I was playing on Llane when it went down without explanation around 12:30 p.m. EST. It looks like it wasn't just my realm. According to this announcement, 36 servers in the Vindication and Ruin battlegroups are currently down with no notice of when they might come back up.

We're aware that players are currently unable to log in to the following realms and we're in the process of investigating. We will provide further updates when they are available.

The full list of affected servers is after the jump.

UPDATE:  Around 3:44 p.m. EST, Bornakk posted that the issues have been resolved and the servers are currently being brought back online and should be playable soon.

Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has posted on the O-Boards that the coefficients of the Warlock spells Corruption and Immolate were hotfixed last Thursday.

Corruption's coefficient went from 0.156 to 0.20.
Immolate's coefficient went from 0.13 to 0.20.

This ends up being a reasonably significant dps buff to all 3 specs. In our preliminary testing, Demonology may have benefited the most.

Since there are now forums for both Warlocks and damage dealing on the O-Boards, there are threads here and here on the subject. You can also discuss it in our Allakhazam Warlock forum in this thread.

MMO Portal has put together its 2009 MMO Calendar featuring autographed artwork from numerous games. The list includes Age of Conan, DC Universe Online, Dofus, EVE Online, EverQuest II, Free Realms, Guild Wars, Pirates of the Burning Sea, RuneScape, The Agency, Warhammer Online and World of Warcraft.

All of the proceeds go directly to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, which treats children with cancer and other catastrophic diseases.

Also, everyone who purchases a calendar will be entered to win one of 10 prizes for each game, including boxed copies, premium accounts, 30- and 60-day passes, closed beta accounts and more. More information can be found here.

Happy Halloween! Blizzard has selected the top five pumpkins in its annual pumpkin-carving contest. Each winner will receive a Logitech G51 Surround Sound Speaker System.

You can browse the entire photo gallery, which also contains 18 honorable mentions.

Are you doing anything Blizzard-related today for Halloween? Let us know.

For all you rich players who are worried about losing a chunk of your hard-earned gold if you transfer from your server, Blizzard has responded to your fears.

Starting Nov. 4 after weekly maintenance, the gold limit for paid character transfers for characters level 70 or higher will be increased from 10,000 to 20,000 gold in preparation for Wrath of the Lich King. This will also apply to free character transfers when they're offered. If you have more than 20,000 gold, I suppose you're still out of luck.

The full announcement can be found here or after the jump.

Nethaera has spoken !

Since the release of the latest patch, Echoes of Doom, we have gone through a series of optimizations in order to increase overall game performance. We've seen steady, stable populations and a flurry of activity and excitement during the Hallow's End event and the latest rumblings of zombie attacks. It's been an exciting time for us as we draw closer to the release of our second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King.

We've reached a point where we feel we can now accurately evaluate the events since the patch release. Though overall downtime has been minimal, players have experienced latency, inaccessible instances, and general frustrations. We are therefore announcing that we will be issuing compensation to accounts in all realms in the US, Oceanic, and Latin American regions. Accounts that are currently active and in good standing will be credited with an additional three days of game time.

We would like to thank you for your patience during this time and look forward to seeing you in game!

Let's see those complainers come out and take back their criticism of Blizzard's handling of the entire situation!

[Edit: This credit also applies to European and Russian subscribers.]

With the upcoming release of Wrath of the Lich King, the Blizzard developers have decided to scrap their class forums on the O-Boards on Nov. 6 and create three role-based forums for tanking, damage-dealing and healing.

According to Nethaera, the purpose of this change is to set common ground for common goals, celebrate diversity and help the devs help you.

Nethaera's full post can be found here or below. Of course, this is a perfect time to remind the Allakhazam community that we have our very own World of Warcraft class forums. Our general forum is great for all WoW-related topics, but our class forums allow you to focus your discussion to specific talents, concerns, items, ideas, etc.

UPDATE: Allakhazam posters Eindrachen and Ryshenron have pointed out that Blizzard has decided the class forums will stay along with the new role-based forums.

Wrath of the Lich King will be available at midnight on Nov. 13 all around the globe, and Blizzard developers and executives will be on hand at four locations throughout the United States to sign copies and meet players. So if you're near New York City, Anaheim, San Francisco or Austin, prepare for some long lines.

In addition to these four US locations, similar events will be held internationally in Paris, London, Berlin, Madrid, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Mexico City, Taipei, and Seoul. Full details on the specific locations and plans for each of these events can be found at www.worldofwarcraft.com/es, www.wow-europe.com and www.worldofwarcraft.co.kr.

Copies of the game will be available on a first-come, first-served basis at midnight, so get to your stores early. Of course, the real question will be if the servers can even handle the rush.

Full information on the midnight releases, including addresses for the signings in the US, can be found here or below.

World of Warcraft has become much more than just an MMORPG. There's a board game, an upcoming miniatures game (as previewed by our editor-in-chief), a trading card game, comic books, and so on. There's an upcoming orchestral album coming out and ringtones/wallpapers available for your cell phone (only in the United States, however). And the passing of a young WoW player, Ezra Chatterton, has touched the whole community.

Keep reading after the jump for updates on some of these numerous WoW items, including Drums of War, the trading card game expansion that hit shelves yesterday.

With the recent Echoes of Doom patch, many new emotes have been added to the World of Warcraft. Have you tried them all yet? If not, Blizzard has updated the emotes section of its game guide to include them.

The list also notes which emotes are animated and/or voiced by your character. There are currently 102 animated emotes and 59 voiced ones.

If you haven't done it yet, try /cower. It's hilarious on a gnome.