Activision-Blizzard has released their third-quarter numbers for the financial year of 2009, and as you might expect for the company in charge of Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, and World of Warcraft, business is brisk. They were expecting to bring in around $700 million, and ended up pulling in around $50 million more than that. It's good, we guess, to be the king.

Blizzard, in particular, laid claim to three of the top five selling PC games in North America on the good side, and on the bad side, Activision acknowledges in the press release that they're happy to have WoW back online in China, but a little worried about the troubles it's seen over there lately.

Strangely enough, there is no information in the earnings about how much money World of Warcraft has pulled in for the company, or any updates about subscriber numbers. Usually, that gets at least a mention, so maybe, with subscribers certainly down in China, Activision-Blizzard wants to keep that under their hat for now.

• +153 Stamina, +153 Intellect. Yes, that much. +86 Spirit, too.
• A Blue and a Red socket, with a +7 spell power bonus if you match both up. Remember, you don't have to if you don't want to, and this is certainly a socket bonus that's probably not worth going for. If you need an extra gem for your meta, this is probably the place to put it.

Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women? Blood Sport investigates the entirety of all-things arena for gladiators and challengers alike. C. Christian Moore, multiple rank 1 gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more in WoW.com's arena column.

David Byrne and The Talking Heads are a personal favorite. Miles Fisher seems to love them as well. His cover of This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody) is homage to one of the most beautiful, striking melodies I've ever heard, and as such, it will be your listening music for the day. (NSFW Warning: The video is a parody/reenactment of American Psycho, so view carefully.)

Last time, we went over the Will of the Forsaken nerf, 100% pet resilience, death knights, and druids. The patch looks to be a very interesting bag of surprises for arena enthusiasts, we're getting major changes to the way some races work, as well as nearly every class is getting a pretty substantial change or two which will probably help them in PvP. We don't normally see patches where most classes are buffed, but this could be one of them.

Read on to find out what's up with hunters, mages, and paladins in Patch 3.3!

We mention a ninja of the Onyxia mount in this week's Guildwatch, and while researching that, some other forum threads came up, including these two, both from General, where people say with conviction that given the chance, they'd take the Onyxia mount and never look back. They have a point -- it's one of the rarest random mounts in the game, on a raid that's definitely PuG-able. Chances are low that you'll ever see it, much less win it on a random roll, and so for a lot of people, it'd be worth the namechange and the server transfer you'd have to pay to escape your new ninja reputation.

Personally, I wouldn't do it, but that's really only because I know there are lots of rare mounts in the game that I'll never get (sigh, Red Proto-drake, I covet you), and one more isn't that big a deal. Not to mention that I like the guilds I'm in and the people I play with, and who knows what they'd think of me if I stole the mount from them or someone else. But not everyone feels the way I do, I'm sure, so let's ask: if you had the chance, in a PuG or a guild run, to steal the Onyxia mount as your own, would you take it? And if you would, is it just because it's so rare and special?

Well Blizzard has finally done it. After charging only for out-of-game services like faction changes and character customization, with the release of in-game pets on the Blizzard store, they've finally moved on to selling virtual items for real money. And there's a word, dirty in the mouths of some, that's floating around that some of you may not have heard or understood before: microtransactions. We wouldn't blame you -- some of our own staff didn't even know what they were just a little while ago. But with the decision to sell in-game items for straight cash, Blizzard has entered the fascinating and treacherous world of microtransactions. And if you're going to follow them off into this world, you might as well at least know what they're all about.

And so, we're here to help. Whether you've never heard of microtransactions before, you're convinced that they're the devil and that Blizzard has grown too greedy for their own good, or you can't wait to open up your wallet and get a Pandaren Monk to follow you around, let's take a second and look at the history of the microtransaction model, what it means that Blizzard made this decision, and what might happen to the game in the future.

The new LFG system is certainly great, but there's one problem with random PuGs that I'm sure it won't fix, and that is of course the problem of ninjas. As long as random people are getting into groups (and with the new rewards system in place, there'll be plenty of that), some of them will always find the loot more tempting than keeping their reputation clean. So what's the solution?

Obviously, over on Guildwatch, we've been covering people shouting out names and guilds on the forums for a while, but as we've also reported a few times over there, that barely helps -- even if people do remember a ninja on their server, one name change later and they're gone. A few guildleaders over on Jubei'thos have tried putting a site together to track known ninjas on the server, but even that has issues; it's tough to avoid false positives, even if you do require screenshots.

But surely there must be a solution, so let's put our heads together: a debuff? Something like the group vote-kicking system that's coming in patch 3.3? If Blizzard wanted to really go for fair, they could just take the Need-before-Greed system and turn it into straight Need: if an item matches your class and spec, you get a roll (with items everyone can use giving everyone a roll), and the best roll always wins. You can turn it off (for a Master Looter-style raid), but for PuGs, why even bother with a Need/Greed difference? What do you think?

If you're planning on heading out to join the Kalu'ak Fishing Derby in patch 3.3, you might as well look good doing it, right?

Name: Jeweled Fishing Pole (Wowhead, Thottbot, Armory)
Type: Rare Two-hand Fishing Pole
Damage: 410-610 / 3.00 (169.3 DPS)
Attributes:

• 1603 Feral Attack Power. Yes, it's true. Just in case you druids leave this on while in a different form.
• Requires Fishing 300, which as we've said before, isn't too hard to do. Go over to El's Anglin' take a few hours and follow their great Fishing/Cooking guide, and you'll be done before you know it.

I know -- most of you will hear the word "chatlinks" and think of horrible times in Trade channel where people are spamming the names of abilities and items in different ways, from nonsense to offensive. But chatlinking is a skill that isn't talked about much, and there definitely are place where it's useful (telling guild members about an item that might help them, or linking an enchant to show what mats it needs). So, encouraged by this thread over on Epic Advice, let's run through a few of the ways you can put links to items in the chat channel.

Blizzard has posted a preview of the upcoming Quel'delar storyline that we'll be observing in Icecrown. Quel'delar, you'll remember, is the twin of the old Quel'serrar blade that we put together way back in the days of vanilla WoW.

For those of you who are spoiler-sensitive, details are behind the break.

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Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

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As part of their Halloween celebration, the Escapist magazine is giving away twenty Grunty the Murloc Marine codes to sharp readers able to answer their 10-question quiz about the World of Warcraft's Hallow's End event. Readers, who have to register at the site (go ahead, it's free), need to get all ten questions correctly in order to be entered in a random drawing to receive one of the codes for the murloc pet. Aside from being unbearably cute and badass at the same time, the Starcraft-themed baby murloc which was given away at this year's BlizzCon also gets into a shootout with the Zergling pet. Or explodes in green goo. It depends on who gets the jump.

Fortunately for you readers, there's no need for that kind of violence. Just head on over to the Escapist Magazine and answer their fairly easy quiz (insert Headless Horseman laughter here), a multiple choice affair that doesn't have any time limit -- so it's actually kind of a giveaway. Well, a giveaway for players with a good grasp of wowhead and wowwiki the game, as it's not exactly easy. Well, it wasn't easy for me, but I'm no expert on Azerothian Holidays (I got 9/10, so I'm out of the running). If you think you've got the chops for it, though, hop on over to the Escapist and start the quiz!

Hey, you, reading this blog. You like playing World of Warcraft? You like listening to the sounds of the game as you do it? You got ears and a distinct predilection for playing in either the Horde or Alliance faction? Then boy do we have a headset for you: the Creative World of Warcraft Wireless gaming headset is going to be the hottest thing you can put on your head since the trucker hat, and here's your chance to win one by commenting on this very post.

As usual, the contest is open to legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec), and everyone who enters must be 13 or older. To enter, leave a comment on this post before Wednesday, October 21st, at midnight eastern, and please be sure to use a real email that you check often to enter, so we can contact the winners when we choose them. You may enter only once, and each winner will get a Creative World of Warcraft Wireless Gaming Headset, with a retail value of $150. Please note: winners will not receive the headset until it is released later this year. Click here to read the official contest rules.

Good luck to you all! And don't forget, if you want to win five of these things, there's only one day left in our five-man contest. Just by submitting a shot of your group, you can pick up five headsets, one for every group member. That one ends tomorrow, so get your entry out ASAP!

Blizzard has announced that they've partnered with a company called Windlass Studios to release real-life versions of a couple popular in-game banners and tabards. $40 will get you a banner of the Alliance or Horde, while $80 will get you a real-life faction tabard to wear. Each of the pieces is apparently 100% cotton, and silkscreened with the familiar faction insignia. Very interesting -- we've seen some nice fanmade pieces before, but these are commercial releases bearing official logos.

The company has also released a latex rubber version of Frostmourne -- it's not quite as nice as the Epic Weapons metal version, but then again, it's $149, and the metal version is over $400. I still wouldn't spend over $100 on a rubber sword, but hey, if that's your thing, there you go. And speaking of spending money on rubber costumes, the Blizzard store is also chock full of Halloween costumes this year, and there are a few other masks, including Illidan and a new Draenei mask, floating around the Internet for purchase as well.

So we've been doing these Creative contests to give away their shiny new World of Warcraft-branded wireless gaming headsets for a few months now. But if you haven't won one yet, worry not: today, we're giving away five headsets to one lucky instance-running group out there, so you can all talk to each other while you're wiping in Heroic Old Kingdom.

To enter, you've got to send us a .JPG-formatted picture (no bigger than 800px please) of your favorite five-man group -- you and four friends -- to contests@wow.com by 5pm October 29, 2009 (that's one week from today!). Make sure you put "Creative 5-man contest" in the email subject so we can recognize what it's for, and while you can take it wherever and however you want to in-game (or even in real-life!), just make sure there are five people in there. Because one lucky random entry will win five Creative World of Warcraft wireless gaming headsets, one for each member of the group, at a value of $150 each, or $750 total. That's a lot of headsets! You must also be 18 or older, and live in the United States or Canada excluding Quebec -- full official rules can be found right here.

Please note: in addition to emailing us the .jpg picture, you will also need to copy and paste the form below (filled out) into your email -- it was put together by our legal department and simply says that you understand and will adhere to the rules of the contest. You need to include the names and e-mail addresses of all five players in your group so that we can contact you all about prizes if you win.

Good luck to everyone who enters -- we can't wait to see what your five-man groups look like! And stay tuned, because we've got an even more epic contest planned out soon.

World of Raids has unveiled an extremely spoiler-filled video of the first quest to obtain the legendary axe, Shadowmourne. The quest, called The Sacred and the Corrupt, is active on the PTR but cannot be completed as it requires items obtained from Icecrown Citadel. The sweet-looking axe (shown above as data-mined by MMO Champion) is an upgrade from an identical but less spooky and icy-glowy epic axe called Shadow's Edge. The six minute video is pretty cool and epic, with the setting eerily reminiscent for players who played the Human campaign in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne The Reign of Chaos (thanks, Skeeran! Shame on me!). Nothing much to say, really, other than hit the jump to see the video. Oh, and in case I haven't made it clear... it's kind of spoiler-ish.