Interesting note from the forums, although apparently quite a few threads are being deleted or locked even as I write this; Jeff "Tigole" Kaplan appeared momentarily in this thread written by a player complaining about the 51-point Restoration Shaman talent, Riptide. The original poster notes Blizzard's guiding philosophy of never shipping a game before they're truly done with it, and contrasts that with the fact that some of Riptide's visual and audio effects are unlikely to be finished in time for Wrath (the spell itself is apparently 100% functional, just not the bells and whistles Blizzard usually programs to accompany player spells and abilities).

Another player down the thread characterizes this as Blizzard caving to demands made by Activision. Tigole appears a few comments down to ban the first commenter for "trolling," adding that the game is still being worked on. The second of the two commenters mentioned is then handed a ban by Tigole as well. One of the response threads that appears to have survived is here, with a set of reactions ranging from sympathy to Tigole to a recountment of EverQuest history to concern over how the two players were banned.

I'm somewhat torn, and had wondered whether the whole thing was a joke; I've not seen Tigole appear on the forums to ban people before (although it's entirely possible he has and I've just missed it). I've seen worse behavior on the forums escape official comment, but it does seem as if the number of complaints (rational or not) has hit fever pitch on the discussion boards. And -- let's be frank -- a lot of it does seem like pretty pointless carping. I've had a chance to see the beta myself now, and I don't think anyone could realistically accuse Blizzard of skipping its usual attention to detail (indeed, the only running complaint I've seen on the beta servers is that they're too popular). Still, these particular bans seem a little out of the ordinary, unless there's something going on I haven't seen.

**EDIT: as of 4:12 pm EST, it looks like the above referenced response post has also been deleted, but the original source thread is still intact.**

It was just a quick sentence that went by almost completely unnoticed, flew totally under the radar. But in an interview which WoW lead designer Jeff Kaplan gave to WoW Vault, he mentioned a heretofore unknown achievement reward coming up in Wrath that will definitely pass the smell test.

Current Wrath beta testers may have been able to peruse the approximately 500 achievements in the current build, but Kaplan has indicated that by the final release there will be 600-700 achievements for players to attempt. One of these achievements, Kaplan said, can be acquired by collecting pets. It seems that if you collect all the available pets in the game -- and I'm not sure if he meant tameable pets or collectible/vanity pets or both -- you will be granted a unique pet in the form of a skunk called Stinker. For my two "scents," I do love me some cute vanity pets, but I'm really glad that WoW doesn't come in a scratch-n-sniff version or with smell-o-vision.

So now it's time for you to earn a WoW Insider achievement! Anyone under the age of thirty who can guess the name of the character in the picture will get this achievement: "Le kittee quel terriblay odeur!!"

Recently Blizzard guru Jeff Kaplan sat down to talk with Eurogamer.fr about the upcoming expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. Now, I don't know about you, but I have been positively drooling for any information we can get from the Blizz devs ever since the announcement was made at BlizzCon.

The interview asks some pointed questions about the problems encountered with TBC and what Blizz might have learned from them. How about the daunting attunement and access difficulties that hardcore players encountered when they first loaded the expansion onto their computers? Kaplan points to how they realized that access to the instances needed to be tweaked and they did so with recent patches. Blizz would like to have world events that include the whole server again, much like Ahn'Qiraj (and I couldn't agree more, as long as the guild that opens the event doesn't do it on Monday morning like they did on Elune), and they are looking to avoid with Wrath what Kaplan "personally consider[s] a mistake in the Burning Crusade."

In addition to world events and the possibility of unlocking an attunement for all a player's characters once one of them has achieved it, Kaplan also says they are looking into improving the trade skills with Wrath. He points to leatherworking as an example of a trade skill that received little lovin' in TBC. Essentially leatherworking became obsolete as players entered Outland and received dropped items that were superior to anything they could make. "In the Wrath of the Lich King, we want everyone to be satisfied with the trade they choose and we want it to be rewarding. Therefore we're going to analyse[sic] everything we did with The Burning Crusade and previously to work out what was good and what was missed out."

Joystiq managed to get a interview with World of Warcraft's lead designer, Jeff Kaplan, (you may know him as "Tigole" on the forums) - and there's some interesting stuff here. Of course there's a lot of info here, but some of the most interesting talk revolves around the new PvP system. As was posted earlier, the system will consist of arena matches of 2v2, 3v3, or 5v5 which will can be alliance v. horde, alliance v. alliance, or horde v. horde and cross-server. And the honor system as we know it will be gone entirely - to quote Kaplan:

It's a competitive-based ladder that uses a rating system similar to the chess ELO rating. One of the key differences is that we require a minimum number of games that you have to play. Unlike in the chess system where if you're on top, you can just sit there, we wanted to ensure that the No. 1 guy can be knocked off his top spot. But, we don't require too many games. We'll require something around ten games.

Further, honor points as we know them will be significantly changed. There will be no more honor decay and instead of determining your PVP rank, the honor points you accumulate can be spent to purchase PVP gear.

And other tidbits touched on by the interview include...

• News that there's been some thought about implementing voice chat in the game, though it won't be coming in the Burning Crusade.
• Dungeons (though whether all dungeons, or simply expansion dungeons) will have a "normal" and "hard" difficulty setting, and loot will be adjusted accordingly.
• They're currently anticipating new races with every expansion - though there is a finite limit on the number of races in Azeroth.

I can't help but be excited about this news.