In the MMO world there is one large elephant in the room: World of Warcraft. If forum postings were to be believed, there are those who love it and those who hate it with nary a soul in between. But, believe it or not, MMORPG.com's Isabelle Parsley IS one of the in-betweens and she's got a few things to say about World of Warcraft since she's rejoined the game post-Cataclysm. Check out her thoughts and then give us your reaction in the comments below.

A quick tangent here: yes, I know WoW has issues. No, I’m not saying it’s a perfect game. I no longer debate these things with anyone who is so entrenched on one side or the other that they can’t even consider a point of view other than their own. Zealotry and fanaticism are distasteful and pointless in terms of debate, no matter what the subject. End tangent.

Read more of Isabelle Parsley's Player Perspectives: I’ve been WoWed – sue me.

Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw is at it again in the Zero Punctuation video review of World of Warcraft Cataclysm. There's just so little that can be said about it...you just have to watch. It's a wild, fast talking, profanity spewing, side-splittingly funny ride. Check it out by clicking the image below.

Blizzard has announced that the LP version of the soundtrack from World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has been released to iTunes. The new version features bonus content including behind-the-scenes artwork, seventeen tracks and a bonus track only available on the LP download.

Want to bring the music from the latest World of Warcraft expansion with you anywhere you go? The World of Warcraft: Cataclysm soundtrack is now available as an iTunes LP from the iTunes Store, featuring 17 eminently epic tracks as well as special bonus content including artwork, liner notes, and behind-the-scenes interviews. If you previously purchased a copy of the Cataclysm soundtrack album from iTunes prior to the release of this special LP version, don't worry -- you'll be able to receive the bonus content at no additional charge.

The Cataclysm LP Soundtrack is $9.99 on iTunes. Check out the full list of tracks on here.

Since the World of Warcraft Cataclysm expansion was released just over a month ago, there has been a lot of discussion among players about the difficulty of Heroic dungeons. Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has penned a new article discussing why the dev team made the decision to make those dungeons as hard as they are: In short, 'heroic' is supposed to mean something and that players need the challenge.

First, let me state that we do hear you. We understand some of you aren’t having fun and preferred the Lich King paradigm, or at least something closer to the Lich King paradigm. We greatly appreciate the feedback and it always makes us sad when players aren’t having fun. We're not ignoring you. We get it. We may not always agree on every point, but we understand where you’re coming from, and we want to try to help you understand where we're coming from.

The bottom line is that we want Heroics and raids to be challenging, and that is particularly true now while the content is new and characters are still collecting gear. They’re only going to get easier from here on out. We want players to approach an encounter, especially a Heroic encounter, as a puzzle to be solved. We want groups to communicate and strategize. And by extension, we want you to celebrate when you win instead of it being a foregone conclusion.

The balance of the article gives frustrated players a few tips to improve their experiences within the Heroic dungeons.

Read more here.

In The Rant this week, MMORPG.com's Adam Janovyak discusses using Microsoft Kinect to play World of Warcraft utilizing FAAST (Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit). Adam walks readers through his WoW Kinect adventures and renders an opinion or two while he's at it. Check out The Rant and then let loose in the comments below.

In case you haven’t heard you can use Kinect for the Xbox 360 for pretty much anything on your computer now, even to play MMOs. Using a program titled Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit (or FAAST as I will refer to it from here on out) you can play WoW, or any MMO I would imagine, using your body. WoW was what they demoed so that’s what I used. FAAST is incredibly easy to install. All you have to do is follow the directions on their website which I will provide… NOW! All the other programs you need to make FAAST work with your Kinect are on there too.

Read more of Adam Janovyak's The Rant: Kinect-ing with WoW.

Blizzard's Community Manager Jonathan Brown (alias Zarhym) has a new post on the official World of Warcraft forums about planned changes coming to the Shaman class. The list is not a huge one but seems to have the Shaman community fired up with sixteen pages of comments already posted.

Those changes were only announced in the context of warlock changes. I recognize though that the first draft of patch notes did not yet have shaman changes listed. In light of that -- and to hopefully dissuade you all from invading the warlock forum about the changes I listed there -- below you'll find the tentative shaman notes. The patch notes will likely be updated to include these changes tomorrow evening.

Shaman

• Chain Heal’s effectiveness has been increased by approximately 10%.
• Hex now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.
• Purge now dispels a single effect instead of two.

Read more here.

Blizzard has announced that over 4.7 million copies of the World of Warcraft Cataclysm expansion were sold in the month following its release on December 7, 2010. According to Blizzard's internal sales partnership statistics and its own sales data, this is a record single-month sales record for a PC title.

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm was simultaneously released in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Europe, Russia, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand on 7th of December , and became available in Korea and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau on 9th of December. With day-one sales topping 3.3 million copies,* World of Warcraft: Cataclysm became the fastest-selling PC game of all time, shattering the previous record, which was held by the second World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King.

Read more here.

The World of Warcraft Mobile Armory application has been given a free update with support for the Cataclysm expansion. UI improvements have been implemented, Cataclysm items, classes, races, etc. have been added and the app has been reskinned to match the new WoW community site.

The World of Warcraft Mobile Armory App is available from the App Store on iPhone and iPod touch or at www.itunes.com/appstore. For more information on the World of Warcraft Mobile Armory, visit our Mobile Armory page.

Read more here.

As part of the streamlined World of Warcraft community site, the team has posted a new handy-dandy guide to travel in Azeroth. The guide includes information about mounts available, what levels they can be obtained, flight masters, zeppelin travel and more.

Azeroth is a large world and it's recently become much larger. There are hills to climb, deserts to explore, fjords to ford, and a vast sea separating the continents. And let’s not forget that beyond Azeroth proper there lies a whole other shattered world -- Outland. Traveling has never been more interesting, and for some, confusing. To help you with getting around, we’ve compiled a list of some of the more common ways you can see the world, meet new creatures, and (likely) be killed by them.

Read more here.

All hail innovation! A group of intrepid University of Southern California students have created and released FAAST, or the Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit compatible with the XBox Kinect. Using FAAST, folks can map body movements and gestures. To put the program through its paces, the group used FAAST to play World of Warcraft via Kinect. The results are AWESOME as the video shows a group member casting spells, moving the camera and more.

In this video, we show how FAAST can be used to control off-the-shelf video games such as World of Warcraft. Since these games would not normally support motion sensing devices, FAAST emulates keyboard input triggered by body posture and specific gestures. These controls can be dynamically configured for different applications and games.

Source: Mashable.

Click the image below to check out the video on YouTube.

The World of Warcraft development team has started an interesting series of blog posts about the 'movers and shakers' in Azeroth and their collective metamorphosis since The Shattering that came with the Cataclysm update. The series starts with a look at Orc powerhouse, Thrall, and gives a retrospective look at the way Thrall used to look and the way he looks now.

One of the most notable metamorphoses in Cataclysm is that of Thrall. Thrall He's worn many titles in his lifetime: slave, gladiator, shaman, chieftain of the Frostwolf Clan, and, most recently, warchief of the Horde. Now, as the son of Durotan puts down the mantle of warchief and takes up the simple garb of a shaman once again, we take a look back at his journey and the events that shaped him into the orc he is today.

Read more here.

The official developer blog at the World of Warcraft site has been updated by Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street. The team is beginning to list out some of the systems and features that it's looking at for future tweaks. Street issues a caveat by saying that this is a preliminary list and not necessarily all-inclusive.

PvE

We’re happy with damage overall. We have very few traditional tank and spank fights (even Argaloth likes to parry melee) so it’s hard to get consistent numbers without very large data sets. Still, we see Survival hunters and Unholy DKs on top of a lot of single target fights. Arcane, Marksman, and Beastmaster damage is too low. Retribution, Shadow, and Fire and Frost mage damage might be too low, but we’re still watching them. We aren’t seeing a lot of Subtlety rogues in PvE yet, so that sample size is still small. On fights where there is a lot of area damage, Demonology warlocks, Frost DKs and possibly Survival hunters are all too high. Shadow priest AE, mostly due to a weak Mind Sear, feels too low.

Healing in PvE is working out pretty much as intended. There are some Heroic dungeon bosses that are probably tougher than the required item level average permits. In general, you might have a tough time upon zoning into a Heroic dungeon with a bunch of strangers as soon as Dungeon Finder permits, especially if your group isn’t willing to communicate and work together. We want Heroics to be challenging -- if you want to zerg the content, stick to normal dungeons.

Tank balance overall seems good at this point in time. Threat seems to be in a good place -- good tanks don’t have much of a problem, but they can’t “phone it in” either. We’re seeing all four tanks get a lot of use, even on Heroic raid fights. That could change as more guilds are able to make serious heroic attempts.

Read more here.

World of Warcraft has been completely remade with the recent Cataclysm expansion. MMORPG.com Industry Relations Manager Garrett Fuller takes a look at all of the Cataclysm features that have made it nearly a new game. From the remade quests and leveling mechanics to the new classes, Garrett gives a comprehensive look at World of Warcraft: Cataclysm.

At Blizzcon 2009, fans were treated to a sneak peak at the next expansion for World of Warcraft. Cataclysm would change the game forever, taking the old world that players had gotten used to and after six years of Warcraft, the world was destroyed. The cinematic was all over the place even making it into a commercial during an NFL broadcast. With all the hype, let’s start the review of Cataclysm by looking at what Blizzard has done to the world of Azeroth.

Read more at the MMORPG.com World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Review.

In The Rant this week, MMORPG.com's resident ranter, Adam Janovyak, reveals a daring and horrendous secret: His World of Warcraft account has been hacked. If that's not enough to send flurries of obscenities flying into the pre-holiday air, nothing is. Check out Adam's thoughts about being hacked by a dirty rotten no-good scoundrel and then let us know about your experiences in the comments below.

“You might want to check on your WoW account because I think it’s been hacked.”

My mouth became immediately dry and my palms started to sweat as a knot formed in my guts. I hung up the phone without another word, and sheepishly attempted to login to my account. Sure enough, my password doesn’t work. Beautiful.

Read more of The Rant: Integrity Compromised.

Blizzard dev 'Ghostcrawler' has penned a new blog post on the World of Warcraft community portal called "Threat Needs to Matter". He begins the post with the obvious: A tank's job is to draw bad guys to him/her and to protect the rest of the group from direct attack. The rest of the post outlines the importance of threat. It's a great read so be sure to head over.

We don’t usually want DPS classes to have to stop attacking in order to keep from generating too much threat. We do want players to pay attention. We don’t think it’s too much to ask for DPS and healers to wait a couple of GCDs for the tank to get the enemy under control -- we’re not asking for five stacks of Sunder Armor these days. What we really mean by proper threat management is knowing things like when it’s time to go all out, when it’s appropriate to use a threat-reducing cooldown, and most importantly, which is the right target to be attacking. I’m not trying to bash pugs here, but I am amazed at how often a nuker will pick a random target instead of the one being tanked, then blame the tank for not holding aggro (and then blame the healer when they die). In short, if threat is too easy, the game is boring. If threat is too difficult, the game is frustrating.

Read more here.

Blizzard has announced a free 10-day trial of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm to those who have yet succumbed to purchasing the latest expansion. The announcement was made via the new community portal and offers players the opportunity to fully explore Cataclysm.

To participate, you’ll need full versions of World of Warcraft and the first two expansions, The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King. Note that a character of at least level 78 is required to explore the new, high-level zones. More information on the 10-day free trial is available in our FAQ. We look forward to seeing you in the new Azeroth!

Read more here.

MMORPG.com's resident ranter, Adam Janovyak, is ready to take on the unavoidable: World of Warcraft's Cataclysm expansion. Adam raves about Cataclysm becoming the overwhelming force in his life right now, though maybe not for the reasons you think. Cataclysm has given Adam fodder for The Rant. Check it out and then rant yourself in the comments below.

Here is what I’m mad about right now, Cataclysm. It’s consumed all of my senses. It’s everywhere and I can’t get away from it. I really didn’t want to write about it at all. I started and abruptly deleted ten different articles, honest to god. Nothing was flowing from my creative faucet (see? Lame!), I just wasn’t feeling it. Every single website I went to, including this one, had articles and banner adds that just sent the Cataclysm disease raging inside my system. No amount of vitamin C or penicillin could combat the illness.

Read more of The Rant: Unavoidable.

Blizzard's juggernaut, World of Warcraft, has been declared the 'fastest selling MMO on the planet' and devs have the numbers to back up the assertion. Over 3.3 million copies of the Cataclysm expansion sold in only twenty-four hours. These numbers eclipse the former title holder, Wrath of the Lich King, by more than a half-million copies.

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm was simultaneously released in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Europe, Russia, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand on December 7, and became available in Korea and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau on December 9. More than 10,000 stores throughout the world opened their doors at midnight to welcome players who wanted to be among the first to obtain a copy of the expansion. In addition, approximately 15,000 players attended official launch events hosted by Blizzard and key retail partners in the US, Canada, France, Germany, Russia, Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain, the UK, and the region of Taiwan.

If you haven't already joined the masses playing WoW: Cataclysm, you can find out more here.

In her latest Player Perspectives column, Isabelle Parsley reveals her love/hate relationship with World of Warcraft. After a two year hiatus, Isabelle is bac albeit in the form of a trial account. See what she thinks of Blizzard's World of Warcraft as it is today and then let her know what you think in the comments section below.

I’m going to start with the usual disclaimer regarding my WoW-position. I am neither a WoW-fangirl nor a WoW-hater. I think it’s a great game, even though it does sit in the corner of the MMO world like the 800 pound gorilla everyone wants to either emulate or kill (or turn into a hunter pet). And I do think its developers know a thing or two when it comes to designing a game, even if the playstyle they encourage isn’t necessarily one I always enjoy. I’ve played it several times, off and on, over the past 6 years, which is an experience most of the people I know share – I don’t know many people who have played nothing but WoW all this time (though I do know a few), but almost everyone I know has tried, left, and returned to WoW at some point.

Read more Player Perspectives: Cataclysm-Me.