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?

This is exciting for WoW fans, as well as a promise fulfillment from Blizzard that they were going to work on improving the timing of the release of furute WoW content. With Wrath of the Lich King there was definitely a stale period where the endgame content did become routine and not fun for the players who were hardcore raiders. Even for a non-raider for me I slowly started getting bored near the end.

I’ll be interested to see what comes out of this press tour and what other details we may get regarding the expansion.

You can read about my thoughts on what I got to play of the expansion at Blizzcon last year here.

1. Get one character to level 85. I’m so close on this one that I can taste it. Ariadne up there (she’s been race-changed and name-changed in the past month because I was just tired of being a Worgen), as of December 30, sits at level 84. That means one to go before I hit the big one — and level cap. Can I do it? Absolutely, especially with the friends and guildies I have (that I didn’t really have at the time of making said resolution) who are willing to help me out by queuing for random dungeons and giving me advice.

Of course, I have tonight (Friday) and Saturday night. But Saturday gets a little more difficult when you factor in the holiday — how much leveling can I do on New Year’s Eve, before midnight? I might not actually make it, but I can definitely say I gave it a good shot. Perhaps not my best, since there were weeks where I didn’t play at all, thanks to school, but at least a genuine shot. At the very least, I didn’t give up.

2. Don’t start any more alts until I have a level 85 toon. Well, I obviously messed this one up, given that I started two new characters, both very recently. Resolution (and Ariadne), please forgive me for wanting to explore the worlds of the Shaman and Death Knight classes. They were fun, too.

So, what’s on the menu this year? It’s pretty simple, really.

I want to punch Deathwing in the face. Yep, that simple. Well, okay, in a sentence — yeah, it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot to it if you don’t know the game. But in reality, that means I have a lot to do. What will follow for me for the next year will be a merry-go-round of gear collecting, equipped item level raising, and begging people to go on old content raids with me (pleeaaaaaaase? Pandas can wait, right?). It’ll all culminate in an eventual trip to Dragon Soul, once I’m geared enough and deemed ready.

I guess some of this gets easier with the very recent addition of the Raid Finder to the game, essentially putting the endgame in “easy mode,” but…I want to avoid that. I want to, if at all possible, go with the people who kept me in the game in the first place — awesome guildies.

Yeah, I know. I’m getting sappy. But they’re the people I want to learn from, so it really only makes sense.

So — one goal, many steps. I’m emotionally-invested. I’m ready to go, 2012.

I just have to finish up 2011 first.

WoW, however, is still going strong — and to celebrate, anyone logging in to the game from November 20 to December 3 gets an anniversary Feat of Strength added to their achievements as well as a “Celebration Package.” Opening that package sets off fireworks (Blizzard asks that you “please observe all goblin and gnome fire hazard warnings and celebrate responsibly”), applies a new tabard to your character, and also activates a buff granting an extra seven percent experience and reputation bonus for however long it’s active (which is hopefully long enough for me to get a bit of grinding in!).

Not only that, but Blizzard’s airing a new commercial for World of Warcraft during this weekend’s Chargers-Bears game on CBS (it starts at 4:15 EST). Someone (we don’t know who at this point) will be asking us what our “game” is. Curious.

Oh I know a certain GamingAngels editor that would love this! PDP just announced that they have created Alliance and Horde iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S cases. This is a new line and the Alliance and Horde symbols are the first cases to be released on PDP.com and GameStop locations. The cases are $29.99 each.

“We’re excited to offer World of Warcraft players a new way to show their enthusiasm for the game wherever they go,” said Bill Otte, SVP of Sales and Marketing for PDP. “Players can proudly display our new line of Horde- and Alliance-themed iPhone cases as a badge of honor — or as a challenge to their rival faction.”

For Blizzard fans that may not play WoW, PDP will be coming out with Diablo III and Starcraft cases! Which is pretty cool! I can’t wait to see those designs! The Diablo III case was at Blizzcon (I thought I saw that). Android fans, don’t be sad….cases are coming your way too!

Download the file here!

Please leave us positive feedback on iTunes! You can also leave us a voicemail at (209) 874-6555, and email us at weeklyroundup@gamingangels.com.

You start off in the starting zone and move through quests that follow a very martial arts feel to them. You have to fight training dummies, apprentices, and then a master before being sent to help protect a village and save supplies. The world itself is absolutely stunning in appearance and the new mobs look fantastic. You can tell that they’ve put a lot of work into this just for Blizzcon, so I can only see good things for when they have more time and can really sit and focus on expanding the art style and improving the look and feel of the game.

Now as for the new race themselves, that has been getting the most mixed reviews. Some players don’t like it since it seems too cutsey while others are actually pretty happy that they can get to play pandas. Not surprisingly only the male pandaren were available to play and had concept art shown. We were even told that this is not the final model for male pandaren and that it will see several tweaks done to it up until the release of the game. With all of the time they took to make over, for example, the Worgen before Cataclysm and the design changels that happened with the models shows that they will work up until close to launch to make sure that the models look good and will make the majority of the community happy.

As for how the Monk plays, the biggest thing for me was not being used to seeing an auto attack. Other than that the resource bar and management was actually pretty well done and pretty easy to pick up on. Once I got the hang of how to use the attacks, it’s actually a pretty fluid class to play in the beginning stages. It made me interested to see how the class would play once you get past level 10 and begin to focus on your talents and what spec you will go into. Based on what was talked about during the WoW Q&A, I’m super interested to check out how healing on a Monk since they will apparently be more mobile and have some interesting abilities, like setting down statues that will help to heal party members that they’re near as the Monk DPSes.

All in all I don’t mind how the male pandaren look right now. I wouldn’t mind if they could turn out more rugged as I think it would be more ideal, but for a start it’s not that bad. I also don’t mind that things are brighter and not as dark as they have been the past couple of expansions. I think this change along with the fact that we’re going back to Alliance and Horde fighting against each other will make for a good next expansion. I look forward to all of the updates that are going to eventually come out regarding MoP, and of course the eventual beta invite that I know I will get with my WoW Annual Pass!

Now this was definitely some information overload, but thanks to our partners over at GKick, they put together a detailed list with screencaps of each of the new trees. You can read up in detail over here on Gkick.net!

Gkick.net is part of the Gaming Angels network and have been helping with our coverage of Blizzcon 2011.

I did have a chance to play as a Pandarian Monk yesterday, and overall I did enjoy the experience. My full write up will be up on Gaming Angels soon!

Gkick.net is part of the Gaming Angels network and have been helping with our coverage of Blizzcon 2011.

When you sign up for the 12-month Annual Pass plan (and you can do that right here), you not only get a free copy of Diablo III, but you also get an awesome mount based on Diablo III‘s Tyrael’s Charger as well as guaranteed access to the beta of Mists of Pandaria, the fifth expansion of World of Warcraft.

The mount features some pretty awesome wings, right? And I can’t even pretend that it’s the big deal anymore. The free copy of Diablo III is. And it’s apparently a limited-time deal, probably only because the new game is launching early next year.

We still don’t have timing for Diablo III‘s release, or even that of the Pandaria beta, but…it’s Blizzard Time. “Soon” is sufficient, right?

The Annual Pass can either be billed at $14.99 a month, or on your billing plan of choice. Keep in mind that this offer isn’t available to new accounts — you have to have registered a full copy of World of Warcraft before October 18, 2011.

Blizzard’s provided a full FAQ here. One item of note: If you don’t complete your full year of WoW, it looks like you don’t get to keep the copy of Diablo. So…just in case you were thinking about ditching the subscription…yeah, don’t.

I’ve already upgraded my subscription — it was pretty easy, and it really only involved switching my current subscription to another type. If you’re going to play for another year, you may as well switch, too. Free stuff!