On May 15th at 3 A.M. PDT, the heavens will tremble and Diablo 3 will be live. Players will be able to scour Sanctuary for gold and epic loot and trade it on the in-game gold-based auction house immediately, and a week later, the real money auction house will open, where players can trade their items with other players for real world currencies.

The recent announcement of the fee schedule for the “real-money trade” (RMT) auction house had some players astonished at the prices. The fee for the gold-based auction house is 15% of the sale price and while the real-money auction house matches that 15% for “commodities” (e.g., stackable items, gems, materials, dyes, etc.), it charges $1 for equipment and unique items. These fees are charged to the seller and deduced from the money they receive from the sale of the item. Additionally, the real money revenue is credited to a Battle.net account balance; if you want to be paid and withdraw the funds to Paypal, this incurs an additional 15% charge. Once you get the money into Paypal, you can transfer to a bank account for free, or do anything you could normally do with Paypal credit.

If you are at all familiar with Blizzard’s other major auction house system, the WoW gold auction house, you might notice the similarities and differences easily. Here’s a quick rundown of WoW’s auction house fees:

• 5% of the sale price on same faction auction house (99% of the trading), 15% on neutral auction houses
• Players must put down a deposit when selling items. If the item fails to sell, the deposit is not returned. The deposit varies based on the length of the auction and the vendor value of the item.

The dapper Boubille of MMO-Champion has uncovered and revealed the new /dances coming in the new World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria.

The female dance is, without question, the Caramelldansen. If you’ve ever seen any anime series, you’ll probably recognize the dance.

After the jump you can find both female and male version of the dance as well as a few other videos for your enjoyment.

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Yesterday, ZeniMax announced that the many rumors of an Elder Scrolls MMO were true, and officially announced The Elder Scrolls Online, only to be met with fan backlash. The main reason being, that fans believe that Bethesda will be less likely to release another single-player Elder Scroll game, since they do not want to compete with themselves.

While Bethesda is owned by ZeniMax, they are two separate development studios; with ZeniMax developing the Elder Scrolls MMO, and Bethesda doing what it normally does. As a MMORPG gamer first, and Elder Scroll fan second, I don’t see a conflict of interest.  A single-player RPG and a MMORPG are not in the same market. It’s like World of Warcraft and Warcraft 3, one’s a RTS game, and the other a MMORPG. Both can exist at the same time without affecting the other.

One comment on the Bethesda blog stated,

Please say this won’t indefinitely post-pone the release of the next real TES title, the way World of Warcraft has indefinitely put Warcraft 4 on hold.

This user is failing to see that  Warcraft 4 was not put on hold for WoW, but for Starcraft 2. Both are RTS games that do compete in the same market. A single-player RPG is no more of a threat to a MMORPG than any other single-player game.

The only issue I could see is that Bethesda wouldn’t want to saturate and cheapen the Elder Scrolls name by releasing too many games around the same time. However, considering that the Elder Scrolls RPGs normally have a 4-5 year development cycle, we won’t see Elder Scrolls VI for at least another 3-4 years anyway. Elder Scrolls Online has a release date of 2013, which provides a big enough buffer that it probably won’t have any affect on the next Elder Scrolls RPG release date anyway.

Regardless, I can’t wait to learn more about Elder Scrolls Online.

It seem like every few months Blizzard does something that invokes the back-lash of its gaming community. This time it’s over the Mist of Pandaria beta invites that were promised to those who purchased the one year Annual-Pass subscription for World of Warcraft.

It seems Blizzard originally promised Annual Pass holders beta access as the time of launch, but have since updated their site to say that beta invites will be staggered.

In the top right, we have the original advertisement and to the left we have the new one.  The original advertisement under the “When do I get Diablo III and other exclusive benefits?” clearly states, “beta acess will go live with the beta launch“.

For further proof, players have cited a video from Blizzcon 2011 where in the opening ceremony, President and co-founder of Blizzard, Mike Morhaine, states, “guaranteed access into the next World of Warcraft expansion beta when it goes live.”

Well there you have it, pretty solid proof that Blizzard did indeed promise Annual Pass holders beta access from day one and have since reneged on it. Whether or not that language was used in the Term of Service or contact has yet to be determined, but at the very least, from the images above, this constitutes as false advertising.

Perhaps Blizzard did not expect the Annual Pass to be as big of a success as it was and realized they could not possibly give beta access to that large amount of players, but that’s really no excuse.

We’ll keep you updated once Blizzard responds.