The popular role-playing game is headed to consoles after all.

Blizzard Entertainment community manager Micah Whiple confirmed via his twitter feed that Diablo III is indeed headed to consoles. However, no specific platforms were mentioned for the console version, or a release date.

“Yup,” Whipple said. “Josh Mosqueira is lead designer for the Diablo console project.”

Blizzard Entertainment have announced a brand new expansion pack for World of Warcraft, Mists of Pandaria. The latest expansion will reintroduce the Pandaria and centerpiece the conflict between the Horde and the Alliance.

Mists of Pandaria highlights the idea of “war,” with vice president Chris Metzen stating that the Alliance and Horde will go to war in ways we haven’t seen since the second WarCraft installment. Introducing a the new Monk class, it features the Pandaren as a playable race of characters. It also brings the level cap up to 90, add new talents, a “Challenge Mode” for dungeons and a “Pet Battle” system.

[Video Game Design Colleges]

Blizzard Entertainment has revealed that its more then “halfway” complete with the development of Diablo III, the third installment into the series. Diablo director Jay Wilson states that the sequel isn’t “feature complete” but, however, it isn’t lacking content-wise.

Later in the discussion, Wilson added that “[they're] not really close [to announcing a release date] until you’re playing it”, pointing to a friends and family beta. Then, he points out that Diablo isn’t “close” to the end of its development, a friends and family beta is. Meaning that, they’re close to announcing a release date.

[Blizzard: Diablo III "way over half-way" done via VG24/7]

Blizzard Entertainment have unveiled the final character class for Diablo III, the Demon Hunter class, a class that captures the essence of its name. The Demon Hunter carries a dual-crossbow and is said to be the successor to the Rogue class from the original.

The Demon Hunter class is focused on projectile weapons; including throwing knives, grenades, bolas and, of course, crossbows, which can be combined with magic spells. It’s also said to finalize the “archetypes” of the Diablo universe, adding a needed strategy to the title — delayed attacks, traps, and timed detonations.

Blizzard has been relentless towards cheaters, suspending the accounts of thousands of players caught using hack programs or other forms of cheating. Now, the company’s pointing the finger towards the creators of those programs; accusing three parties of “multiple counts of copyright infringement”.

The parties — “Permaphrost”, “Cranix” and “Linuxawesome” — stand accused of encouraging others to infringe upon the company’s copyright clause, because when users install cheat programs “they copy copyrighted content into their computer’s RAM in excess of the scope of their limited license, as set forth in the EULA and ToU, and create derivative works of [the title].”

It’s unclear what jurisdiction the court has over the accused but, as stated in the companies end user agreement, all disputes will be heard in a Los Angeles court. The plaintiffs are also seeking, not just damages, but a portion of the money the three received.

Despite having a hefty launch, there was still one curious omission from the Starcraft II experience, the ability to jump into an in-game chat with friends. However, don’t fret; Blizzard has announced that the chat feature is “something that will be added in a patch” sometime in the near future.

“The system will be based around groups, where you will be able to join public channels that are based around your interests. Also the system will include private chat channels (in plans for release in the first few months after the release), where you will be able to connect with your friends,” said a Blizzard community manager, reports Kotaku.

It seems that video game developers and publishers, after a bit of an hiatus, are beginning to “re-open support” to Apple’s operating system, Blizzard reveals that a beta for StarCraft II is in the advance stages of development and that they do plan to release the beta next month on Mac operating systems.

A Q&A panel on the Battle.net gives Apple owners hope: “We are currently working on a Mac version of the beta and hope to release it sometime in April,” the post states. “Hang in there.”

Though it’s currently planned for release on both PC and Mac platforms, only PC owners have been able to take part in the game’s beta, which began about a month ago. The beta is expected to end in late spring, making the two month gap for a Mac release a pretty substantial chunk of available time.

It’s no secret that Blizzard Entertainment has been working on a new MMO, even teasing at its development via a job listing. However, it wasn’t until BlizzCon that World of Warcraft director, Jeffrey Kaplan confirmed that Blizzard is “definitely involved” in a new MMO. “I think the great part about a new MMO from Blizzard is that it doesn’t have to be ‘WoW‘,” he said to MTV. “There are a lot of lessons we learned in making ‘World of Warcraft,’ and some of those you can take and do things better than you ever did before.”

When being asked about the possibility of their new MMO being cannibalizing to “WoW” subscribers, Kaplan stated that he wasn’t worried at all, and that the company was going to great lengths to make sure that, that doesn’t happen. But, with the recent success of high fantasy MMOs, one must wonder if there’s any more room for MMOs of WoW’s kind.

“Oh yeah,” Kaplan said. “I only think [non-high fantasy MMOs] have a harder time because of the past games that have tried and the game design decisions that they made, not because of the [intellectual property] or the setting that they chose.” Kaplan also added that the next-gen MMO is very early in development and, like all Blizzard titles, it’s “going to be a while” before we see it.

This news comes straight out of Blizzard’s voice actors panel at BlizzCon. Blizzard has revealed that Battlestar Galactica’s Tricia Helfer will be playing Sarah Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades, in StarCraft II. Along with that, several returning actors will be lending their vocal talents in the game, including Robert Clotworthy and James Harper, reprising their roles as Jim Raynor and Arcturus Mengsk.

“It’s certainly fun to try and find the small differences — how do you bring Sarah Kerrigan into the Queen of Blades, without completely changing it?” said Helfer at the outset of her introduction to the crowd at BlizzCon. “Sarah is more innocent, and the Queen of Blades is just fun.”

“It’s intimidating to come into a game and do a job that you don’t really know the history of it, I’m kind of a video game virgin in terms of playing. Personally I’m not technologically savvy,” Helfer continued. “At the time, I didn’t know what Zerg and all these things were. It was fun to find out all these little differences.”

Blizzard today announced that World of Warcraft, its award-winning subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game, is now played by more than 11.5 million subscribers worldwide. This new high was reached following the November 13 release of the game’s second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King.

Within its first 24 hours of availability, Wrath of the Lich King sold more than 2.8 million copies, making it the fastest-selling PC game of all time. In addition to winning a number of editor’s choice awards from major gaming publications, the expansion has now gone on to sell more than 4 million copies in its first month, setting a new record for monthly PC-game sales. Both sales records were previously held by World of Warcraft’s first expansion, The Burning Crusade.

“We’re pleased to welcome the new and returning players who have helped World of Warcraft reach these new milestones, and we appreciate the enthusiasm and support that the game’s global community has continued to show,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We look forward to providing all of them with an excellent entertainment experience for a long time to come.”

South Park has always had a lot of fun with video game referencing, including games like World of Warcraft and Guitar Hero. Both have been used and parodied alot of times, even receiving some help from Blizzard in regards to a World of Warcraft parody. Now, South Park has seems to set its eye on a brand new game, Call of Duty: World of War. Which was revealed in an episode of South Park where the kids are suppose to be learning about computers and Butters has somehow found out that vampires are in the school. It’s really funny so check it out.

[South Park Plays Some World at War (NSFW) via Aeropause]