Today in WoW: Monday, Aug. 8, 2011

Now that the API is live, we want to make you all aware that HTML datamining (via us.battle.net/wow or any of the other regional wow sites) is not acceptable. Within the next 7 days, we will start to blacklist users that are making excessive requests to our regular community sites.

If you are currently in the process of porting over to the API and have not requested a key yet, please do so. We do not want to interrupt service for community sites that are following that path.

Please email api-support@blizzard.com with specific questions/concerns, or reply to this thread with any general comments.

Thank you for your cooperation!

As of this moment, there aren't any plans to make those items available for Justice Points.

That doesn't necessarily mean that those items are still out of reach, though. We re-tuned the tier 11 raid instances in the hopes that players who haven't seen that content might be willing to give them a shot. If you don't have a group of friends or guild mates that are interested in trying out those raids, the Raid Browser is an under-used tool that can be convenient for getting a raid group started, or for filling the gaps in your raid composition.

(For those who are unaware, the Raid Browser is available as a menu button at the bottom of your interface titled 'Raid')

We've spent 8 years adding awesome community comics to our Comics section, but we're far from finished. We're looking for the best new World of Warcraft comics to become front page news on our site, and we'd love to have your help, whether you're a seasoned contributor or a first-time cartoonist. If you'd like to have your comic displayed on our website, submit it here.

There's a whole lot of conjecture going on in this thread. I think it's better for me at this point for me to present the facts as I can, rather than focus on any particular commentary that's already been made.

Hiring Game Masters is a lengthy and expensive process, and one that we are constantly going through. Speaking as a former Game Master myself, it's not an easy job. There's a lot of demands that need to be made, both from the employer and the players that you interact with. Much training is required, and even then, some tasks are limited to more experienced Game Masters.

This is a topic that comes up frequently, and it seems to stem from the general lack of knowledge about how we do the things that we do in Customer Support. Some of that will have to remain a well-protected secret – we provide the best customer support that we can, and we feel that's something extremely valuable that no other company offers at the same level. We know it's important to you guys, and we agree.

However, we're also working on ways to bring to light our policies, procedures, and our day to day lives here so that our players can better understand what's necessary to get these difficult tasks done in the best and most efficient way possible.