Curse.com, a portal that offers many tools for MMO players, has purchased MMO-Champion.com from Major League Gaming.  MMO-Champion.com is one of the most popular World of Warcraft news sites boasting more than 7 million unique visitors and over 80 million page views a month.  The site is popular for it’s simple design and Blue Tracker as well as providing many sneak previews of upcoming changes to WoW.  MMO-Champion’s founder and administrator, Fabien Bonte, will be joining Curse as a full-time employee and maintains that “99% of the decisions on the site” will still be made by him.  While Curse has been a leading provider of MMO tools and resources since being founded by Hubert Thieblot in 2005, some gamers will also be wary of the deal since Curse, along with WoWInterface, led to the downfall of WoWMatrix.  Here is the press release as found on MMO-Champion.com:

San Francisco, CA – July 19, 2010 – Curse, Inc. announced today the purchase of the #1 World of Warcraft news site, MMO-Champion.com. The site was bought from Major League Gaming for an undisclosed amount.

MMO-Champion is a natural fit for Curse which already possesses the largest repository of add-ons available for MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) games such as World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online and Runes of Magic as well as extremely popular forums for Runescape, Aion and Final Fantasy XIV. The World of Warcraft news site attracts 7 million unique visitors and more than 80 million page views per month (Google Analytics WW, June 2010). The combination makes Curse the #1 MMO destination online.

“The acquisition of MMO-Champion markedly sets Curse apart from the competition,” said Hubert Thieblot, CEO and Founder. “Not only does the addition solidify Curse as the largest MMO destination on the web, but it plays a central role in delivering a complete Curse MMO solution. Curse is now the ultimate resource for MMO news, forums, databases, and add-ons.”

Gamers and advertisers alike will benefit greatly from MMO-Champion’s purchase by Curse. In the next few months, visitors can expect an updated page design and improved user experience. To insure the site’s strong content offering will not be compromised, Fabien Bonte, the site’s founder and administrator, will be joining the Curse staff as a full-time employee. Advertisers can take advantage of Curse’s extended reach into the core MMO market, making MMO gamers easier to connect with than ever. For more information about Curse and MMO-Champion, please visit www.curse.com.

While the acquisition of sites is nothing new, patrons of the site may fear that things will change a bit too much for their liking.  One of the major draws of the site currently is the ease of finding information as it is basically a blog featuring the days news in full layout on the front page.  A redesign as well as the addition of premium content may hurt the sites fan base but some features may be getting an upgrade as well, so time will tell if the move is positive or not from a gamers perspective.

Bornakk!

A couple of my personal favorites:

• Q: Are Mimir and Mimiron supposed to be the same entity, or are they relatives?
  A: Same entity, though only his close friends are allowed to call him Mimir.

• Q: What happened to Algalon after Ulduar? It didn’t seem like he was just going to go back to business-as-usual.
  A: As shown in the World of Warcraft Special #1 comic, Algalon is currently monitoring the activities of the mortal races of Azeroth. His outlook on life and the titans’ plans has been called into question, so he seeks to understand what makes Azeroth so different from the countless worlds he has observed before.

You can find the complete thread here

Blizzard announced today that they will be hosting a charity event on the eve of Blizzcon this year, on October 21 at the Hilton Anaheim hotel.  In addition to scoring you a pass to Blizzcon, the $500 per-person donation gets you a nice meal, the opportunity to rub elbows with Blizzard’s illuminati, a signed work of art, and a tax deduction, since the proceeds benefit the CHOC Children’s Foundation.  In response to this announcement, millions of people who want to go to Blizzcon have asked what CHOC is.

It’s short for Children’s Hospital of Orange County.  CHOC is the 18th busiest children’s hospital in the United States, and just a few miles up I-5 from Blizzard’s headquarters.  Founded in 1964, CHOC now serves the unique needs of over 200,000 children per year in their hospital, mission hospital, and numerous clinics and outreach programs.  Here are some facts about CHOC that we find very cool:

• CHOC enrolls the highest number of children in insurance programs in the state of California.
• CHOC surgeons were the first in the world to successfully complete a pulmonary resection in a child using a robotic system.
• CHOC has the nation’s first and only American Diabetes Association-certified pediatric diabetes program.
• CHOC conducted the nation’s first balloon dilation of a cardiac lesion, now a routine cardiac procedure.

Blizzard expects to sell out a limited number of tickets to this event, so if you want to participate, set a reminder for July 13.  That is the day that tickets go on sale on the Blizzcon website, and Blizzard intends to close the sale if they have not sold out within two days.

Baltharus the Warborn

The first thing that caught my eye about the Sanctum is the inclusion of three sub-bosses Savianna Ragefire, Baltharus the Warborn and General Zarithrian.  At first I assumed there would be an activated hard mode a la Obsidian Sanctum but that is not the case.  I admit I’m somewhat disappointed since I am a fan of the activated hard mode.  Each of these bosses will drop a frost emblem and have some interesting mechanics that I won’t spoil here.

Halion, the main boss of the Ruby Sanctum

The main battle of the Ruby Sanctum is with Halion.  According to much of the information available, Halion is not the most complicated fight a raid team will find in Northrend but does require some teamwork and strategy.  Again, I won’t spoil the mechanics here because if you’re at all like me you enjoy entering new fights with a bit of ignorance.  Did the player base want an extremely hard experience in the final stage of WotLK raiding?  I can’t say since everyone differs in preference but I will say that for a one-off raid instance it looks like Blizzard has a firm idea of how they prefer to tune these encounters, and that is generally less difficult than the full-fledged, 10+ boss instances.

Lastly, let’s talk gear.  It’s important since these are the purples you will wear until Cataclysm when you start to get those “epic greens”.  You will not be replacing everything you have gotten out of Icecrown Citadel but you can patch some holes in your gear.  There is a little something for everyone and the iLevels are equivalent to those that you find on Lich King gear.

Overall the Ruby Sanctum does what it sets out to do.  It begins the story arc towards Cataclysm as well as give players a little something to hold them over while they wait.  Let’s face it, we’ve been in ICC for the past 6 months and some people are starting to get a bit weary of the fights and this will give those players something to do in the meantime.

Post a comment with your views of the upcoming Ruby Sanctum and you will be entered to win a DVD from the German Medieval Martial Arts series entitled “German Medieval Marital Arts:  The Poleaxe“.  What could be better than that?  A winner will be selected at random.

Some quick links to Ruby Sanctum info:

• WoW.com’s Guide to Halion
• MMO-Champion.com Ruby Sanctum Info compilation
• wowwiki.com Ruby Sanctum

It should be noted that the imagery here is of models that are a work in progress.  This may not be identical to the final look of the female worgen when Cataclysm is finalized.

The female worgen in a cloth dress

There are three more images after the jump, and our commentary!

The female worgen in typical leather armor

The female worgen sporting chain mail

A plate-wearing female worgen

Our first reaction to seeing these images is very positive.  Blizzard has not only walked the fine line between difficulties when producing a model that has both human and animal characteristics, but they’ve also nailed the details!  We’re very much in favor of the female worgen as she looks today.  We’re predicting that the majority of worgen you see in game next year will be of the more fair gender.

What do you think?  Leave your comments below, as Blizzard is reading!

Official word from Blizzard today finally confirms the development of a system that has been among the  improvements most-requested by players for years: access to the AH from outside the game itself.  Bornakk posted:

Since the launch of the World of Warcraft Armory, we’ve been regularly releasing updates and new features designed to help players stay connected to the game even when they’re not logged in. Today, we wanted to give you a heads-up about a new service now in development that will let players access the Auction House directly through the Armory website or Armory App for iPhone or iPod touch.

While there are still plenty of details to be worked out, we’re designing the service to offer auction functionality similar to what’s available in-game. Players have been requesting — and we’ve been hoping to implement — a feature like this for a long time, and we’re excited that the Armory and the game have evolved to a point that makes it possible.

This is a fairly complex service to develop, due in large part to its unprecedented integration with the game, so we don’t have an exact release date yet. It’s important to note here that certain elements of the service will be premium-based, which we’ll go into more detail on once the service functionality is finalized. As with all of the services we offer, we plan to integrate the Auction House and Armory in a way that won’t disrupt the gameplay experience, and we won’t release it until it meets the quality standards that we’ve set for our other features and services. You may be seeing bits and pieces of the Auction House service pop up in the test builds we use for the public test realms as we go through the process of internal testing. We’ll have more info to share with you here and at http://www.WorldofWarcraft.com as we get closer to release.

We’re very excited about this.  You can join in the discussion on The Instance forums here.

Click here to jump over and check out some of the spreads and content coming! Is ten bucks per issue too much? I say it depends on the content and the quality, and so far, it sounds awesome. Time will tell. Again, more here.

Over the past five years, a lot has changed in Azeroth. Valiant heroes have travelled the length and breadth of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms, taken wing in Outland to free the Black Temple from Illidan’s clutches, and set sail for Northrend to battle the mighty Lich King. Whether you’ve been part of the adventure from the beginning or are just getting started now, we’re glad to have you with us for the five-year anniversary of World of Warcraft and the 15-year anniversary of the Warcraft series.

Help Blizzard celebrate by checking out their hot new mini-site!

As of 11AM PDT, we can assuredly report that the next BlizzCon convention will not be held in Las Vegas.  A Blizzard source has assured us that the rumor on this subject is just that.  Furthermore:

• Blizzard is not commenting on whether or not the next BlizzCon will be held in 2010.
• Blizzard is not commenting on why their name is associated with the Las Vegas Convention Center calendar.
• Blizzard is not commenting on where the next BlizzCon may be held.

That last point is key.  Wherever the next BlizzCon is held, it will not be in Las Vegas.