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We're probably the last people that you'd expect to be excited for a film set in the universe of World of Warcraft, but that's the position we find ourselves in now. The movie, Warcraft, is supposed to be a live-action version that takes on Blizzard's franchise, but video game movies are notoriously awful. We've been burned before. That's not to mention the fact that the Warcraft mythos is sprawling and any slight miscalculation on the film's part will be seen as a travesty. Even so, it's been revealed that Duncan Jones, director of sci-fi darling Moon, will be at the helm, and that's left us cautiously optimistic.

World of Warcraft is a community as much as it is a game, and sometimes that community has been called on to help out the real world. Blizzard, the company behind WoW, has hosted fundraising efforts in the past for charities like St. Jude Children's Hospital, the Make a Wish Foundation, and even the relief effort after the devastating 2011 tsunami in Japan. Their latest call to action for players has broken all of their previous fundraising records. Blizzard announced last week that World of Warcraft players have raised $2.3 million dollars for Hurricane Sandy relief.

Minecraft has been around for a while now -- ages in Internet years -- and we've seen some incredible structures and locations built in the blocky world simulator. Sure, the scope of builds became virtually limitless once people figured out they could throw together some code and use a script that analyzes data from an outside source and then automatically translate it to in-game Minecraft blocks, but even then, some builds are just ridiculous. Case in point, World of Warcraft built in Minecraft. The project has been under construction for quite some time, but the beta was just released. Head on past the break to check out comparisons between the two games, as well as more info on the project.

Every so often, a glitch or exploit will be discovered that causes massive amounts of World of Warcraft folks to die. This typically has something to do with incorrectly set flags, or similar circumstances, that then cause a chain reaction as more folks exacerbate the problem. It wasn't that long ago that Death Knights found they could cast their plagues on friendly units and caused a mass extinction of their own. Yesterday, an exploit was used to fly around killing everyone in range, thus nuking entire cities across multiple servers.

A bug in World of Warcraft allowed Death Knight players to cast plagues on friendly characters, triggering untold levels of destruction in Azeroth on Friday night. Players looking to enjoy a regular raiding, looting, questing session of WoW may have been met with a rude awakening when they logged on to find that whole towns of players and NPCs had been turned into piles of bones.

Getting a quick self portrait of your World of Warcraft toon in some newly minted gear. We've all been there, posing for posterity. Through some diligent digital detective work, though, a group of players has uncovered something a touch unseemly -- every WoW screenshot is tagged with a digital screenshot, leaving a record of the player taking the shot, a timestamp indicating when the picture was captured, and information about the realm the player is in at the time, including its IP address -- which could be bad news for players who are running on private servers to escape the monthly subscription fee built into adventuring in Azeroth.

There are some pretty heavy economic sanctions businesses have to deal with under United States law. A number of these have to deal with Iran, because the US isn't what you'd call a fan of their government. However, digital goods and the like have a tendency to be mostly ignored; this isn't because they aren't against the law, per se, but because it's a difficult thing to effectively track and stop. In order to comply with these sanctions, however, it looks like Blizzard has finally blocked access for Iranians to World of Warcraft.

Some might argue that Blizzard is "panda"-ring to fans with their newest expansion to the popular World of Warcraft franchise, Mists of Pandaria. What's actually hard to disagree with is that the company sure does know how to make a cinematic trailer. Blizzard revealed the official trailer for Mists of Pandaria and, while it might not have the same impact as Cataclysm's, it's a doozy. The lost continent of Pandaria supposedly holds many secrets for both Alliance and Horde factions.

It's time to change your passwords, World of Warcraft fans! The security of Battle.net has been compromised, Blizzard president Mike Morhaime announced earlier this week. The breach has since been found and closed, but not before a  big ol' list of user names, answers to security questions, and data related to Blizzard's special Battle.net Authenticator software was taken from their servers.

Remember when the Pandarens were just Blizzard's running joke? Remember when they weren't the center of an entire World of Warcraft expansion? Those were good days. We now have the release date for Mists of Pandaria, and the prices for three different editions of the expansion. "This one's on the house!"

What better way to honor the birth of a new year than the falling of a dreaded enemy? That was the thinking from the writer at the Domestic Scientist, who wanted to celebrate the victory of the Molten Core Swim Club guildmates over World of Warcraft's dreaded Deathwing. The resulting celebratory cake is a thing of beauty, even if some of the horns didn't survive the baking process. See more pictures, after the break.

We already know Blizzard is the king of the video game world, especially after fusing with Activision and going Super Saiyan 5, but just how large is their kingly crown? Aside from owning World of Warcraft, both the bane and champion of the video game industry and MMO market, which millions upon millions of users pay a monthly subscription to play, generating an ever-flowing river of cash directed at Blizzard headquarters, Blizzard has also made $26 million on keychains.

USA's sort of mock-procedural-but-not-really Psych paid tribute to World of Wacraft's theorized-to-be-staged-raid-ruiner Leeroy Jenkins. After a bit of technology trolling, pretend psychic Shawn Spencer determines that the culprit they're searching for, Leeroy Jenkins, has had a bit of a makeover. Upon discovery of this, Spencer belts out the famous Leeroy Jenkins battle cry. Procedurals like to mess with technology and video games, but at least Psych's representation of one of the two is a tribute more than a proper trolling.

To some developers, it’s become a dirty curse. To others, it has become a venerated phrase, something immediately associated with excellent growth and revenue. To the common gamer, it is instead a promise of gameplay without immediate monetary investment. Considering the typical console game has a sticker price of $60 whether the player ends up liking the game or not, this can be the point that pushes their curiosity over the edge. Regardless, we are living in a free-to-play gaming revolution. But that’s a good thing. It means that developers and publishers are aware enough of their customers’ wants and needs to provide them with tailored content specifically for them.

Regarding World of Warcarft, there are basically only two groups of gamers: Those who play it and those who know they won't like it. Both groups are fairly large, but with the latest patch, Rage of the Firelands, Blizzard is attempting to turn that latter group into "those who know they don't like it, but play it anyway." Now, rather than the free 14-day limited trial, WoW has shifted over to a limited free-to-play trial: Instead of 14 days to test out the game, players will be able to play some of the content forever, but with a limiting level cap of 20 that will only be removed once they upgrade to the full version of the game.

Dubbed the World of Warcraft Starter Edition, the free-to-play "trial" includes the base game and some content from the first expansion, The Burning Crusade, namely the two added character races. So, not exactly a massive shift to a free-to-play model like every other game seems to be doing lately -- even games that never had a subscription to begin with -- but still, a step in what many people would call the right direction for WoW, a game that needs to reach a new audience, but is so widely known that most of that potential new audience already knows it doesn't want to play WoW. At least if the game moves to some kind of free-to-play model, all of those people who wouldn't want to play may give it a shot. It's entirely possible that this free-to-play trial could be the first step in that direction.

(Blizzard via Joystiq)