While piracy in MMO gaming isn't as prevalent as in other video game markets, Activision-Blizzard and other publishers remain aggressive in their hunt for operators of rogue, "private servers." Last week World of Warcraft publisher Blizzard made headlines across the blogosphere after the company was awarded more than $88 million in damages in federal court; the complaint was originally filed in October 2009, alleging Alyson Reeves—the defendant and operator of a popular "Scapegaming" private server—broke the company's EULA by hosting the illegal server and selling in-game items for real money via PayPal.

The recent lawsuit is one of the most extreme cases of piracy in the MMO industry; Scapegaming hosted 427,393 total users, with 32,000 to 40,000 players online each day, according to the court order [via THR, Esq.]. But is piracy in MMOs a widespread problem for most of today's publishers? Or is online gaming, by nature, more prohibitive to "digital theft" than traditional video games? Some publishers are taking cues from the cloud-based nature of online gaming, adopting new forms of digital rights management (DRM) for single-player or "offline" games that rely on users' Internet connections to constantly validate their usage rights.

According to a blue post in the official World of Warcraft board, Blizzard will be changing the way that posters are identified on all of the official game forums. The announcement was made around 9 a.m. PST, and after about 3 and a half hours, the post already had more than 230 pages of responses. Blizzard's thought is to spur more creative discussion, but the response has been less than stellar as hundreds of people seem to be going back and deleting their old posts. Below is the official post on the Battle.net forums.

The Blizzard Creative Writing Contest is back this summer, offering one lucky (and talented) fan the chance to visit Blizzard's headquarters in Irvine, CA and spend an afternoon with the company's own writing team. As if hobnobbing with Blizzard's lore masters isn't reward enough, the grand prize winner will also receive his or her choice between a Diablo III "OVERTHROWN" barbarian diorama or a Frostmourne sword. Seven runners-up will each receive prize packages from the Diablo Archive, the Warcraft Archive, the StarCraft Archive, and the Warcraft: War of the Ancients Archive, "all signed by Chris Metzen, the cover artists, and Blizzard's writing staff," according to the official contest page.

This year fans from anywhere in the world can enter the contest (with the exception of a few states and provinces), unlike the 2009 event. Blizzard is calling for creative fiction based in the Warcraft, StarCraft, or Diablo universe, written in English and composed of 2,500 to 7,500 words. Entrants are instructed to submit their work at the official contest page, using this entry form. Rules and eligibility information can be found here, or visit the main contest page for all the links and info. The deadline for entries is August 23, 2010. To help you get an idea of what kind of writing the judges enjoyed in the past, visit the 2009 Blizzard Creative Writing Contest page to read last year's winning entry and excerpts from some of the finalists' stories.

Despite Blizzard's effort to accommodate more fans at this year's BlizzCon (October 22 and 23 at the Anaheim Convention Center), tickets sold out amazingly fast during online sales last Wednesday and Saturday. According to statistics tracked by WoW.com, the first round of tickets sold out in just 23 minutes, with the peak ticket queue at 30,000. The second round of sales, on Saturday, sold out in 28 minutes, with the peak queue at 20,000. Recent blog and fansite chatter reports that the Blizzard Store was in better shape during this year's ticket sales than in 2009, when it was slammed with traffic, resulting in downtime and disconnected customers. Nonetheless, this year's ticket capacity was reached within a half-hour throughout both sales, leaving many fans empty-handed.

This year Blizzard implemented a new policy to deter ticket-scalping; everyone who purchased a ticket will have to provide photo identification at the door, which must match their badge information. However, the new ID challenge isn't fool-proof; Blizzard allows ticket buyers to "update" their personal information until June 20, giving scalpers a brief window of time to sell the tickets by changing the purchaser info to match that of potential buyers. Hundreds of tickets have already shown up on third-party sites like eBay and Craigslist (both links show the result of a "BlizzCon 2010" query). But for those of you who missed out on the official sale or don't like the idea of lining a scalper's pocket with ridiculous amounts of cash, there's still a way you can enjoy the event from the comfort of your own sofa...

Blizzard finally has set a date for it annual fan convention. Mark your calendar for Oct. 22-23 and be prepared for updates and panels on StarCraft, Diablo and World of Warcraft. They probably have a new biombshell announcement planned as well.

Since its launch in 2004, World of Warcraft has dominated the gaming industry, regarded as the most-successful and popular MMO in history. Throughout the past five years, Blizzard continued pouring its blood, sweat and tears into WoW, ensuring its legacy by retaining a multi-million-player subscriber base. And with each passing year, as Blizzard reported, the MMO's subscribers continued to grow. Players grew from 5 million to 8 million, followed by a staggering 10 million. Around this time last year, Blizzard boasted more than 11.5 million subscribers worldwide after Wrath of the Lich King's release.

For the first time since its inception, WoW's seemingly-boundless momentum might be leveling off, according to Activision-Blizzard's recent end-of-fiscal-year conference call with its investors. As we reported last week, Blizzard president Mike Morhaime confirmed that the company's upcoming expansion, Cataclysm, will launch in 2010. In addition, Morhaime revealed that WoW's current subscriber base is 11.5 million; the same figure announced in November 2008. Has the MMO finally reached the pinnacle of its success, or is there another reason behind the stalled numbers?

In a new interview with Blizzard—celebrating the Warcraft franchise series' 15-year anniversary—WoW producer J. Allen Brack told Gamasutra that Blizzard will "definitely" deliver another console game in the future (via Eurogamer.com). The story, which highlights Blizzard's original roots as a console developer, features quite a bit of interesting commentary from Brack about the past, present and future of video game platforms.

"[...] there's a perception, I think, that Blizzard is anti-console, and that's absolutely not the case," Brack told Gamasutra, when asked how invested Blizzard is in the PC market. "We just want to make the right game for the right platform. Think about StarCraft II. Some real-time strategy games have tried to happen on the console. Some of those have been successful, but overall, our experience is that it's going to be a better game on the PC, ergo it's developed on the PC."

"We're a culture of gamers," Brack continued, in response to the same question. "We will definitely work on a console game at some point. I have no doubt about that. It's just [a matter of] what game." The interview also features commentary from Blizzard art director Sam Didier; check out the full story here.

It's not necessarily the most breaking news, but if you've ever wanted to take a tour of Blizzard Entertainment's Irvine, Calif. headquarters, a recent post at EntertainmentWeb offers more than 100 new photos of the Blizzard Campus, inside and out. Until the World of Warcraft developer begins hosting public tours (or even official "virtual" tours), the recent gallery posting offers one of the most comprehensive collections of Blizzard headquarters photos around.

The gallery features a candid, voyeuristic look at where the dutiful Blizzard employees spend their days, developing the games millions of people around the world play every day. From shots of the famous courtyard statue, display cases to the library, this gallery has it all, even down to the more mundane (but curiously interesting) worldwide WoW connection display, floor maps and random white board scribblings. There's even a few snaps of Blizzard employees in their native work environment, although you have to wonder; is this scene what newcomers have to look forward to, before they get their own measly (yet well-adorned) cubicle?

You might remember reading about a seemingly obscure company called Worlds.com filing a patent infringement lawsuit against MMO developer NCSoft (Aion, City of Heroes, Guild Wars) last spring. It was widely covered in the video games press, and widely criticized by most community members. The suit revolves around a set of patents filed by Worlds.com back in the late-90s for its Starbright World project; a "social network" for sick and terminally-ill children.

Around the same time, Worlds.com CEO Thom Kidrin announced he planned to go after other major MMO publishers like Activision-Blizzard (World of Warcraft) and Linden Labs (Second Life), essentially claiming that every MMO on the market today owes Worlds.com patent infringement damages. In addition, MMO developers and publishers would have to pay Worlds.com a licensing fee to use its"interactive virtual world system" technology (more on that later).

Meanwhile, another patent troll stepped up to the plate last week, hoping to make a quick buck at the MMO industry's expense, à la Worlds.com. As we reported a few days ago, Paltalk Holdings Inc. filed suit against a handful of developers, including Turbine Inc., Activision-Blizzard and NCSoft, among others. The suit claims the MMO companies are violating its patents for its HearMe technology (an inconsequential, business-oriented "online meeting service"), which Paltalk bought the rights to in 2002. Will the MMO industry collectively stave off these lawsuits, or is this just the beginning of a multi-million dollar litigious gang bang?

While most of the non-gaming media continues to cover events like BlizzCon as a nerd-fest gathering of an incomprehensible and socially-inept subculture, one guy is helping to lift the curtain and change those preconceptions. Well, from his standpoint, at least. Chris Nguyen, a.k.a. ddrfreak5o3 on YouTube, directed and produced his own fan-made, mini-documentary called "BlizzCon: An Event For Fans" while attending BlizzCon 2009 last month.

"I suppose the main purpose of this decision was to challenge myself, prepare for some documentary film classes (as well as a few other Journalistic Electronic Media classes), and update my digital portfolio," he wrote in the video's description on YouTube. Although he might not have originally intended it to be a deep, sociological insight into the die-hard gaming community, it's a fairly distinct and refreshingly alternative piece, compared to similar "fish-out-of-water" documentaries and news reports.

The mini-docu runs just over 10 minutes long and is surprisingly well-edited and shot. Nguyen captured high-quality video throughout a variety of BlizzCon events and exhibitions, including the Ozzy Osbourne performance. He also interviewed a couple of WoW gamers, and the winner of this year's costume contest. All in all, it's an extremely polished video for a fan-made documentary; one that shines a light on the best elements of BlizzCon, and the community behind it.