Blizzard has decided which version of World of Warcraft to use as the foundation for WOW Classic.
In a post on , Blizzard said it decided on Patch 1.12: Drums of War "because it represents the most complete version of the classic experience".
The classic period of World of Warcraft was two years long - and this period included a huge number of changes for the MMO as well as massive additions, such as Battlegrounds.

Private World of Warcraft server Light’s Hope has suffered a major data breach, compromising the personal data of forum users including email and IP addresses. After the breach occurred, an email went out to all Light’s Hope users, accusing the project’s management of corruption, selling user accounts to profit from gold farmers.
That accusatory email out back on June 30, and Light’s Hope commented on the breach earlier today, saying that the forums had been the target of a “mass-bruteforcing attack targeting accounts owned by staff.” They took efforts to prevent the attack, but on June 8 “a user account with access to the administrative parts of the forum” was compromised.
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The Light’s Hope operations lead says this breach only affected the forums, and not website or game accounts, though “username, bcrypt hashed password, email, and IP addresses were compromised.” Efforts like two-factor authentication are being put in place to prevent similar breaches from occurring in the future.
“We are disgusted that the hackers released the private information of players in full, without any kind of redaction or anonymizing, thereby fully violating those players privacy and exposing them to spam, phishing attacks, and other unwanted attention. This was a poor attempt at discrediting the Light's Hope Project, however the only victims in this incident are you, the players.”

Blizzard is testing the launch of Battle for Azeroth, beginning today. The new World of Warcraft expansion isn’t actually due to launch until the middle of next month, but a test build will hit the beta client later today, giving access to some of the earliest parts of WoW’s new chapter.
Testing begins at 14:00 PDT (22:00 BST) with the arrival of the Teldrassil scenario and the battle for Lordaeron. Those will take place on a new Beta realm called Launch Test, which testers will be able to copy their live characters over to. Once there, you’ll have access to the full storyline, minus a few important cutscenes that Blizzard doesn’t want you to have access to just yet.
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In a post on the (via ), community manager Kaivax says that that same realm will be updated on Thursday July 5 “to test the subsequent events of the actual launch of BAttle for Azeroth.” To get access to that test, beta testers will need to have completed the Lordaeron scenario before it goes live. Assuming they’ve done so, testers will then be invited to the expansion’s first test.

Kaivax says that the purpose of the test is “to check for bottleneck issues where many players are competing for the same resources,” as well as allowing Blizzard to monitor for server issues. With that in mind, don’t expect this to be the smoothest WoW experience you’ve ever had.

I remember reading that Blizzard has hired psychologist in the past to help work on World of Warcraft. Their goal was to make their game (WoW) even more addictive. Now, if this is the case when does it become unethical?

Hi, I'm Wesley, and I was addicted to World of Warcraft.
I'm not talking about a, 'I played this game a lot because it's fun' kind of thing. I'm talking about a good old-fashioned, almost ruined my life kind of thing. Hold onto your legendary hats, things are about to get serious.
In early 2005 I started playing World of Warcraft with a few friends. I was living at my family home in South London with my then girlfriend of over five years. I was trying to make it as a journalist at a mainstream Sunday newspaper, but was told that in order to progress, I'd need to get some proper journalism training. So, I dropped down to one day a week at the paper, got some freelance media analysis work for some extra money, and thought about doing a course.

World of Warcraft (WoW) is an MMORPG which can easily be called as one of the most popular games in the history due to its massive, massive fan following. The game has its very own extremely passionate fanbase which in todays day and age is a very difficult feat to accomplish. However, with the entire community now desperately waiting for the games next expansion, Kill Ping has a list of 9 best games like World of Warcraft which you can play instead.

Become a bounty hunter.

Real-time strategy games aren't awfully common these days, but back when Blizzard was working on the original StarCraft, the RTS market was booming. Creating a game that stood out among the many RTS titles released in a given year was a challenge, and to face it, Blizzard’s team of developers established a fiercely competitive internal culture. One developer dubbed it "the piranha effect."
Author David L Craddock is wrapping up his second book on Blizzard, titled Stay Awhile and Listen: Book II, and he's given us a chance to read a pre-publication version of Chapter 7: Hubris or Fear, which delves into the intense development of StarCraft.
Blizzard wound up creating World of Warcraft, which is still one of the .
The piranha effect referred to a sink or swim mentality in Blizzard’s programming department, where senior engineers and programmers were intimidating presences for new hires.
"It basically was, if you did anything wrong you can expect the programming team to jump all over it," recounted Gage Galinger, a software engineer who worked on StarCraft.
Craddock's interviewees describe an atmosphere at Blizzard where there was no 'onboarding' process for new hires, they were simply expected to perform from day one. It was a deliberate pressure, since Blizzard was expected to deliver up another hit with StarCraft. Any mistakes were immediately pointed out by senior staff.
"You were so careful with the code. The code was sacred," said Galinger. "If you're going to check something into that code base, it better be fucking spotless."