A bug in World of Warcraft allowed Death Knight players to cast plagues on friendly characters, triggering untold levels of destruction in Azeroth on Friday night. Players looking to enjoy a regular raiding, looting, questing session of WoW may have been met with a rude awakening when they logged on to find that whole towns of players and NPCs had been turned into piles of bones.

Remember when the Pandarens were just Blizzard's running joke? Remember when they weren't the center of an entire World of Warcraft expansion? Those were good days. We now have the release date for Mists of Pandaria, and the prices for three different editions of the expansion. "This one's on the house!"

World of Warcraft is fairly well-known for it's "kill X [thing]" mechanic and slog of a grind at the later levels, but Night Elf Druid Everbloom on the Feathermoon server surpassed that slog and hit the level cap of 85 without making one kill. Though WoW is known for its kill mechanics (kill X thing, endgame raiding, PvP, etc.), Everbloom was able to achieve level 85 without making a kill due to only participating in gathering professions and exploration, accruing experience from archaeology, herbalism and mining.

Everbloom died only 25 times during her (or his?) quest of pacifism, but took 3 million damage throughout. Everbloom claims she chose the Night Elf Druid race and class combination for the healing, flight and rooting (freezing enemies in one place) abilities. Even though she has been playing since 2004, she claims that taking the pacifist route showed her landmarks and parts of the world she has never seen before--maybe something of which Blizzard will take note.

(Everbloom's profile via The Escapist)

Here's a World of Warcraft parody of the Little Mermaid song "Part of Your World," released over at World of Filkcraft. The singer of the video, Aquilae, pretty much sums up the MMO experience when she sings the line, "Lookin' for group, you don't get too far." Amen, sister.

(World of FilkCraft via BuzzFeed)

If you don't play World of Warcraft, the phrase "Patch 4.03a" probably doesn't do much for you, but if you do, it most likely makes you gooey with delight and anticipation. For Patch 4.03a marks The Shattering, the most portentous in-game change until Cataclysm drops on December 7th. This is a huge update to the world of WoW, and will affect players whether or not they buy Cataclysm. Blizzard's servers are currently down in anticipation of the change, but here's some of what players can expect, once a dragon messes some stuff up in Azeroth. Update, 3:56pm EST: While the servers were initially scheduled to go back up around 4pm EST (1pm PST), a tipster tells us that upon trying to log in, he received a message that Blizzard has delayed this by an hour; at present, The Shattering is set to officially go into effect at 5pm EST / 2pm PST, although there's no guarantee that that too won't be pushed back. (Thanks, Luis!) Update, 5:53pm EST: The Warcraft folks just tweeted out that "Patch 4.0.3a: The Shattering of Azeroth is now live on North American realms. Welcome to a world forever changed." [Blizzard's comprehensive rundown of the changes]

At this past weekend's BlizzCon, one red-shirted fan managed to stump Blizzard world designer Alex Afrasiabi and loremaster Chris Metzen with a rather obscure question about the game's plot and continuity. Both Blizzard employees were pretty cool with the correction, and they promised the man now known on the Internet as "Red Shirt Guy" that they would "get that fixed."

Double Rainbow Guy (Videogum)

Paul the Octopus (Time)

Isiah Mustafa (G4)

Sam Raimi on WoW (Metacafe)

Michael Caine on Batman 3 (Digital Spy)

Robert Rodriguez and Nimrod Antal (Joblo)

Drunk Hulk (Cover Stories)

(title image via NY Mag)

In a surprisingly affecting short film called "Avatar Days," digital artist Gavin Kelly examines the relationship between World of Warcraft players and their online personas. According to Kelly, the WoW players who venture through a grey and haunted Dublin in the guise of their in-game avatars aren't actors: "they were actual WoW players asked to take part from a message board," which adds to the emotional impact beneath what could have just been a gimmicky CGI horrorshow.

Check out the full four-minute film below.

Blizzard Entertainment has revealed via their website that their 5th BlizzCon convention will be held on October 22-23 at the Anaheim Convention Center. Feel free to wet yourself. According to Blizzard's announcement release, "BlizzCon is a celebration of the Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo franchises and the communities that surround them." The two day event has been held each year since 2007, with the first being in 2005, attracting fans for social events, meet-and-greets with the developers, hands-on gameplay with unreleased titles and expansions, and live concerts. According to WoW.com, Jay Mohr will be hosting the festivities.