With over 11 million subscribers, the behemoth World of Warcraft has enlisted a vast community of gamers. However, for a community as large as WOW's, it noticeably lacks a major print periodical. That will change soon, though, as the game mag publisher Future announced yesterday that the massively multiplayer online role-playing game will receive its own official quarterly exclusively for the game's myriad players.

World of Warcraft: The Magazine--a collaboration between Blizzard and Future--will allow current game subscribers to enroll in the magazine starting August 21 for a $40 one-year subscription or $70 two-year subscription in the US. Blizzard plans to showcase the publication at this weekend's BlizzCon expo in Anaheim, California.

The upcoming periodical will be spearheaded by a number of game publication veterans, including Julian Rignall (Virgin) as executive director, Ryan Vulk (Wired) as art director, and Dan Amrich (Official Xbox Magazine senior editor). The forthcoming magazine's publisher, Future, is no stranger to gaming, as it currently runs the Official Xbox Magazine, Official PlayStation Magazine, Nintendo Power, and Maximum PC.

"We're bringing together an international team of player-writer experts to create in-depth articles about World of Warcraft's design, art, lore, and community, as well as all aspects of its gameplay," Rignall said.

The magazine's 148-page inaugural issue will be "out in time for the fifth anniversary of World of Warcraft" of November 2009 in English, German, Spanish, and French. The upcoming publication will be sold through the game's account management page and the magazine's forthcoming site (warcraftthemagazine.com), which is expected to go live tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. PDT.