I managed to have a quick chat with Andy Salisbury of the World of Warcraft magazine. The big thing, though, is that issue 3 shipped Thursday the 21st. Subscribers will have many articles to look forward to in regards to Cataclysm.

Some highlights right after the jump.

Not only did we get an interview with Christie Golden here at BlizzCon 2010, we also met up with Richard A. Knaak, author of the World of Warcraft novel Stormrage. Richard sat down with us for a few questions about his work on Stormrage, his work with Blizzard, and his views on the often vocal fan reactions, both positive and negative.

WoW Insider: Richard, thank you for joining us, it's great to meet you! Obviously you did Stormrage earlier this year -- how closely did you work with Blizzard on the book?

Richard A. Knaak: Everything was back and forth with them. I've been very fortunate from the beginning to work with a group of really fantastic people and I've been able to immerse myself in the game. Mick Neilson, who's the publishing lead right now and Evelyn the lore mistress, between those two especially every one of my questions would be answered quickly and efficiently, with a lot of graphics in case there was something that wasn't visible for me to see on the game.

They sent you screenshots?

I get lots of screenshots -- I see lots of things you won't be able to see for awhile! There's other people like James who works with Mick, he's one of the top publishing people too. And of course Chris [Metzen] has been there from the beginning -- he basically grew up reading my Dragonlance work, that's fantastic to me. Everyone's been great at Blizzard.

I finished watching the current No. 1 guild in the world <Paragon> tackle a unique live raid event developed just for BlizzCon 2010! It was a big thrill watching them do their stuff. I only wish I could've heard their communications in real time. I've always wondered what is being discussed on unknown encounters.

Except these weren't unknown encounters. We were fighting past foes like Shazzrah, Baron Geddon and the Beast. It wasn't limited to older encounters. Some newer bosses included Ozumat and Rom'ogg Bonecrusher. Apologies for the image quality on some of these folks; I'll need to select a better location and grab a better camera.

There are a lot of questions that come up from the WoW community at events like BlizzCon. Will we ever have player or guild housing? Why doesn't Blink work right? Where's my moose? One question that keeps coming up is will we ever see the Emerald Dream or its corrupted version, the Emerald Nightmare?

While there is no announcement for an exact date or even which expansion it will appear, Alex "Valnoth" Afrasiabi (lead world designer for World of Warcraft) has finally answered this for us, and that answer is yes. The problem comes down to a matter of finding the right place to fit it in. This might mean something in patch 4.2 or all the way in patch 6.2. It really comes down to when it will fit in the game storyline.

At least we now know that it is something they will do.

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BlizzCon 2010 is upon us! WoW Insider has all the latest news and information. We're bringing you liveblogging of the WoW panels, interviews with WoW celebrities and attendees and of course, lots of pictures of people in costumes. It's all here at WoW Insider!

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Aaaaaand we're back with another liveblog! The open World of Warcraft Q&A session will start in about 20 minutes, so we'll see you back here for that. With any luck we'll have ... um ... I don't know how to put this politely. Less whining than the last panel. We'll settle on that.

Seriously, folks, don't fly all the way to BlizzCon just to be a jerk at a mic. You can be a jerk on the forums for free! I probably shouldn't be encouraging that.

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BlizzCon 2010 is upon us! WoW Insider has all the latest news and information. We're bringing you liveblogging of the WoW panels, interviews with WoW celebrities and attendees and of course, lots of pictures of people in costumes. It's all here at WoW Insider!

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During the BlizzCon 2010 dance competition, one of the competitors reportedly broke his leg. The man was performing a particularly enthusiastic rendition of the male undead dance when he slipped and fell on the stage. He got up a moment later to resume his dance, but quickly fell a second time and did not get back up.

Jay Mohr, host of the competition said, "He's tapped out. He's done, he tapped out," indicating the band to stop playing. Then Mohr leaned over to help him up and spoke with him away from the mike. Mohr then stood back up and asked for medical attention, saying that they had a broken leg.

The competitor was carried off stage by four employees, by the arms and legs, and the show continued.

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BlizzCon 2010 is upon us! WoW Insider has all the latest news and information. We're bringing you liveblogging of the WoW panels, interviews with WoW celebrities and attendees and of course, lots of pictures of people in costumes. It's all here at WoW Insider!

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I am quite happy to report that the WoW Insider BlizzCon 2010 reader meetup was a huge success! The patio near the poolside of the Anabella hotel was full of our wonderful readers, and I know we here at WoW Insider had an awesome time meeting all of you. For those of you who couldn't come to join us at this year's BlizzCon, I hope you got a chance to tune into the live stream of the event.

Now, not only did we get to meet you, our loyal readers, but we also had a ton of prizes to give away both through our live stream and on site at the Anabella. Cryptozoic was there handing out boosters of of its current Icecrown TCG expansion, as well as a handing out quite a few loot cards, including the Wooly White Rhino and Blazing Hippogryph. Razer and Steelseries also provided loot in the form of Razer Naga mice, amazing mouse pads, Zboard keyboards and awesome headsets, and we would like to give them a big thank-you for supplying us with some truly amazing prizes for our readers including MMO-Mumble! For those of you who either couldn't join us live or on the web, I'd like to recap the events of a most wonderful evening.

Photos courtesy of Mari Provencher.

Between panels, the DirecTV folks had an interview with Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street (lead systems designer for WoW) on some various aspects of both Cataclysm and the recent 4.0.1 patch.

Just a warning, this is essentially a live blog and a lot of things will get paraphrased to get it out. We'll try to clean it up a little bit on a second pass, but just think of it as a live blog and you should be golden.

Everyone wants to know where their moose is.
They can't handle the moose.

Are wintersabers still available or should we get them before the sundering happens?
No, they'll still be available. We're not doing anything with them.

What about the mounts in AQ that we use in the instance? Now that it's going to be a zone, can we use them there?
AQ or ZG? AQ mounts will still be there. So you can still get them.

What is getting ready to happen with the sundering? Are we going to be able to watch it happening or are the servers going to go down and when the come back up it's all done?
Pretty much that assuming all goes well. The two old continents will go away and the new ones will just appear almost over night. Players will experience that and then shortly after that Cataclysm will go on the shelves and people will be able to level their goblin, worgen, or go up to 85.

The class Q&A panel will go live in roughly 20 minutes, so get ready. We'll be liveblogging every minute of it past the cut! I'm afraid you guys are stuck with me again, but the other writers have already warned me that liveblogging any Ghostcrawler panel usually results in fingers falling off by the end, so I've taken the precaution of arranging some Motrin and heat packs off to the side of the computer.

I type at 127 words per minute. Bring it, Dr. Street.

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BlizzCon 2010 is upon us! WoW Insider has all the latest news and information. We're bringing you liveblogging of the WoW panels, interviews with WoW celebrities and attendees and of course, lots of pictures of people in costumes. It's all here at WoW Insider!

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DirecTV did a surprise interview with Tom Chilton, and there's some interesting stuff out of it. In particular, the famed and somewhat vaporware Dance Studio is still in the works and will be released once they have enough content! This is the first thing we've heard about it in a very long time. A great little surprise for the day! The full interview transcript below and after the break.

Interesting decision to make Tol'Barab similar to the Isle of Quel'Danans. What is your thinking? What is it going to look like?

It's what you'd consider an Alcatraz to be. It's an abandoned island. It's a central hub for daily quests. Really where players are going to be and do their daily activity. On PvP servers it's going to create a lot of friction and action all the time. At the central part of the island, it's going to feel a lot like Wintergrasp did.

Tell me a little bit about Twin Peaks

Twin Peaks is one of our new BGs where introducing. Capture the flag, solid game play. A lot like Warsong Gultch. It's a proven game play style, a lot of people like to capture the flag.

As hinted during the Starcraft 2 cinematic panel yesterday, a new Cataclysm cinematic just debuted at the Cinematics: Cataclysm panel. As any beta worgen player could tell you, the "transition cinematic" that really kicks the story into high gear has been missing, and now we know where and what it is. As a quick gloss on what you'll see without spoiling anything too heavy, you'll see your character's transition from human to worgen, with some quiet speculation on whether your humanity's salvageable or not.

We'll post it as soon as we can find/get a copy on YouTube, but suffice it to say -- it rocks. I'm amazed at the quality the cinematics team can get out of the in-game models these days.

EDIT: A copy just went up and I've posted it past the cut. The quality's not that great, but I'll post a better copy as soon as one appears.

EDIT: High-quality copy now available past the cut.

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BlizzCon 2010 is upon us! WoW Insider has all the latest news and information. We're bringing you liveblogging of the WoW panels, interviews with WoW celebrities and attendees and of course, lots of pictures of people in costumes. It's all here at WoW Insider!

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Blizzard is holding a silent auction at BlizzCon to support Child's Play, the charity started by Penny Arcade to help sick children. Up for auction are signed artwork, a signed NOObz marine and actual WoW server hardware. See the gallery below for the items on which attendees are bidding.

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BlizzCon 2010 is upon us! WoW Insider has all the latest news and information. We're bringing you liveblogging of the WoW panels, interviews with WoW celebrities and attendees and of course, lots of pictures of people in costumes. It's all here at WoW Insider!

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The BlizzCon costume contest took place yesterday afternoon with roughly 90 entries (give or take a few, depending on how you count group efforts). We did have a screenshot of one entrant in black that was unfortunately too dark to include, but this is an otherwise comprehensive gallery of all contest entrants, the five finalists and winner. There were a number of extraordinary costumes this year, and we highly recommend giving them a look. However, I think Jay Mohr was correct in observing that it's only a matter of time before someone's going to topple over on digitigrade stilts. Please, folks -- it's okay to suffer for your art, but it's not okay to break your ankles over it!

The five finalists (you'll find them toward the end of the gallery) portrayed Ysera, the female monk from Diablo III, Jaina Proudmoore, the female witch doctor from Diablo III, and Illidan Stormrage. The eventual winner was Christina Estrada as the female monk.

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BlizzCon 2010 is upon us! WoW Insider has all the latest news and information. We're bringing you liveblogging of the WoW panels, interviews with WoW celebrities and attendees and of course, lots of pictures of people in costumes. It's all here at WoW Insider!

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BlizzCon isn't just about panels, demos and concerts. It's also about shopping and gawking. For those who like to gawk, the Art Gallery shows off the art for all three of Blizzard's games. The gallery below shows this year's offerings.

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BlizzCon 2010 is upon us! WoW Insider has all the latest news and information. We're bringing you liveblogging of the WoW panels, interviews with WoW celebrities and attendees and of course, lots of pictures of people in costumes. It's all here at WoW Insider!

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Ever imagine what that guy you always see hanging out before raid time in Dalaran is like in real life? Players are finding out at the realm meetup tables at BlizzCon. Realm mates are meeting and mingling at scheduled times for each realm. At any given time, the meetup area is peppered with curious players who've stopped by to see if they can't find a few familiar names and faces.

These Moonguard (US) players not only did just that -- they managed to take over a good one-third of the entire meet-and-greet area with their enthusiasm. While a handful of players did share a guild in common and were attending BlizzCon as a group, most of the Moonguard gang were at BlizzCon on their own (two of them all the way from Australia!) . While not many players were familiar with one another's characters in game, that didn't seem to dampen the enthusiasm -- and I have to say they were great sports with a little gentle teasing about their realm's somewhat exotic reputation.

The realm meetups continue Saturday on the con floor. Stop by and discover what new faces might be friends you already know.

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BlizzCon 2010 is upon us! WoW Insider has all the latest news and information. We're bringing you liveblogging of the WoW panels, interviews with WoW celebrities and attendees and of course, lots of pictures of people in costumes. It's all here at WoW Insider!

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