Blizzard has apparently gone trigger happy with their ban hammers this season. Anyone who has taken Diablo 2 or Starcraft online knows there are a fair few people who cheat. (I myself encountering a another player in Diablo 2 who wouldn't die even when his health was drained five times over) Blizzard is fighting back now however banning over 350000 accounts between the two games. Along with over 7000 World of Warcraft players. I'd love to see their faces when they realize what's happened.

The WoW tournament for the BlizzCon 2008 that was held in the Anaheim Convention Center - located in California - has finally come to a hault, with German-based team "Nihilum Plasma" taking the grand prize of $75,000 and a replica Frostmourne, the blade in Wrath of the Lich King.

Check out the seeds and videos of the matches in the source.

"Wired.com: When I told my community, the greater Wired, um, "people," that I was going to be coming to Blizzcon they wanted to know ... a couple months ago we talked about the Activision merger ...

Morhaime: Yep.

Wired.com: ... You seemed really happy about it. Everything seemed to be working out pretty well, you seemed genuinely pleased about it, and not being, like, the “PR-business-diplomacy guy” ...

Morhaime: Sure. "PR-business-diplomacy guy?" [Laughter]

Wired.com: Are things ..."

"

"

For over a decade BattleNet (Blizzard's online network) has kept Starcraft, Diablo and Warcraft players nice and happy at no extra cost. It looks like this will be a thing of the past however, come BattleNet 2.0, which is to debut with Starcraft 2. Diablo 3 director Jay Wilson when questioned admitted Blizzard is looking to monetize the new BattleNet. What form this will take either through subscriptions, expansions or micro-transactions is yet to be seen.

In the past, players have been frustrated with falling from their Mount when trying to cross over water on WoW. At the BlizzCon 2008, it was revealed that after Wrath of the Lich King comes out on November 13th, a patch will fix that problem.

Ma Jae-Yoon "sAviOr" defeated fellow Korean pro-gamer Lee Yun-Yeol "NaDa" in two sets to win BlizzCon's pro Starcraft tournament with a nice $25,000 prize.

On the Warcraft side, Park Jun "Lyn" defeated Spanish pro Pedro Duran "Lucifron" twice to come out of the lower bracket and claim the first place finish.

Visit the source for the Starcraft finals, with full English commentary!

While at this year's BlizzCon, the UGO Games Blog caught up with Rob Pardo, the EVP of game design for the latest game in the popular Diablo series: Diablo III. He goes over the big announcement, the custom 3D environments, and a lot more!

Kotaku recently got their hands on a demo of the upcoming Diablo III and any worries they previously had about the game soon vanished. For Diablo fans worried about the changes that seem to be present in the third installment, you can put you mind at ease. It still feels like Diablo.

Discuss in the Diablo III forum

What video game convention would be complete without cosplayers? Kotaku have compiled a list of the good (and not so good) cosplayers of Blizzcon 2008.

For more cosplay, check out the photos from Tokyo Game Show 2008 2008 and Games Convention 2008.

(Go to the source for more Blizzcon cosplay)

Blizzcon 08 is in swing and releasing details left right and center about all things Starcraft, Diablo and Warcraft. At a live panel earlier today focusing on Starcraft 2 some particular juicy details were released. The not so great news that 3 separate versions of Starcraft 2 would be sold, each with a expansive unique campaign featuring one of the races. And that a similar system would be used in Warcraft 4, which confirms the games existence.

A magic-based class that uses elemental powers, the Wizard class was just unveiled today at the 2008 BlizzCon expo. Along with this announcement came a gameplay video showing the class off.

Blizzard has revealed, via their playable Diablo III demo at Blizzcon, that their upcoming PC RPG will include the Wizard Class, joining the previously unveiled Barbarian and Witch Doctor classes.

Discuss in the Diablo III forum