I think there are few things more disturbing in the modern world than ill-conceived notions of racial, religious, and sexual divisions. For some reason parts of humanity continue to believe that just because one group or another looks and/or acts differently, they are bad. One of the reasons I enjoy WoW and just games in general is because it allows us to escape the problems this world gives to us, even if only for a few hours a week.

Unfortunately, some people find it necessary to bring their attitudes in game. We've covered some of this before, from border-line inappropriate arena names to sexism in WoW. However while playing an arena game recently fellow writer Amanda Dean came up against a team named "Rosa Parks Stole My Seat," and this name is possibly the most offensive one I've seen. Rosa Parks (for those of you who need a history lesson) refused to go to the back of a bus because of her skin color and continued to sit in the white only section of the bus, despite being told to do otherwise. She represented a key moment in the history of civil rights.

There are 65 arena teams with this racist name.

When Amanda ran into one of the teams she reported it via a GM ticket.

I actually considered asking my boss if this post could be the first in a new series called "Stupid WoW Criminals," but honestly, I'd prefer to think that this guy is one of kind.

So, here's the deal: A young Warlock named Kiranth of the Aman'thul server (Who has since deleted his post, but you find it quoted a couple posts down from the top in the thread) came to the customer service forums, and in this thread here, claimed that he somehow lost his epic flying skill after buying it on a Monday and playing until Tuesday morning maintenance. He claimed that he'd been trying to contact the GMs for months in order to get the skill back, and that he was incredibly frustrated and about to cancel his 3 accounts if he didn't get the skill.

Luckily, the ever vigilant GMs are always willing to please, and Auryk soon chimed in with an answer to his problem.

I'll summarize what he said after the break, but you really should read it for yourself. It's amazing.

You might recall, if you've followed WoW Insider in the past few months, that I've been a relatively strong advocate of the making sure naming and RP server policies are enforced and have felt that if the community's going to be made to it, we should get better tools for the job. While I even got in a very productive conversation with Belfaire about it, I'm not holding my breath on a lot of my proposed tools and reforms seeing the light of day. After all, I work for WoW Insider, not Blizzard itself, and hey, not everyone agrees with me on how this stuff should work. Which is cool. Variety is the spice of life and all.

That said, for policy reporting curmudgeons like myself, Wachunga of the Maelstrom server has created a pretty good tool: the NameViolation addon.

There is a mechanic in game that we are all aware of, and one that exists for a good reason: when we attack a mob, we get the mob's loot. That's the mechanic. If you're solo grinding mobs out in Shadowmoon Valley for some Primal Fire, you want to be sure you're the only one that can get the loot. The same goes for groups – if you're grouping and killing Murmur in Shadow Labs, you want to be sure that everyone is going to get his pretty blues.

But what if the mechanics of the boss fight dictate that you won't hit the boss? In fact, what if successfully killing the boss means that you have to stand on the opposite end of the playing field the whole time? You don't hit the boss, you don't get the loot – but you've done everything right. In this, the game mechanic does not represent fair play, nor does it encourage success. In fact, the mechanics are a complete contradiction of each other.

I've recently encountered this problem, and it's a real pain. Read on after the break for what happened, and what can be done to solve it. It's rather long, but this is a serious problem that Blizzard needs to fix, and all the facts need to be laid out completely and in a way that is full of thruthiness.

It's coming up fast. Pretty soon we will all be standing in that huge line wrapping around the Anaheim convention center, buzzing with excitement. The tickets for this year's BlizzCon sold out in only three days, and if you missed your chance, well be sure to enter the WoW Insider ticket giveaway.

We now know a little more about the event than we did ten days ago. For instance, we know that Blizzard will have a playable Starcraft II demo on the convention floor. If the multiplayer is as enjoyable as it was in the original game, I'm going to need to wear some extra comfy shoes to stand in the line to sit down with the game. Blizzard also announced that Video Games Live will be performing selections from the game's soundtrack. And then there's the infamous Murloc Suit. Need I say more? It's going to be a hell of a time.

How do you plan on getting to BlizzCon this year? I've seen some requests for carpools from various points toward Southern Cali, and honestly, I think I will be hitting the road myself in order to arrive in a timely fashion. But maybe the car isn't your thing. Will you instead fly, or perhaps Amtrak it to the convention center? I know from personal experience there's a shuttle from the Anaheim train station near A's stadium to Disney and back, so that might be an option. What is your chosen means of transport to BlizzCon?

Yes, if you're going to BlizzCon, you can expect to see plenty of WoW Insider staff on-hand to cover all the excitement. And if you aren't at BlizzCon, we'll be posting every last scrap of interesting information we find there on the site, so you'll see everything we see! But, no, I'm not making this post just to mock the poor folks who didn't have a chance to purchase tickets because they sold out. I'm making this post to let all of you know that we have some BlizzCon 2007 tickets to give away! So for those of you who were hoping to go to BlizzCon, don't give up yet. We'll be giving away our tickets by random drawing next week -- so stay tuned!