" opportunities, but it's hard to imagine what other opportunities they have access to where the weight and muscle of Blizzard couldn't have helped open doors.

On the other hand, it may be that Blizzard is finally being shackled to the constraints that've damaged game author's final product for years. Unfortunately for the industry, most companies that write games don't also publish them. This means that the creative side of the industry is ultimately held hostage to a marketing team that may or may not have any grasp of the difficulty and time required to produce a blockbuster product.

The cycle seems to go something like this: Low-level managers give enthusiastic, problem-minimizing reports on a product's progress to their immediate superiors, who then turn around and give even more enthusiastic reports to their superiors, and so on, and so forth. By the time the report gets into the upper levels of the company there are few mentions of problems left and the game is going to ship a year ahead of schedule.

So the PR wheels spin and all sorts of ridiculous hype is created, which only frustrates gamers when release date after release date slips. Truth is, the release dates should never have been made in the first place, but it’s the programmer's, not the marketers, who are held responsible for this more often then not. Management wants profit and they want it now, which often leads to half-finished games being kicked out the door long before they should've been. They sell a few thousand copies and sink like rocks, leaving everyone out in the cold and nobody happy.

Blizzard, to date, has dodged this trend. Blizzard games might have a reputation for great-ness, but their reputation for late-ness is just as huge. This is partially due to Blizzard's predilection for going back to a product that's half done and ripping it apart to start over again with a new engine a move that undoubtedly enhanced both Warcraft III and Starcraft, but also added tremendously to their development time.

After Blizzard was acquired by Vivendi, people have began watching for trends that the company would put pressure on Blizzard to release substandard product. Thankfully this has never been the case, but with the entire corporation's entertainment division on the auction block I wonder if the four Blizzard colleagues saw the writing on the wall and decided to bail when they could before they found themselves helming a flagship company descending into the hell of a "publish at any cost" mentality.

This does not bode well for Blizzard. While the vast majority of people who worked on Blizzard's classics remain, four of the people responsible for setting the vision of the company and of its respective gaming worlds are gone. Hopefully there's someone who can replace themor Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne may be the last great product to sail out of Blizzard's doors for a long time.

The german print magazine GameStar features a huge preview in its latest issue. Besides some well-kown screenshots there are some really interesting details revealed. Here are the most important ones including some comments from us:

**Also remember that these have not yet been confirmed by a Blizzard representative and should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Information provided by. www.worldofwar.net

• A class Thief is mentioned. We think this must be a mistake and should be approved by an employee of Blizzard Entertainment.
  
  
• No stat-points are allocated like in DAoC when creating a new character.
  
  
• There are really tons of possibilities in character-customization and this is just alpha ....
  
  
• According to GameStar there IS a loss of Exp when dying. This is hard to believe since loosing experience is definitely not planned. In our opinnion this a misunderstanding.
  
  
• Has been revealed yet, but still interesting to some people: new skills and spells can be obtained by solving quests.
  
  
• In this preview it is mentioned that the skill “Language” is only necessary to talk to other race´s NPCs, not to other PCs. Still, this should be confirmed by Blizzard before we can really believe that.
  
  
• Decorations in player´s houses can be chosen from a vast pool of carpets, pictures, accesoires and so on.
  
  
• Crossing Azeroth by foot takes appr. two hours.
  
  
• More expensive mounts like horses do not offer an increase in speed but only in the looks.
  
  
• Capacity of transportships is 30 heroes so far.
  
  
• Mages can summon portals leading to the capital´s mage tower.
  
  
• The transparent map known from Diablo II is available in cities like stormwind.
  
  
• There are two prison dungeons in Stormwind.
  
  
• An online-ladder will cover the tournaments organized by Blizzard in the arenas.
  
  
• On a very interesting shot there are a warlock and a mage fighting a bear. The warlock has summoned a felhound but there is a defias thief standing NEXT TO the mage, facing the bear. He is obviously not an enemy.
  
  

Blizzard has today updated its official World of Warcraft Web site with information on some of the character classes that will appear in the game when it's released next year. Existing descriptions of warriors, mages, and shamans have today been joined by detailed information on hunters, warlocks, and druids, all of whom will have completely different skill sets.

Also shoot on over to GameSpot for some new screenshots. . .

What new playable races have you announced for World of Warcraft?

We spend a great deal of time considering what races and classes are going to be available for player characters, and our goal is to make each race very distinct. This is not only in terms of look and feel, but also in the way they play and interact with other characters, other races and the world in general. We recently announced the inclusion of the Night Elves as a character race, as well as several new classes, including the Warlock - who is a powerful summoner, the Druid - a master of the natural order, and the Hunter - tracker and slayer of beasts. The World of Warcraft team gave us a little insight into each class, and some of the abilities they possess:

Check out Blizzard site for the full news and eight new screenshots.

You can also heard over here to check out another ten new screenshots.

This might be out there already,  but I found this to have a little more information about skills,  spells, PvP and features.

Take a peek at WoW Warcry for the full 5 day report.

Our first appointment at this year's E3 was with World of Warcraft Producer Shane Dahiri who was to take us on a tour of the E3 game build and we were in for a treat as the game has really moved on since we saw it at E3 2003.

Our demo kicked off in the Wetlands, a swampy area just outside the Dwarven lands, you may remember it from the recent gameplay movie. After a quick wander around Shane jumped our character to a sunken ship just off the coast of the Wetland area. The character swam through a hole in the side of the wreck and then climbed aboard the vessel. After a quick demo of the swimming once again Shane explained more about the game's PvP which has been a hot topic of discussion.

Follow the link to the full story . . .

We got a look at Blizzard's upcoming massively multiplayer role-playing game, World of Warcraft, on the show floor at E3. As reported earlier, the game includes five races: dwarves, orcs, humans, tauren, and night elves. Three classes--the warrior, the mage, and the shaman--had also been reported on in the past, but three brand-new classes are being shown off at this year's E3: the hunter, the warlock, and the druid. . . .

Follow the link to the full story.