If you've been trawling the recesses of the internets for the past week or so, you may have come across a story about a pair of 13 year-old kids who lied about winning a WoW tournament, booked a swish hotel room then paid for two $1000-a-night hookers to come upstairs and play Halo with them. For their troubles, the pair have allegedly been "convicted of fraud". It'd be a pretty funny story if it was true. Thing is, it's not. Kiwi site Stuff actually bothered to check with the police in Newark, Texas, where the events supposedly took place, and were told:

As far as we know, this story is a hoax. There have not been any arrests here, and we're not aware of any convictions like that in this county.

Did a 13yo buy hookers with dad's credit card? [Stuff.co.nz, via GamePolitics]

Vivendi Games, which contributed some $340 million to its parent company's "very good" first quarter, continues to place much of its success on Blizzard Entertainment. The World of Warcraft developer provided an impressive $295 million to Vivendi's games division, with a good portion of that cash coming from the MMO's 10.7 million subscriber base. Vivendi says games revenue was down, year over year, with some of that poor performance due to unfavorable exchange rates. Yawn! Who cares about another billion dollar year? We're not Rob Pardo's kids! Where's the next WoW expansion, already?

Wrath of the Lich King is coming in the second half of 2008, says Vivendi's quarterly report. That's as close as we're going to get to a release date for now. Blizzard hasn't officially put a date on the expansion and it's totally realistic it could delayed, as is their wont, but we'll hold tight for a pre-December 31 release, fingers crossed.

Vivendi: Very Good First Quarter - 2008 Outlook Confirmed (PDF) [Vivendi]

The relatively annual celebration of all things Blizzard returns this year as the company announces BlizzCon 2008. Perhaps to help avoid the August event crush that occurred last year, which saw BlizzCon, SOE Fan Faire, and Quake Con all taking place over the same weekend, Blizzard has moved the convention back to October, which is when the 2005 original took place. The show will run from the 10th to the 11th at the Anaheim Convention center in California, where fans will be able to get hands-on time with upcoming releases, attend panels, play in tournaments, collect as-of-yet-unannounced spacial, limited edition merchandise, and see hideously inappropriate women dressed up as elves, both Blood and Night varieties. Joy!

Tickets will go on sale within the coming weeks for $100 a pop. Maybe this year I'll actually make it out there. I needs me some free murloc-themed goodness.

A press event earlier these week has resulted in a veritable flood of new information regarding the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. Most of the news floating about is regarding the Death Knight hero class, fleshing out the details of the eagerly awaited addition, as well as some information on the raids players will encounter in the frozen lands of Northrend.

Every player with a character over level 55 will be able to create one Death Knight per realm. The new character will start at level 55 with a full compliment of abilities at their disposal, the reasoning here being that anyone who has leveled that far will be able to get the hang of the new abilities quickly. Anyone who has ever played with a recently eBayed character can tell you this is a complete falsehood, but it'll be amusing to watch at least.

Speaking of amusing, Death Knights will also gain the ability to raise fallen enemies and comrades as ghouls to continue the fight. If you raise an ally in this fashion they will get a choice of whether or not to take control of their violated corpse. Good times!

The World Of Warcraft Europe website has recently posted an interview with a member of the German workshop group BattleHeat, who took it upon themselves to create a positively amazing set of tier 2 Paladin Judgment armor from the game. The group spent hundreds of hours getting everything just right, going as far as creating a special support structure under the shoulders to give them that trademark WoW hugeness. BattleHeat won't be selling this armor anytime soon, but the interview does give handy tips for blacksmithing, so you should be able to make your own given the right materials and a good decade to hone your skills. Might want to get started on that.

No one does April Fool's Day quite like Blizzard, and this year is no exception. Today they've unleashed not one, but three separate April Fool's Day jokes on the completely suspecting (for the most part, see below) masses.

By far the best is the announcement of the new Hero Class for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, the Bard. Utilizing their magical axes, which they hold upside down, the Bard class unleashes their powers in the form of a Guitar Hero riff, with the amount of riffs hit determining how badly they rock their opponent's world. We're pretty much in total agreement here at Kotaku Tower - we'd play the hell out of this class if it were real. Hit the jump for more Blizzard tomfoolery!

Blizzard is obviously not content with a paltry 10 million World of Warcraft subscribers. The WoW pusherman is expanding its operations to Latin America, giving Spanish-speaking North and South American gamers a fully tailored localization, including new voice overs and a dedicated customer service crew this year. In preparation, Blizzard is staffing up, with customer service, quality assurance, community relations, and web team positions open to those who speak the español.

World of Warcraft is currently available in English, French, German, Korean, European Spanish, and Simplified and Traditional Chinese. I've got gold on a Klingon translation by the end of the decade, sadly.

Blizzard Entertainment to Release World of Warcraft in Latin America [Blizzard]