World of Warcraft is still the #1 MMO around the world, Modern Warfare 3 sold like freaking hotcakes and oh yeah — kids love Skylanders. See? Not really that surprising that they’re still printing money. Here’s a short recap of what was covered in their conference call today.

• Call of Duty Elite has over seven million subscribers.
• World of Warcraft has actually lost subscribers — going from 10.3 million to 10.2 million. Not a big loss, but one nonetheless.
• Speaking of WoW, we’ll get more information on the Mists of Pandaria expansion on March 19.
• A new Call of Duty is on the way (how not surprising!) with an Elite 2.0 to match.
• Diablo III is still coming this year — probably in Q2, if a slide from the publisher is to be believed (I think it is). That might not qualify as “early 2012″ to some people, so those people may think of it as a delay. In any case, we’re getting closer and closer to looting like mad — and WoW subscribers who took part in the Annual Pass program announced at BlizzCon 2011 are one step closer to a free copy of the game. (By the way, over one million people took part in that program.)
• Skylanders Spyro’s Adventure was the #1 kids’ title for the calendar year of 2011.
• A collection of all content available to current Call of Duty Elite members is on the way for Xbox 360. Really, you were probably better off just buying into Elite, but we won’t judge.

Not too much surprising stuff here. Are you looking forward to anything from Activision?

Perfect way to get the COD XP weekend off to a start, I suppose.

In addition to the auction house utilizing in-game gold, Blizzard is including another auction house, this time allowing you to trade cash for items.

So, how much do you really want that in-game ring? Or…how much do you want to keep it? Money that you make in-game can be applied to Blizzard items, or removed from the game via a third-party to spend as you please.

Basically, if Blizzard didn’t do this, an outside service would have eventually stepped in, or people might have started selling coveted items on eBay. It’s happened before, and it would definitely happen again. Keeping it all official makes sure that the quality of service is consistently up-to-par.

Each region gets its own marketplace to keep you from constantly doing mathematical acrobatics every time you want to buy something.

Blizzard will require a small fee for listing the item and selling the item. It’s not a percentage, at least, but they’ve got to keep this running somehow. The listing fee will also be enough to definitely make you think before you list something.

Of course, now this means that your Battle.net account will technically be “worth” a lot more to hackers…time to grab an authenticator if you don’t already have one.

Joystiq

Mike Morhaime stated that Blizzard is currently looking to launch a public beta for Diablo III during the third quarter of 2011. This is after a staff-only alpha that is presumably going on now, according to slides accompanying the call.

Despite this, don’t expect the game to release this year. The same slide displayed information stating the Blizzard is “driving hard” to get the game released in 2011, but you know Blizzard.

It’s done when it’s done. (And my husband and I will play the heck out of it at that point.)

[D]ue to continued declines in the music genre, the company will disband Activision Publishing’s Guitar Hero business unit and discontinue development on its Guitar Hero game for 2011.

So, it’s not completely dead (perhaps living on as DLC), but instead they might be spacing the installments out. But it seems more likely that the whole thing is on the chopping block for good. If we see another title, maybe it can just be a big surprise. But that franchise, as a whole, probably was turning into diminishing returns as far as the money side is concerned.

Activision also canned the already-in-development True Crime: Hong Kong, as well as the entire development team in the UK. Apparently, they weren’t happy with the current product – during the earnings call, it was said that it just wasn’t any good. (Ouch.)

What else went down during the call? Well, for one – we’re getting more Call of Duty. Also, the sun will go down tonight. Bungie is still working on some mystery product for them. And we’re probably not getting Diablo 3 in 2011. At least, Activision Blizzard isn’t willing to use it for projections – Blizzard is doing their usual thing of not announcing a date until they’re really sure the game will be ready, so at least that’s one thing that will never change.

I’m actually surprised they’ve announced it so early as I was expecting the announcement closer to late spring/summer. There’s no other details yet, but they said that new information will be announced on Blizzcon.com. Here’s hoping they have some good announcements for us this year!

Rating:

BUY

I had been looking forward to the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm expansion since I was able to check it out at Blizzcon 2009. A complete re-vamp of the entire game? I was completely excited for it, not to mention the two new races. After getting into the beta, I was able to see exactly what they were changing and check out the new areas, leveling experiences and the general feel of the game. It was definitely a big change, and there were some good and bad points to it.

For my review I wanted to give myself some time to level my main character to 85, and work on trying to get raid ready while also exploring a lot of the other content. As a DPS class (damage class for those unfamiliar with the terminology) I will only be able to comment on Healing and Tanking based on what I’ve heard from guild members, seen in heroics and read online. All of the classes have had some changes to them and not everyone is happy with it. I know at first I hated going from using mana to focus as a Hunter, but I’ve become used to it and have accepted the changes. Now in an upcoming patch they’re making another change to remove the only AoE (area of effect attack) we really have left in order to try and balance out the DPS output between the three hunter specs.

I haven’t heard many complaints from tanks but I know that new mechanics have also affected people who choose to be healers. And they’ve definitely been the most vocal bunch in my opinion. From what I’ve heard, fresh 85 healers of any class have been having issues with running out of mana or spells not healing as much as they were used to coming from Wrath. I can understand that there is probably a learning curve with changes that came to the various classes, not to mention needing better gear to handle the harder end game encounters. What I will say is that my GM (guild master) who is a Priest has stated that she did experience the soul crushing times of healing heroics, however they’ve become a bit more bearable thanks to having geared up more from raiding. There are some changes coming to healing classes with the next patch, and I hope for their sakes things may get easier. But I think that the best thing to do is to work on getting geared and try to master what healing is like in Cataclysm, even though it’s tough.

As for dungeons and raids, I can only speak for the dungeons as I haven’t made it up to the raid appropriate gear level. But the dungeons are definitely more fun for me. I enjoy that Blizzard brought back having to use crowd control, and provided you’re in a good dungeon group things will go smooth and you’ll have some fun! But so far running with a good dungeon group has only happened when most of the group had been fellow guild members. Going into the random dungeon finder is an… interesting… experience. Between a 40minute wait time for DPS and the fact that I could wind up in a group that may quit after the first boss. I can’t even count how many heroics I never finished due to the group dissolving before the last boss. It definitely made me wait for our guild raid nights as those not raid ready would get together and do heroics so I was almost always guaranteed to do a couple of great runs and hopefully gear up.

Archaeology has also become my new addiction. It’s not fully leveled due to trying to do more heroics, but I enjoy flying around and completing projects. Now with the addition of the addon Archy it’s been made easier with the added interface. I know I’ll have it leveled soon, and I’m looking forward to getting the Scepter of Azj’Aqir (I already have the Fossilized Raptor mount). And for the most part it seems like the community also enjoys the new profession. There are some aspects of it that also give some little day to day life tidbits for the lore nerds too if you read up on the items that you’ve completed the research for. I definitely hope that Blizzard updates it with new items and races to collect artifacts from.

The new areas in the game for levels 80-85 are beautiful. The art direction with this expansion has been great and you can tell the attention to detail with the new zones. My favorite new zones are Hyjal and Vashj’ir hands down. Hyjal because it’s great to explore the area which used to only be a raid instance and the ending to the zone is pretty great. Vashj’ir because Blizzard successfully did an underwater zone that is gorgeous. Vashj’ir was the zone I was worried about because of the mechanics of making an underwater zone work, but Blizzard actually pulled it off and I enjoyed it. Plus a seahorse mount is just awesome.

The one bad part I feel to Cataclysm is Tol Barad. Like Wintergrasp in Wrath, Tol Barad battles happen every 2 hours or so. But the mechanics of this battle suck. Your faction has to capture all three objectives in Tol Barad in order to win. Sounds simple right? Well those who already have the zone can have a bit of an advantage with spawning in the center fortress, and it’s pretty easy to just keep zerging against those trying to hold one of the objectives. It’s frustrating, annoying, and most players do not like it. In order to make it more palatable, Blizzard for a time upped the honor rewards for successfully taking over Tol Barad in order to get people to fight for it more, but this just lead to the factions cooporating with each other to switch off who won each battle in order to farm honor points. Blizzard wasted no time reducing the honor awards, however many players including myself feel that they would do better to do something about the mechanics as it’s just not a fun PvP battle.

All in all though I have to say that Cataclysm is definitely a good expansion and I’m glad that they made upgrades like changing old Azeroth to have more polished zones, let players fly and have more streamlined quests. It’s also a step in the right direction for Blizzard to work on upgrading the graphics of the game. Still for a six year old game I can’t complain about the graphics too much. I also think this is a good time for new players to start since the questing has become more streamlined for characters just starting off. So whether you’re a veteran player or a newbie, I highly recommend upgrading to Cataclysm.

Currently, they’re looking for lead designers and programmers as well as a senior producer for console versions of the game. All positions require experience shipping AAA-level content, and a love for Blizzard games and Diablo is a plus here.

This is by no means a confirmation of Diablo coming to consoles. It does mean that someone at Blizzard is considering that move, however.

Would you play a console Diablo title? Or is this one kind of game that just plain works better with a keyboard?

Nothing says “I <3 WoW” more than getting the Collector’s Edition of the latest and greatest for the Blizzard MMO. Thankfully, Blizzard has you covered with this oh so shiny sneak peek at what’s going to be included in the Collector’s Edition.

Art of the Cataclysm art book, featuring 176 pages of never-before-seen images from the archives of the Blizzard Entertainment cinematics department and the World of Warcraft development team, as well as progressive visuals from multiple stages of development.

Exclusive in-game pet: he may not be a breaker of worlds just yet, but Lil’ Deathwing will still proudly accompany heroes on their struggle to save Azeroth from his much, much larger counterpart.

Behind-the-scenes DVD with  over an hour of developer interviews and commentaries, as well as a special Warcraft^® retrospective examining the rich gaming history of the Warcraft universe.

Soundtrack featuring 10 epic new tracks from Cataclysm, including exclusive bonus tracks.

Special-edition mouse pad depicting Deathwing menacing the ravaged continents of Azeroth.

World of Warcraft Trading Card Game cards, including a 60-card starter deck from the Wrathgate series, two extended-art cards, and two Collector’s Edition-exclusive hero cards, marking the first appearance of goblin and worgen heroes in the TCG.

Remember, the beta test for Cataclysm is currently underway. If you want to be awesome like our @stealthyslyth, you should sign up and experience all the shininess for yourself before the official release date.

The Cataclysm Collector’s Edition will be sold at retail stores for $79.99.

Thomas Tippl, COO of Activision and the President of Bungie, Harold Ryan

Only three years since splitting off from Microsoft in 2007, Bungie (makers of Halo, Myth and Marathon) have entered a 10-year exclusive partnership with Activision (hot off the heels of the whole Infinity Ward fiasco) for their next action game universe.

Under this agreement, Activision gets worldwide publishing rights for all future Bungie games based on this new intellectual property. Games like Halo that Bungie owned already will still be their property. The only stuff Activision gets to keep is the new stuff.

“We chose to partner with Activision on our next IP because of their global reach, multi-platform experience and marketing expertise,” said Harold Ryan, President of Bungie, in a press release this morning. “From working together over the past nine months on this agreement, it is clear that Activision supports our commitment to giving our fans the best possible gaming experiences.”

Activision expects this partnership to become very profitable in the future (of course), but all I can think is that this is adding yet another chapter to their current scandal. Imagine it: your significant other breaks up with you, you go off and decide to be your own strong, independent person, and when you turn around, your ex is making out with someone else. Wouldn’t you be upset?