WOW News Blog

World of Warcraft and its creators has been filed a lawsuit by a Beijing based software company for allegedly using its Chinese character fonts illegally in the game. The lawsuit was said to have been filed last Friday, Spokesman Song Zhenying for Founder Group also mentioned that the company seeks a 100 million Chinese Yuan or 13.2 million U.S. dollars in damages. News of the lawsuit was yet to be heard from the Chinese media until recently. Song said that the Chinese version of the world of warcraft that is run by Shanghai-based, New York-listed The9 Ltd. is using 5 Chinese character fonts that were developed by Founder but were used without their permission. Employees have discovered these violations while playing the game. A date for the court hearing has not yet set up to this time. “World of Warcraft,” launched by U.S.-based Blizzard Entertainment Inc., is the world’s most popular online game and has more than 3.5 million subscribers in China. The spokesman for The9 said that lawyers for their company are still studying the lawsuit and has no further comments. Founder Group is a software company and computer maker founded in 1986.

Players have been anticipating and waiting for the guild banks for quite some time now. The feature was expected long before the Burning crusade expansion was about to come out, but still didn’t make the cut because of the major bug fixes and balancing Blizzard had to prioritize. Currently it is still being worked on by developers of the game, but official news from the WOW Europe forums has leaked from Vaneras which is the Blizzard poster and Community manager that the feature will be coming out in 2.3. Many players are hoping for this development because of the lack of space for items is still a rising problem in the game. Details on how the Guild bank works and the systems on using it has yet to come out.

The patch 2.2.0 has some changes and notes that you should know. The new Steady Talasite recipe (boosts resilience and stamina) is now available from Halaa Vendors, which Jewelcrafters should take note of. You can purchase it for your carefully hoarded research tokens. There is also a new recipe for Ragesteel shoulders which Blacksmiths can also obtain from an unknown creature in Shadowmoon valley. In addition to this, Blizzard has reduced the number of pieces required to get the benefits of the Ragesteel set bonus, making the armor very viable in PvE and PvP environments now. Finally, Engineers get a cooldown for the engineer-made Parachute Cloak.

On the quest side, you can now get either a Darkrune or a fragmented Darkrune from the quest Banish the Demons. Another quest that had its rewards modified is the Relic’s Emanation quest which had the money reward decreased and the Ogri’la faction reward raised. The Bomb Them Again quest has been made slightly easier with the cooldown of the Skyguard bombs lowered to five seconds from the previous 10 seconds.

The changes look pretty sweet, and should make for a more fluid experience in playing WoW. Hopefully, we’ll be seeing more changes implemented to balance out the quests and open more options to various professions in the game.

The BlizzCon gaming expo held over the weekend had revealed some great updates for the upcoming World of Warcraft movie. Thomas Tull has said that they are aiming to release the movie at 2009 but is still in the early stages of pre-production with still no director and cast. Tull said that Legendary Pictures is aiming to create an epic with a budget of over a $100 million will be committed. The movie was said to be set a year earlier in the timeline of game and would certainly include races and terrain from the game. Tull said that they are still in the script writing process and are still working out details in aiming for a PG-13 rating. He also said that they are on the lookout for a director with the caliber of Zak Snyder (300) or Chris Nolan (Batman Begins).