Player and RP enthusiast Saphrona of the Shadow Council server has compiled all the known information about pirates in Azeroth. Most of the information comes from the WoW pen and paper roleplaying game. Blizzard lore guru Chris Metzen has approved all the lore added to the game by the PnP books, so it's as good as gold.

Saphrona has dug up some interesting facts, such as there are more pirate organizations in the game than just the Bloodsail Buccaneers. Roaming the high (and low) seas of Azeroth are:

• The Blackwater Raiders
• The Southsea Freebooters
• The Southsea Pirates
• The Defias Brotherhood

Also, the Bloodsail Buccaneers are using engineering to secretly construct a submarine fleet and the leader of the Bloodsails believes so strongly in human supremacy of the high seas, that he refused to aid the Alliance in the Third War. Scurvy dog, indeed.

For your pirate lore overview, check out Saphrona's full article on the official forums.

Chris Metzen and Alex Afrasiabi discussed with players at BlizzCon their desire for the World of Warcraft to be more immersive, for the characters to be more believable and relevant, and for the story to be more at the forefront, right alongside gameplay.

So now a professional screenwriter named Cocles submitted a suggestion on the forums as to how that feeling could be created, by letting the world's characters react to you in a more believable way. Here's one of his examples:

Think of how immersive it would be if you were to step into Outland and have Nazgrel look at you and say, "When I sent word to Orgrimmar that we needed more troops, I never dreamed they would send the slayer of C'thun himself to aid us. You will be a great asset to us Cocles, and I am glad to see you here!"

Had I not killed C'thun, or done anything else of note, Nazgrel could instead look me up and down and say, "Well grunt, let's see what you're made of."

Check out Blizzard's response beyond the jump...

Lagerosi asked on the general forums if The Frozen Throne was in fact the end of the war between the Alliance and the Horde. Jheric clarified our current faction status well:

What exists now is essentially a cold war, with the two factions fighting in proxy areas such as Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin, much like the way the U.S. and U.S.S.R. would send weapons and 'advisers' to small countries in Africa and Asia.

With the transition from active warfare has come shifting allegiances, such as the Blood Elves joining the Horde after falling out with the Alliance (pretty much all the fault of one Alliance general), and Dalaran electing for neutrality.

At the Lore panel at BlizzCon Chris Metzen mentioned that some old faces will appear in new ways in future content. We can expect Sylvanas to make an appearance, Bronzebeard will lead us to unlock the mysteries of the world's creation, Hellscream will lead the Horde into Northrend. Keeping this in mind, what heroes would you like to spend more time with? Is there anyone you would especially love to see again?

Many of us have stepped through the Dark Portal into Outland, and in that time dozens of players have mastered the content available there. Now that we have BlizzCon in our sites, all eyes seem to be on what our next expansion will be. As Chris Metzen mentioned at the last BlizzCon, Outland is peppered with portals, each with the potential to open another world for us to explore.

I personally know of two such dead portals, empty and devoid of life. The first is in Zangarmarsh, at the appropriately named Portal Clearing, and the second is in Nagrand. Have you found any other portals in your time in Outland? If so, do you think that the locations of the portals could be a clue to what lies behind them? Going with this theory, we might postulate that the Zangarmarsh portal might lead to the Maelstrom, since that zone is riddled with naga. What do you think?

The image above is what you saw if you visited the official WoW homepage this weekend, and a few players wondered why Blizzard was talking about a real-time strategy game on a site meant to discuss a MMORPG. Yeah, how dare they do that!

But it's a good question-- Starcraft II will be (assuming it does get released) the first game Blizzard has published since WoW, and so there's a lot of questions about how this will all be handled. How much do the audiences actually intersect? (personally I love MMORPGs, but not so much RTS, if only because I'm so bad at them) And how is Blizzard going to connect the two games, if at all-- are we going to see ads for Starcraft on the loading screen for WoW, or even in-game? Blizzard fans will probably buy and enjoy both games, but there is likely a larger percentage of the WoW population who just don't care about an RTS, even if it is another Blizzard game.

Of course, Blizzard has faith in both games serving their audiences well-- not only is the Starcraft team well-equipped to build their game, but WoW, they say, won't suffer one bit. I tend to believe them on that one, as Blizzard undoubtedly hired a lot of people to make sure WoW is running as smoothly as possible, and while Metzen is apparently working on Starcraft as well as directing WoW's lore, I'd doubt the two teams have that many people in common. Of course, rumors persist that Blizzard will be announcing yet another game at Blizzcon. Along with the new expansion, multiple sources are still reporting that we'll hear about Diablo 3 in August. Can it be possible that Blizzard might be split three ways at the same time? And can that possibly be a good thing for WoW's development?