Tickets for the 2008 Blizzard Entertainment Worldwide Invitational convention and tournament being held in Paris, France, will go on sale this Thursday The event will be at the Porte de Versailles Exposition Centre on June 28 and 29, with tickets costing €70 / £55 ($110). Attendees will get hands-on time with WoW expansion Wrath of the Lich King and StarCraft II.

The tournament will have $100,000 in prizes, but all we really care about is the big announcement. Blizzard has a habit of revealing big things at its special events, as it did at last year's invitational in Korea when it announced StarCraft II. Then again, Blizzard could just make us sad Pandaren by neglecting to reveal anything at all.

[Via WoW Insider]

Everyone knows that World of Warcraft is the hottest thing to hit the MMO genre since BakeQuest: The Battle for Sliced Bread. But according to at least one rival developer, that popularity may be starting to dwindle. Speaking to the accurately named VideoGamer.com, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Quest Designer Joel Bylos cites a "feeling on the Internet" as evidence WoW is beginning to lose its appeal. "You get that just from online communities, which of course we all pay attention to as well," Bylos said when asked if people might be getting tired of WoW.

We're sorry, but a "feeling on the internet" probably isn't the best way of measuring satisfaction in a game with 9.3 million paying subscribers (up from 7 million roughly a year ago) and a celebrity-packed ad campaign. Sure, there will always be internet trolls and forum whiners that threaten to leave over every little problem, but by and large the silent majority seems just as hooked on the game as ever. Much like Democrats who promised to move to Canada if George W. Bush was reelected, these vocal complainers seem good at making threats but bad at following through on them. Then again ...

[Via WoWInsider]

If the first few pages of the first issue of the World of Warcraft comic tickled your proverbial fancy, then you might want to check out the online-only issue #0 that MTV Multiplayer recently put up. The series, which is being published by Wildstorm (a branch of DC Comics) and written by former Hawkgirl author Walter Simonson, seems to pay more attention to lore than most comic book adaptations of popular franchises. For instance, on page three, a level 6 human rogue runs up to a level 70 blood elf warlock, calls him a H0M0L0RD, and /spits on him twenty times.

You should be able to find issue #1 in your nearest Cheetos-scented comic book retailer this Wednesday.

Well, BlizzCon is officially over, and folks will have to wait another year to experience it again. Hopefully by this time next year, however, both StarCraft 2 and the WoW expansion Wrath of the Lich King will be on store shelves, or in your hands. Until then we'll be waiting for the dribbles to trickle out of Blizzard with more information.

But, all is not lost. They did send us out with a bang that included 30 minutes of fairly decent comedy with Jay Mohr, a performance by Level 70 Elite Tauren Chieftain (the highlight of the night of which a brief video appears above), and a pretty sweet set from Video Games Live, including the Diablo theme being played on a 12-string guitar. That was the best moment of the night, and makes us wonder even more when there will be some sort of a Diablo sequel.

Check out the gallery below, which contains some new shots from the closing ceremonies. You can always head over after the break to listen to the complete audio of Jay's performance, the L70ETC set, and the Video Games Live goodness. In handy mp3 format for your listening pleasure. Also be sure to check out the exhaustive BlizzCon coverage from WoW Insider, who really brought down the house with their in-depth look at Lich King, and the event as a whole.

Okay, before you start raking me over the coals again like some of you did with my writeup of StarCraft 2, I'll preempt this writeup similarly. However, I've played World of WarCraft a lot longer than I ever did StarCraft, much to the chagrin of my ex-girlfriend. Is there a correlation there? The world may never know.

Anyhow, the preemption part of this post is that I haven't played WoW enough for some of your strict demands. My Human Female Warlock Character is resting on her laurels somewhere around Level 43, and I bought The Burning Crusade, but never installed it. It still sits on the shelf, mocking me, taunting me, and haunting my dreams.

BlizzCon's dance contest brought out some interesting entries on Friday night, especially in the female Blood Elf category, which just about everyone seemed to end up doing. There were also a couple of Murlocs in there, even a baby version, but the icing on the cake has to go to the first guy in the video above.

He shows off "The Origins of the Ogre Dance", and we have to say it takes guts to get up on stage and do this. Literally. Unfortunately, he didn't even win or place, which is a complete travesty. The guy was robbed. The winning entry, which we didn't capture on video, was a guy in a Napoleon Dynamite-esque costume who wasn't half bad (he did the Blood Elf male dance, which is based on Napoleon Dynamite's famous move) ... but imitating Chris Farley's classic SNL skit while at a fan convention for a video game is pure gold.

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction writer, a blogger, and arguably, a futurist. In fact, we'll let Wikipedia do a much more thorough job of informing you who Cory is. After you've digested that, be sure and visit his website, where you can download many of his books for free, and check out Boing Boing, which he co-edits.

I first discovered Cory Doctorow by reading his excellent novel "Down and Out In The Magic Kingdom" a few years ago. I had worked at Disney World for most of 1992, and as a result I've always had a bizarre fascination with all things Disney. So it was somewhat fitting that I caught up with Cory at Disneyland during the recent BlizzCon and asked him about MMOs, WoWers, and other acronyms.

It's pretty impressive when you meet someone who writes extensively about video games, handles digital content and video game R&D for the BBC, and finds time to maintain an extremely popular blog, only to find out that they also rock some high level characters inside of World of Warcraft. Seriously, where do they find the time? By the end of the day, if I've managed to finish at least a third of the items on my to-do list, I feel like I've accomplished a lot. Alice Taylor does all of the above and manages to make me feel damn lazy.

Anyhow, I caught up with her during BlizzCon, and asked her a few questions about her experiences. She asked what my highest level character was, and when I told her a Level 42 Human Warlock, I think her look of scorn was burned into my brain. Forever.

Check out the interview after the break, and be sure to venture over to Wonderland, which is filled with video gaming goodness. Blizzard, take special note: her suggestions for improvements are spot-on. It would be nice to see BlizzCon 2.0 next year with some of these things implemented. Plus, free passes to Disneyland. Although that's just my little addendum.

[UPDATE - now with video, after the break]

BlizzCon brings out the strangest, coolest, and most insanely detailed costumes this side of Outland, and we were front and center at last night's costume contest, hosted by comedian Jay Mohr. He appeared to have taken notes from Jamie Kennedy's appearance at E3, and was actually funny instead of stupid.

Check out the gallery down below for the highlights, and be sure to take a look at the winning Warlock costume. The girl who designed it was patient enough to pose for a billion photos afterwards with her heavy (and lighted!) helmet, and as far as we know she wore it all night. We even saw her waiting in line for the bus with those wings still on. Most entries were from WoW, but there were a couple of nods to other Blizzard games, including a Terran Ghost from Starcraft.

We attended a press conference at BlizzCon this morning that was held far too early for people who had been out all night ogling people in World of Warcraft contests. In attendance were J. Allen Brack, senior producer for WoW, Rob Pardo, the Senior VP of Game Design for Blizzard, and Frank Pearce, Executive VP of Product Development at Blizzard.

One big tidbit that they dropped was the fact that The Wrath of the Lich King expansion pack may require you to have the Burning Crusade as well. Blizzard isn't sure if this will require an additional purchase, or if they will bundle it in at no extra cost. When asked how retailers might react to this, no one had any idea. If you're Joe Retailer and selling copies of Burning Crusade pretty well, will you want to put something on the shelf that will cannibalize those sales, or will you just stop carrying the older title altogether?

Another interesting fact is that if you pick up say, the latest expansion pack a couple of years from now, when there are three are four out, will you have to go back and buy the others? That could get potentially very expensive for players who have already shelled out for the base game and are paying $14.95 a month. What are we, made out of gold? We'll follow this as it develops.

With the now announced and confirmed World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King expansion comes a new Hero Class character, the Death Knight. But what do we know about it? The short answer is "not very much." The longer answer is, "a few things, but still not very much."

The most asked question seems to be, "Can he summon minions to fight with him?" because in the video, they show him reviving corpses or something to that effect. The answer is yes, you'll be able to summon minions, a la Overlord, to help you fight. However, according to Tom Chilton, one of the lead designers for World of Warcraft, "We don't want the Death Knight to be a sort of minion-based fighter. He's focused towards bladed weapons and smashing your head in."

They did at least let us know that they plan on bringing the Death Knight to all character classes, which caused someone to shout out "GNOME DEATH KNIGHTS FOR THE WIN!" Check out the official Death Knight FAQ from Blizzard by follwing that Read link. There's no release date yet, so you'll have plenty of time to dissect, complain, and drool in the intervening months.

How could it not get you fired up? We don't want to blow all the surprises, but watch for the crotch-thrusting transitional effect. Classic. Video Toaster, this isn't.

See the AWESOME video after the break. And score the MP3 for iPhone action.

Like a kid being dragged to church, it feels like Blizzard just didn't want to be at this year's E3. With BlizzCon right around the corner and a slew of announcements and demos planned, Blizzard just seems to have showed up out of obligation.

For World of Warcraft they showed off the new raiding dungeon Zul' Aman. It will be in the Ghost Lands, north of the Eastern Plaguelands. Zul' Aman is designed as a 10 man instance for those done with Karazhan. The Forest Trolls have infused themselves with animal gods and now they are half troll and half beast. A new loot system will have a time limit like the Baron Run in Undead Strat -- the faster you get through it, the better your loot will be. The Amani tribe who reside there have a new game mechanic called the scout who will call for more adds. For those wondering if there will be a return to 40 man raids, it's not in the cards. Tony Hsu, associate producer, says, "Currently we're very happy with the 25 man being the cap -- 10 man content as well."

As was already known, voice chat is in an upcoming patch and so are guild banks. A Blizzard rep says, "We're still trying to test it and evaluate how large it's going to be." Guild masters would be able to give permissions and assign who can access the bank.

StarCraft II? Nothing we didn't already know. Hsu says the thinking behind StarCraft II was, "To make a successor to the original game that's in the flavor of StarCraft, but adding new mechanics and tricks to how you know the game." He says players who have tested the game say it starts the same but feels different about ten minutes in.

That's it, Blizzard is saving it all for BlizzCon. Considering there are no more tickets available, be sure to check on Joystiq and WoW Insider at the time for our coverage. There were no dates for anything given ... what do you want? It's Blizzard.

The Chinese version of World of Warcraft has removed skeletons. Yup, skeletons are no longer in the game. No fighting skeletons and no skeletons signifying you've resurrected. Enemy skeletons now have flesh on them and dead players are symbolized by a tombstone. The9, which runs WoW in China said the change was made due to China's "particular situation and relevant regulations."

No real reason for the change were given, but Chinese WoW players have expressed their unhappiness with the decision. The best possible explanation the Reuters piece could come up with is that in April, China began a campaign to combat "negative online influences" on the Internet. It's aimed at fraud and illegal lotteries (wonder if gold farming is on there?). So enjoy your skeleton-less World of Warcraft China, 'cause for some odd reason the government just doesn't think a skeleton is a "healthy" thing for your body.

Boy, if this is the future of gaming on the iPhone, then someone had better order up a load of bifocals and a side of patience, because just watching this gave us a headache. He's using a program called Telekinesis that basically streams video from your laptop through your iPhone, and it's not like the game was ported to it specifically, but we sincerely hope gaming on the iPhone will eventually look pretty much nothing like this.

Since Apple was so keen on putting games on the iPod, it's a sure bet that there will be gaming happening on their white-hot cell baby at some point. Hopefully it'll be something a little easier to play than World of Warcraft, and it'll make better usage of that multi-touch technology. We knew that web-based iPhone games would be popping up almost immediately, but we also wish those rumors that there was a Nintendo / Apple iPhone gaming merger coming out were true, too.

[Thanks, Joe W.]