Word on the street: WoW, EQ, Champions and Aion.

So I've been reading forums, checking out my favorite sites and have seen some interesting stuff. Word on the street is:

WoW
If you play World of Warcraft and don't have a Battlenet account, you have until Nov 12th to change it. Players who have not change it by then won't be able to log in until they do so. For doing so anyone who changes over (which means everyone lol), gets a free penguin pet! How cool is that. It looks like it will be given to each character on the account also. You can read more about it on MMO-Champion where they have some 'blue' info on it.

EQ
Everquest's 16th expansion Underfoot beta is currently taking registrations from players. The Beta testing will be from October 20th to Dec 1st. As always they give nice rewards for beta testing. I wonder what it will be this year. Also new hot zones have been released.

Champions
The Blood Moon Rises October 27th!
* Take part in an event of epic proportions. The evil Undying Lord Takofanes has returned to proclaim his coming reign over humanity. Help defeat his undead hordes all over the world.
* Help save the 13 souls of the Undead Heroes to unlock the Celestial power set weeks before it is released to the public.
* New PvP Map: Zombie Apocalypse – Fight for survival against the zombie hordes.
* New power set: Celestial – A support-based set allows you to both heal allies and weaken enemies.
You can read more about it on the official site.

Aion
Lately it's annoying to try to get official information from Aion. Supposedly the community support cannot post on the forums due to technical issues. Even players are reporting many problems such as: You should make sure copy your post because most often it will get ate up and spit out, paste and post again. At times when a player posts it posts under another players name. Yikes!

So how do we know what is going on? It seems the NCWest Community Manager gives a lot of information out on Twitter and Aion Source. I didn't know if it was official or not at first since it has his picture instead of a company logo.

Recently this CM posted on Aion Source "Regarding the recent bannings". I found nothing official anywhere on the Aion forums about this, I had to search around... Seriously, not on the official Aion forums?? This isn't professional at all.

If you actually go to the official forums you might hear about people getting banned. Since nothing official has been posted on the official forums this is what I'm getting from the players as possible reasons for bans:

*Extensive Play times. 8+hrs
*Unknowingly selling something through the broker to a RMT.
*Accidentally speaking to or even grouping with a botter.
*Dumb comments about gold selling on public channels

Is it true? Well, taken that there was a mass ban, the lack of support currently and lack of being in touch with the community... Sadly I can see this happening. Players report no explanation was given for the bans, no email stating what they did.

Currently this is the only means of support over the weekend. No support on weekends. I am sure those phones will be ringing off the hook come Monday.

And that's the word on the street this weekend. -kaozz