Being on a motorbike in winter is cold. Stopped at traffic lights you have to put your hands on the engine to warm them up, it's that cold. But it does give you a few moments of crystal clear lucidity in which to think. And think hard. So, I was contemplating what is next for Blizzard.

World of Warcraft, while being the feature packed behemoth in the industry, is starting to look dated. Hardware has caught up to it.

Earlier this morning, while discussing the trends that World of Warcraft is going in now I mentioned to Stigg that if I were in charge of Blizzard I'd be putting resources into developing World of Warcraft II. If you think about it, that makes sense. It makes a lot of sense. They have the opportunity to redesign and redevelop an ageing engine, get it back up to speed with modern technology and it is based on their intellectual property, so the basic game design, quest scripting and so forth is there already. They can re-use a lot of assets. So in a rather scary life mirrors comments on blog moment, I was quite surprised when my mailbox dinged with an email from one of my industry insider friends. Larry works in Maryland, Washington and often catches little snippets of what is on the backburner or sometimes just a watercooler discussion. He's been wrong before, but this snippet was just too good not to pass up.

Blizzard has outdone themselves once more with the features they are making available to their community. This last week has seen the World of Warcraft Atlas, a Guild Relations system and a whole new section devoted to PvP launch. I'm constantly reminded of how much polish these guys put into their game and it's definately noticeable. There is a very fine attention to detail that just smooths all the rough edges you find in other games.

More information on each of these over the break.

The 2.3 PTR patch notes are now available and they make for rather interesting reading. Guild Banks are on the list, but there is no mention of either the riding skill reduction or the ability to purchase season 1 arena gear with honour points. And it does seem as if the Affliction Warlock is being nerfed just a little bit more. We seem to be scaled back to almost regular levels now.

Bornakk the Orc confirmed that the Hippogriff mount will be made available in patch 2.3, just like the new engineering mount. It is a 280% flier that requires Exalted reputation with the Cenarion Expedition to obtain. The snag however is it's cost. Apart from the rather ludicrous 5000gp riding skill cost the mount itself will cost a whopping 2000gp. A whole 0 more than the standard Epic flier. As Bornakk says in post 56,

"The 2000g cost is not a typo and intentional. Every time you see one you'll know the dedication and enjoyment the player has for their new mount."

Blizzard has added more fansites to their listing. You can check out the latest additions, which include Curse, Wow Interface and Wow Wiki here.

Well, patch 2.2 has officially hit us with some massive improvements thrown in. One of those truely debatable moves, Voice Chat is included in this patch. But perhaps the most noticeable change thus far for me has been the auction house delays. Once an auction is brought out, you will receive a mail stating what the price was. It takes an hour for the actual gold to arrive. I presume this is to scan for gold sellers, because it makes preciously little sense otherwise. anyway, full patch notes are here.

There are however some more subtle improvements such as the new browser search plugin, for Firefox, IE7 and Opera and my personal favourite toy, the Arena point calculator.

Blizzard has posted a collection of tips on gaining reputation for that much loved Netherdrake. It's nowhere near as amusing and cool as Gormash's Prelude guide to reptuation, which you can find here, but it provides a few basic tips. And while I'm at it - you are all specialized in certain areas of the game. If you have nifty guides or a tip sheet that would be useful, post them as "Guide" content and let me know so I can link them!

The armory has been updated with several new features. You can read about them here. Because I am inherently lazy and would not click through to a different link, I've pasted the details below for you.

There is a song in there somewhere, sung to the tune of Spam Spam Spam Spam. Preferably with John Cleese, Eric Idle and Terry Jones. And you must say mount at least 132 times in three minutes. Wait. Where was I going with this? Oh yes, Blizzard has released some lovely screenshots of their aerial mounts. So you can now peruse those glorious creatures to your heart's content while grinding away at the 5000g required to earn one. The Onyx Drake will be mine.