Upper Deck Entertainment lost WoW TCG publishing rights?

I'm surprised that this didn't come to my attention sooner. I was recently made aware that Blizzard will not be renewing Upper Deck Entertainment's publishing rights for the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game and Miniatures Game. Various reasons have been plastered all over the internet, but they all seem a tad too extravagant, so I'm sceptical about most of them. The one that really caught my eye was Upper Deck losing a court case to Konami recently, and perhaps this was making Blizzard think twice about Upper Deck.

Blizzard has not yet cancelled these games, meaning that there is still hope for their future. The most likely outcome is that Blizzard will seek a new publisher and grant them publishing rights as soon as possible, so that the games can get back up to running speed.

Upper Deck Entertainment will be publishing their final sets and issuing tournament prizes whilst they still have publishing rights, so with all luck both Wrathgate and Icecrown will be released before Upper Deck's time runs out. However, it does look like Scourgewar will have been the last set to contain Loot cards, meaning that collectors of the TCG will be set back severely.

The tournament crowd is also severely disappointed by these recent announcements. Without Upper Deck it appears that Official Play will be taking a short break until Blizzard either finds a new publisher or publish the games themselves.

The World of Warcraft TCG is very well known for it's extravagant tournaments and prize support which has dragged in a lot of professional players looking to make their mark in this TCG as well.