Excellent podcast this week, if I do say so myself. Last Saturday, right smack dab in the middle of the Worldwide Invitational, I took to the virtual airwaves with Duncor of WoW Radio, and Matthew Rossi and John "BigBearButt" Patricelli of WoW Insider, and we chatted about all of the news coming out of the Worldwide Invitational. On this show, which is now live on WoW Radio, you can hear us talk about:

• What Turpster is up to -- we talked live with him directly from Paris about what he thought of the convention and what he'd seen out there.
• The announcement of Diablo 3, and what is isn't (an MMO or a console game)
• All the class changes that we saw on Saturday, including Warriors' Titan's Grip, Shamans' Hex, and Warlocks' Demonform, and what they meant for each class.
• And finally, what Blizzard meant exactly by that little talent trees comment they threw in on one of the panels.

It's a rip-roaring show, and no matter what you love to do in the World of Warcraft, Matthew, John and Duncor definitely hit on a topic that will interest you. Definitely give it a listen, and don't forget to subscribe in iTunes if you want to get the podcast sent to you automatically every week.

Unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to hit on any email because of all the amazing WWI news, but that's OK, because we'll just talk about twice as much of it next week. If you want to ask a question or have a comment for us, drop us a note at theshow@wowinsider.com, and you might even hear it on next week's show. We do this every Saturday at 3:30pm over on WoW Radio, so tune in next week to hear more commentary and insight about all the news from the last week of WoW.

Happy Monday morning everyone! If you're a fan of World of Warcraft, chances are you heard about the big old shindig Blizzard threw in Paris this week. If you didn't a chance to get to Paris this year or catch any of the news over the weekend, you'll want to keep reading. We had a crack team on the convention floor, and more of us watching the live feeds all weekend, all working hard to deliver up to date reports and analysis. What that means for you is that this is the perfect place to catch up on all the WoW news from Paris. This handy list will direct you to exactly where you want to go to get the information you need.

Liveblogs and other event reporting:

• Opening Ceremony liveblog: If you haven't heard yet, there was a pretty big announcement at this one.
• Developer's Class Panel: There's a little something for every class in here. Find out what's coming for your favorite character!
• Q&A Grab Bag Panel: See what WWI attendees had on their minds, and how the developers answered.
• Dungeons and raids panel: See what's next in the Caverns of Time, Ulduar, and more. Don't forget to check out parts two, three, and four for the whole scoop.
• PvP panel: Find out about Lake Winterspring, siege engines, Arenas, Battlegrounds, and pretty much everything except class balance. Includes pictures! Be sure to check parts two, three, and four as well.
• Arena Tournament, day 1: Amanda Dean breaks down the results.
• Notes from the costume contest: See how creative your fellow fans are -- includes pictures!
• The goodie bag: Even in real life, we like our epic loot. Let us show you the swag.

Of course, if the flood of liveblog information makes your head spin, no worries, we have analysis on every angle and every little tidbit discussed during the Invitational. Check them out after the break.

Here at WoW Insider, we pride ourselves on bringing you the latest, greatest news about the World of Warcraft we all know and love. (You haven't all gone off to play Diablo, have you?) What this means is that we crawled out of bed at what our watch says was three in the morning, even though by local Paris time it was already mid-morning under a sunny sky. We've fought our ways through crowds at the Worldwide Invitational to bring you a front-row seat to today's PvP panel, starting shortly. For the latest updates on the game's PvP system -- right from the developers! -- keep reading for live updates from the panel.

1:46: Siege vehicles! Chilton covers five different types, all usable for both factions:

• The Demolisher: baseline vehicle. Has both short and long-range attacks and a ram attack. Can carry a driver and three passengers. (The passengers are exposed, can be targeted and attacked -- but it also means you can fight back!) Drive-by shootings. The driver is also the gunner.

• Forsaken Catapult: much quicker than The Demolisher (says Chilton: more agile). Not as long range as The Demolisher, doesn't do quite as much damage, doesn't carry any passengers, has a flame attack. Lowest cost vehicle.

• The Siege Engine: hardest-hitting and longest range vehicle. Carries a driver, gunner, and passengers (but not exposed -- which means they can't attack).
• Flying Machine: a flying vehicle that's very quick but fragile. Vulnerable to anti-air weaponry. Carries a pilot and a gunner.

• Goblin Shredder: an anti-air vehicle that fires rockets and can rocket boost yourself into the air to reach air vehicles (or jump over walls!). Essentially a personal armor suit -- if the suit is destroyed, you can jump out and keep fighting. Close-range melee attack. Vulnerable to siege vehicles.

They're still considering how to obtain the vehicles, but they want the process to be fast-paced and fun.

1:55: Time to talk Arenas. Design ideals for these are:

• Keep it simple
• Still leave room to innovate (keep it simple, but add some new twists)
• Dynamic points of interest (read: moving objects)
• Unique starting areas/events. Might put starting teams close to each other.
• Room to grow: we need to be able to make quest adjustments during beta

1:57: Stockton takes center stage again to talk about the two new arenas in Wrath: Dalaran and Orgrimmar.

Dalaran Arena:

• Located in the sewers of Dalaran city. When Dalaran came over to Northrend, it took a large chunk of rock out of the ground with it, including the sewers.This environment seemed like a great fit for the arena.

• Dynamic line of sight: we can move objects in arenas and have the line of sight move with them. Think about the pillar in the Nagrand... and think if that pillar could move. We could make these move randomly or based on a specific timer. This can mix up the gameplay.
  
• Simple layout
• Mounts will not be usable. It's a small arena and wanted to let people get right into gameplay.

There's a pipe in the center of the arena that water will occasionally pour out of. While the water is falling, it will block line of sight. It's a simple layout, but a few dynamic elements that will mix it up. There's a pipe on either side of the arena where each team will start, and a blast of water will push people out of the pipe early on.

It's currently in playtesting.

Orgrimmar Arena:

• There's been an arena in Orgrimmar for a long time in the Valley of Heroes, but Blizz has never done anything with it.
• Elevating pillars will create line of sight (on set timers -- there will be little wheels and gears on the side of the arena that will spin before the pillars move)
• Triggered objects that damage players (thinking as the pillars go down, a wall of spikes may come up -- you can get across them but you'll take some damage)
• Extremely close starting areas: players start on elevators that rise out of the ground ten yards apart from each other. The elevators will be surrounded by spikes that will drop a couple of seconds after the elevator reaches the top -- so you'll have a couple of seconds.
  
• Mounts will be allowed inside -- this arena is a bit larger than Dalaran. Thought this was the perfect place to get NPC spectators who cheer, etc.

These dynamic elements will make each arena feel different. Not testing yet.

2:09: Chilton comes up to talk about Northrend's new battleground

• Tital isle located off the southern coast of Dragonblight
• Attack/Defend gameplay, but a bit different since it's instanced. You play half the game on defense and half the game on offense, switching mid-fight.
• This battleground will have siege vehicles and destructible buildings
• Based on the Titan lore. A lot of Northrend circulates around Titan lore.

2:11: Stockton explains the layout. Attackers will come in on boats and assault the city. Siege vehicles will need to be used to break through the city's walls and break in. The further you get, you'll capture points allowing access to more siege weapons.

They're currently planning it to be 10v10 or 15v15. They BG is currently being play-tested.


Q&A

2:17: Q: Now we have one source of honor, Alterac Valley, and everything else is a source of marks. Some people lose on purpose to get marks quicker. Is there anything being done to solve this problem?
Chilton: It's a very very difficult problem to solve. We find that if we give no rewards for losing a battleground, it's very punishing. That's why we have systems to report players for not participating and we've lowered the number of players who need to report someone. (There is a certain point where the system can't determine how hard you're trying.

2:19: Q: Do you have plans to implement a spectator mode?
Chilton: Definitely on our list of things we want to do. To add to that, we also have the idea of using that spectator mode to extend to other things, in raids for example

Q: Unique (racial) combat moves?
Chilton: We don't plan to add any more racials.

2:24: Q: My girlfriend and I love PvP, but since the Burning Crusade, we feel like we're forced into arenas
Chilton: We do plan to keep a pretty similar sort of reward items.

Q: For the frost mage, some crowd control talents seem to be PvP-oriented, don't you think this could cause unbalance?
Chilton: It's always going to feel that way because bosses tend to be immune to crowd control, but we're trying to open it up.

Q: What do you plan to fix Warlock pet scaling?
A: Right now we're pretty happy with pet scaling. It should be a viable tactic to spend some time attacking the pets. A player has to make a choice. We feel like if that scales very well, it's going to be a viable tactic to just focus on one.

2:34: That's all she wrote, folks! The Invitational's final World of Warcraft panel has come to a close.

We had bloggers onsite for Day 1 at the Worldwide Invitational 2008 in Paris. Elizabeth Harper, Turpster, and Jennie Lees were all in France to provide in-depth coverage with liveblogging, pictures, and videos, and our entire staff was back here in the US to break out the analysis and coverage of the live streams. Here's a roundup of all the posts from Day 1.

Liveblogging

• Opening ceremony
• Developer's panel
• Q&A with Developer's Panel

Analysis by Class

• Death Knight
• Druid
• Hunter
• Mage
• Paladin
• Priest
• Rogue
• Shaman
• Warlock
• Warrior

Analysis by Topic

• Diablo 3 Announcement
• Gear resets
• High expectations
• Linux
• Raid buffs
• Talent trees

Media

• WoW Insider podcast
• Gallery: Diablo 3
  
• Gallery: Splash screen speculation
  
• Gallery: A first look at the WWI digs
  
• Movie: Turpster talks to people waiting in line for WWI
  
• Movie: Turpster amok in Paris

UPDATE: A round up of our entire weekend of coverage can be found here!

A special Worldwide Invitational edition of the WoW Insider Show is about to go live over on WoW Radio in just a few minutes -- myself, John "BigBearButt" Patricelli, Matthew Rossi, and Duncor from WoW Radio will be live on the air talking about all the announcements we heard at WWI '08 this afternoon, and we'll be speaking live with Turpster all the way from the convention in Paris about what he's seen. Subjects of discussion will include Diablo 3, everything we heard at the two dev panels today (Titan's Grip! Two talent trees! Pet talent trees!), as well as all the other news coming out of WWI.

We're also chatting live on IRC with players and listeners -- join us in the #wowradio channel at irc.mmoirc.com. And you can email us any questions you have (for us or Turpster in Paris), at theshow@wowinsider.com. Should be a great show. Come join us right now over on the WoW Radio website.

Update: Show's over and we covered pretty much everything (and got some good info from Turpster). Keep an eye on the site -- there will be a recording posted on WoW Radio later this weekend and on WoW Insider next week. And if you missed the show, you can always subscribe to it in iTunes and get the new one whenever it comes out.

Though Blizzard's Worldwide Invitational has not yet begun (though there are only a few hours to go!), WoW Insider has been checking out the Paris scene and hunting for any clues on Blizzard's next move. (We brought our magnifying glass and everything!) We haven't found any -- even after extensive interrogation of US CM Nethaera -- but we have managed to get a good look at the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles. Check out what's happening by travelling along with Turpster or visiting our Worldwide Invitational gallery!

Mark "Turpster" Turpin is in Paris for the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational and has logged the first video of his misadventures. Join him as he takes a bus ride with Blizzard reps, gets his first look at the Convention hall and explores the oddities of Parisian hotel bathrooms. Cover your eyes, children, it's Turpster at his best.

Blizzard has posted the official WWI schedule on their page, and there aren't a lot of surprises -- lots of tournaments, a few developer panels, and of course the requisite costume and dance contests (no soundalike contest this time around?). The opening ceremony starts everything off Saturday morning at 11:45 (that's Paris time, of course, which is 5:45am EST), and that's when we'll hear about whatever announcements Blizz plans to give us, whether they be new Wrath information, a new Diablo game (cross your fingers!) or a completely brand new IP.

One interesting thing is that the Nihilum live raid is an officially sponsored event -- for some reason I thought that, like their other events, it was an unofficial look at the high-end content, but it's right there on Blizzard's official schedule, and will likely be on their stage as well. That's an interesting connection between some of the game's best players and the actual developer.

It's almost here! Stay tuned for Worldwide Invitational news right here on WoW Insider all weekend, of course -- we'll have people live on the scene, and anything we know all weekend long, you'll know too. More details on our coverage are coming up soon -- it looks to be a terrific event in Paris, and we can't wait to see what Blizzard's got planned for us this time.

Blizzard's 2008 Worldwide Invitational is coming up in a couple of weeks. It looks like they've got a series of interesting events planned including, signings, and even a sneak peek at Wrath of the Lich King. I'm exciting to see how the best of the best fare in the arena tournaments. Blizzard is also touting competitive events for causal players.

Some of the contests are already underway. Blizzard is accepting submissions for the WWI Machinima and TV advertisement contests are currently open. They will be accepting 4-minute movie and 40-second ad submissions until June 16^th. The time frame is the same for the Fan Art Contest, which can feature any of the Blizzard game universes.

I think it would be pretty awesome to go. Sadly, a trip to Paris is a wee bit out of my budget this much. I'll be anxiously awaiting news and information from the attendees. So now it's time to rub it in. Who's going to WWI?