Blizzard is pretty proactive about protecting its community from cheaters and hackers, hence the constant rounds of bans on players who they think are unfairly exploiting or gaming the system. If you are an ardent fan of Diablo III, however, you may have noticed that the leaderboard has suddenly seem some changes that you can’t quite place- that’s down to the newest round of bans issued by Blizzard.

“Some of the shifts you may be seeing on leaderboards are a direct result of a recent ban wave issued for cheating,” Blizzard said. “Players that were found to be in violation were removed from the leaderboards and other rankings have been adjusted appropriately as a result.

“This means your ranking may have increased if someone ranked above you was removed from the leaderboard.

“As we move forward to future seasons and eras, we’ll be continuing to monitor for such behavior and take appropriate action, though we may not always message when such ban waves occur.”

I just hope that they never inadvertently ban someone innocent, but apart from that, protecting the community from cheaters and hackers is something I can absolutely get behind.

Will World of Warcraft ever die? Probably not. After multiple successive quarters where Blizzard lost subscribers, they finally started regaining them again this last quarter, just as their next gen, long in development, MMO, Titan, was canceled. And right in time too- this year, a new World of Warcraft expansion is releasing, and Blizzard is doing everything it can to ensure that it revitalizes interest in the nearly decade old MMORPG.

Of course, that also includes conventional methods such as TV advertising. And these three TV ads are something you should be seeing a lot of if you live in North America, as Blizzard will be bombarding the airwaves with these ads constantly over the next few weeks, until the release of this game.

Warlords of Draenor will launch on PC and Mac. Blizzard is currently offering World of Warcraft, plus every single expansion pack ever, for just $20, to get players primed for this new one.

If you were looking forward to the iPhone and Android release of Blizzard’s endlessly popular (and great fun!) Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, you will be disappointed to know that Blizzard has officially delayed the release of the game into 2015 today. The reason for this that they cite is ‘needing more time to make the game work on smaller screens,’ which, honestly? Is a good enough reason for me.

“We’re… close to having Hearthstone out to our iPhone and Android phone users, but it’s become clear that we need a little more time to get that version right. While we have a build up and running internally, it needs a bit more work, and we don’t feel like we’ll be ready to share it with you until early next year,” Blizzard said on the Hearthstone blog.

However, and this should be good news for everyone who wants to play Hearthstone on the go, but is unwilling to invest in an iPad, a version of the game on Android tablets is very close to being done.

“Throughout the past year, many of you have been asking about the release date for Hearthstone on Android. The team has been hard at work to bring Hearthstone to that platform, and is making great progress,” they said.

“We’re taking things one step at a time and we’ve got our sights set on a release for Android tablets, our next new platform, before the end of the year.”

Hmmm. Well that’s one less reason to not buy an Android tablet now.