While Blizzard may have lost an estimated 100,000 subscribers in its most recently reported quarter, the good news for the World of Warcraft maker is that the bleeding is now trickling. In the quarter before that Blizzard revealed that it had lost a whopping 800,000 subscribers, so losing 100,000 in the three months ending December 31 seems almost like a reversal of fortune.

Normally when you imagine someone getting in the Guinness Book of World Records, you correlate the entry to some kind of effort being involved. Someone eats 1,000 eggs, or juggles for 24 hours, etc. But with the new Gamer’s Edition of the book they have added a new category called "the Best Game Ending" and allowed about 13,000 fans to vote.

If you were planning on heading to Anaheim, California at the end of this year to attend BlizzCon, we have some sad news for you today: Blizzard has decided not to host a 2012 event. BlizzCon will return in 2013. The reason for not running its fan event this year? The company says that it wants to spend all of its time developing the three titles it has in its pipeline: Diablo III, the StarCraft II expansion Heart of the Swarm, and the World of Warcraft expansion Mists of Pandaria. The company did announce details on the 2012 Battle.net World Championship. Details below:

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. According to an Ad Age report, Activision publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg said that the Modern Warfare 3 leak onto the Internet was his "first real crisis on the job” and forced the company to employ some unorthodox methods to soften the blow. He said that when the news broke the marketing department was called into a half-day meeting with risk management to discuss their options.

Hacker Brandon Wilson decided to tinker with Activision's Skylanders action figures to see how they work. In case you don't know, Skylanders uses action figures that are placed on a portal peripheral that makes them appear in the game by reading the bottom of the figure.

A California Superior Court judge has told EA that it must defend itself in the $400 million contract-interference suit brought by Activision over Infinity Ward founders Jason West and Vince Zampella.

If you've been banned from Modern Warfare 3 for being a jerk or cheating, you can start playing again in another 5,000 days. If you're a 13-year-old and you catch such a serious ban, you'll be 26.5 years old when you can play again. A serious ban is 5,000 days, or 13.5 years, according to MP1st. But don't worry - these bans are dubbed "temporary" by Infinity Ward.

Bloomberg is reporting that Activision-Blizzard's top stakeholder Vivendi SA has failed to obtain a new line of credit worth an estimated €1 billion. According to multiple sources with "knowledge of the negotiations," the credit deal fell through mostly because of wary investors who are dealing with the mounting pressure from the European debt crisis.

Xbox 360 Modern Warfare 3 online matchmaking won't work properly in countries that are not supported by Xbox Live, according to a report in Eurogamer. Some customers in countries where the service isn't official are having trouble playing Modern Warfare 3 and there's nothing that can be done about it, according to tweets from Activision and Microsoft to users complaining about problems.

Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has hit the $ 1 billion sales mark - and it did so just 16 days after its November 8 release. As this IndustryGamers report points out, it hit that milestone faster the top grossing movie in history - James Cameron’s Avatar. Activision also said that it has 30 million players in its worldwide Call of Duty player community.

According to EA's Peter Moore Battlefield has either taken market share from Modern Warfare 3, has added millions of new customers into the mix, or both. The COO of EA insists that Battlefield 3 has successfully taken a slice of Modern Warfare 3’s market share, even though the latest title in Activision's top franchise has become the fastest selling entertainment product of all time.

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick takes a jab at EA, saying at the recent Reuters Media Summit that it will be LucasArts - and not Electronic Arts - that makes out like a bandit when MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic is released. At least he admits that the Star Wars-themed MMORPG will be successful.

Infinity Ward, the developers of Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, announced via Twitter that it has banned more than 1,600 players online for cheating. Infinity Ward Creative Strategist, Robert Bowling explained via Twitter what was going on.

"Any attempt to cheat, hack, or glitch in #MW3 will not be tolerated. 1600+ bans issued. Updates in works."

He went on to answer questions from followers about how to report cheaters from within the game:

If there's one thing you can say about anti-game campaigner and UK Labour MP Keith Vaz, it's that he is tenacious in his fight against games. This week MP Vaz raised his fourth early day motion aimed at violent games, this time specifically targeting Activision's recently released Modern Warfare 3.

Beachhead Studios, the development team in charge of the Call of Duty Elite social and stat-tracking network from Activision, are promising that the service will be fully operational by December 1. In a recent interview with G4TV, vice president of production Daniel Suarez says that he accepts responsibility for the widely reported problems with the service since its launch.

As part of its latest financial results games retailer GameStop revealed that it sold well over a half-a-million Call of Duty Elite subscriptions. The Call of Duty Elite subscriptions were a big hit at GameStop stores, mostly due to the November 8 launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Elite sales certainly helped GameStop's digital business, which the company expects to exceed internal expectations of $450 million for the current fiscal year. So exactly how many Elite subscriptions were sold? According to GameStop, right around 600,000.

Activision says that it "misspoke" earlier this week when it said via Twitter that Call of Duty: Elite support for the PC version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 probably wasn't going to happen.

"We are working towards a universal Elite experience but we cannot guarantee if or when a version will be available for the PC," Activision stated via its CoD: Elite Twitter account yesterday.

Vivendi revealed that it has sold 35 million shares of its Activision Blizzard holdings, reducing its stake by right around 3 percent to 60 percent. Vivendi did not disclose what it sold the block of shares for. A Reuters estimate based on the opening price on Tuesday morning of $12.18 per share puts sale at around $426 million USD.

Analyst Sebastian Colin of Baird Equity Research says that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 will break records today.

According to Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter, Activision's Modern Warfare 3 will sell ten percent more copies than Call of Duty Black Ops. He estimates that the game will rake in $1.1 billion in its first six weeks on store shelves. Pachter also predicts that the Call of Duty Elite premium service could pull in up to 4 million subscribers by the end of the year. Of course, he probably didn't know at the time that it wouldn't be available for PC users. That may throw a wrench into the gears of his calculation machine.

If you somehow managed (by hook or by crook) to get a copy of Modern Warfare and are trying to play it online via Xbox Live, you'll be treated to a ban. The game officially launches November 8, but apparently Microsoft has noticed that some Xbox Live users have the game and are trying to play it online. Those people are having their accounts banned.

Just days before the worldwide release of Modern Warfare 3 (November 8), Activision has decided that its Call of Duty Elite service will not launch on PC alongside the game - according to an MCV report. The company did not reveal when it expects the service to be ready either.

If the fight between EA's Battlefield 3 and the Call of Duty series is a popularity contest than EA is losing, according to online usage stats released by Xbox Live's Major Nelson. According to his list of most popular game being online for the week, Call of Duty: Black Ops and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 are more popular than Battlefield 3. This might give EA some pause considering that these are very old games beating a game just barely released this month.

Blizzard Entertainment will host a series of special charity auctions featuring server-blade hardware that was originally used during the early days of World of Warcraft. The money generated from the auctions will go to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, one of the world's premier centers for the research and treatment of pediatric cancer and other catastrophic childhood diseases. The auction consists of the original HP Blade System servers that once housed hundreds of different realms across North America and Europe.

A letter hand-delivered to Sussex County Community College President Paul Mazur on February 14 has managed to net the school $35,000 dollars for a web domain. The story begins on that date when the new president of the community college received a letter offer of $7,500 for the domain name the school paid $5 to reserve: Skylanders.com. Skylanders happens to be the name of SCCC's athletic teams, the only college or high school with that team nickname in the country, in fact. It is also the name of an upcoming game from Activision.

An article in Forbes calls a new promotion from Pepsi and Activision "nothing short of unholy." The promotion, "Rank Up XP," gives Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 players extra time in-game to earn double experience by purchasing Pepsi products (Doritos and Mountain Dew) and redeeming codes from the packaging. The experience comes in various allotments of time; a 20 oz Mountain Dew will earn players 15 minutes, for example.

According to Activision its Call of Duty fan event, Call of Duty XP, was a smashing success and the second most viewed televised event in history. Speaking to IndustryGamers, Activision Publishing's top executive Eric Hirshberg said that they were delighted with how the event turned out and proud of the milestones it earned.

Infinity Ward founders Jason West and Vincent Zampella finally have a trial date in their long-running lawsuit with Activision. Their court battle with Activision over royalties allegedly owed from the Call of Duty series is set to go before a judge in Los Angeles on May 7, 2012.

"I’m really looking forward to having our day in Court," said Zampella in conversation with Forbes.

Zampella and West founded a new studio, Respawn Entertainment, in 2010, signed a deal with EA, and have hired over 60 employees.

Activision has prevailed in a fight with the owners of ModernWarfare3.com, a website that first came to light in July because it lampooned the Call of Duty series and Activision - and redirected visitors to the official Battlefield 3 site. Clearly a violation of naughty internet rule 370.

Ignoring calls from Activision to tone down its rhetoric, EA Label boss Frank Gibeau says that - for the first time - the Call of Duty series will face the first real competition it's had "in a long time."

Gibeau bragged that DICE's upcoming FPS shooter Battlefield 3 will "definitely" take market share away from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 this Christmas.