231 – The Instance: One star for the kids

Big News of the Week
Blizzcon is sold out! Shocked faces everywhere! “If you were unable to purchase tickets, a limited number of tickets to an exclusive pre-BlizzCon dinner to benefit Children’s Hospital of Orange County will go on sale Saturday, May 28 at 10 a.m. PT (BlizzCon admission included). For those unable to attend the show, in-depth coverage of BlizzCon will also be available through the BlizzCon Virtual Ticket, which is offered as a multi-channel Internet stream and also via DIRECTV in the United States. BlizzCon 2011 will take place October 21 and 22 at the Anaheim Convention Center. Tickets to the BlizzCon Benefit Dinner cost $500 USD each and include BlizzCon admission. For further information, check out the official BlizzCon site.”

Patch 4.2: We Bid Thy Keyring Adieu! Blizzard says: “World of Warcraft has evolved quite a bit since the day the Keyring bag slot was added in patch 1.11. When implemented, this Keyring provided players with a convenient way of storing dungeon, quest, and other keys automatically. Back when the largest bag was a mind bottling 18 slots – rumoured to be bottomless – the Keyring helped save precious bag space. But as things tend to do, time went on, bags got bigger, and designs for gating content (literally and figuratively) evolved through the years.”

Chinese prisoners forced into WoW “goldmining” scheme, says detainee. “In what could be considered the most modern form of prisoner torture know, prisoners in a labor camp in northeastern China have allegedly been forced to play MMORPG’s like World of Warcraft in an elaborate scheme said to net prison bosses approximately $800 to $900 per day.”

Rumors & Scuttlebut
We are experiencing technical difficulties! Cataclysm Raid Difficulty Progression.

Firelands Difficulty, and the Indirect Players Buffs that are coming.

How about some Firelands Q and A!

Drop of the Week
Search for Warcraft Cakes in Google Image search (thx Bill W.)