I love playing WoW, but after a while that $15 a month adds up. And that’s on top of the money I originally spent on the game, plus the two expansions. Lets face it, MMO’s are expensive. Aside from buying your own arcade cabinet, an MMO is probably the most expensive video game you can buy. Naturally, any help you can get on those monthly fees is always appreciated. So how would you like to never have to pay for a single month of WoW again? Sure, you could just quit playing, but what’s the fun in that? No, what you need to do is win a lifetime pass from Blizzard.

In an effort to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society a Blizzard employee is offering up the chance for some free WoW time. Just head over to the donation page and give the charity at least $25 and leave a comment (“For the Horde” or “For the Alliance”). So exactly what are they giving away? Well, up for grabs are three 1-year subscription cards, and one lifetime pass. That’s right, if you win the grand prize, you’ll never have to pay for your WoW subscription again. Even if you don’t win, you’re still helping out a great cause. So far they’ve managed to raise just over $13,000, which far surpasses the $5,000 goal. You’ve got until January 5th to enter.

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So lets say you’ve been playing World of Warcraft for a couple of years, and you suddenly realize that your female dwarf mage named Poopzfire really just doesn’t suit you anymore. You’ve already put hours untold into leveling her and getting all of the best gear, but you want something that suits you just a bit more. Fear not, Blizzard has decided to give you the option to change nearly every detail of your character, for a fee.

Re-Customization is a new feature that will allow you to change the gender, face, skin, hair and name of your character for $15. Sure, you can already change your name for $10, and your hair for free, but for an extra $5, why not go all-out and get a sex-change operation while you’re at it?

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If you didn’t already know, Blizzard is going to be updating their Battle.net service for the upcoming Starcraft and Diablo sequels. Eventually they’re even going to be moving World of Warcraft players over to Battle.net accounts. In obvious anticipation of the new service, Blizzard has brought down the mighty ban hammer on roughly 350,000 accounts for cheating.

Granted, this is only a temporary 30-day ban for using third-party hacks and mods, with a permanent ban coming if you continue to use such cheats. It’s been a long time since I jumped on Battle.net and played some Diablo II, but I do recall a few run-ins with people who were obviously employing some sorts of hacks, which almost always ruined the experience. So a word of warning to all of you still playing Diablo II and Starcraft, play fair, or  you won’t be playing at all.

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Surely you’re not already tired of Wrath of the Lich King, since it did only just come out yesterday. However, if you’re already itching for something new and improved from Blizzard, you’ll be happy to know that they are hard at work on a new MMO. This has been known for a little while now, but we are finally getting some of the juicy details. Blizzard COO Paul Sams has given us a brief look into just what they are doing. Check out his full quote after the jump.

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If you’re looking to download the Wrath of the Lich King when it comes out next week, it ain’t gonna happen. For those of you that haven’t taken advantage of it, you can download the full World of Warcraft client, and subsequently The Burning Crusade expansion from the WoW site. You’ll need to have a valid account, and in the case of the expansion, you’ll need to have purchased it as well.

Unfortunately when it comes to the new expansion, Blizzard won’t have it up starting on day one. In fact, TBC wasn’t up for a couple of weeks after it hit store shelves. I’d say that would be a fair way to judge when to expect the latest one to be available.

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Someone happened to notice a slight similarity between the Wrath of the Lich King cover and the cover for the Battle for Middle Earth expansion.  Hilariously enough The Wrath of the Lich King and The Rise of the Witch-King sound alarmingly similar.  Also the armor itself is very much alike, then there is also the blue background.  The Middle Earth expansion came out in 2006, so it’s possible that the cover art was unintentionally inspired  by it.  However, Arthas’ armor was based off of Warcraft III which came out in 2003.  It’s likely just one big coincidence, but funny either way.

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Blizzard has updated their emote list.  They added the new emotes that will be in Wrath and of course they still have the old emotes on the list.  Which also means you can brush up on all kinds of emotes you’ve either forgotten about or just never realized were in the game.  The list shows which emotes have movements and sound and which ones don’t.  However, what they don’t say is which ones are the new and which are the old.  I haven’t seen a lot of them, but after a while you just see and use the same old ones and forget about all the extra emotes.  There is a video up of a night elf doing the /cower emote that is truly priceless.  You can check out the full list here.

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Yesterday we informed you that Blizzard was opening up several servers for free character transfers. If it weren’t already blatantly obvious, they had to do this because the game is still attracting thousands of new gamers all the time. In fact, the company has just announced that they now have over 11 million active users in World of Warcraft.

While it has taken them nearly nine months to jump from 10 to 11 million subscribers, I doubt it will take quite so long to hit 12. First, we’ve got a new expansion hitting stores next month, which will likely attract new players, as well as entice those who’ve kicked the habit to once again lose themselves in the world of Azeroth. Then of course you have the holiday season which is fast approaching. With those two elements working together, I’d be surprised if we didn’t hear another announcement before spring.

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If you’re fed up with how packed your server is, now is the time to make the change. Blizzard has opened up 22 of the US servers for free character transfers. I have yet to switch, because I have real life friends on my server, but I may attempt to get them to transfer with me. After all, if you’re going to do it now is the time. With things as they are now, it’s going to be a nightmare trying to get anything done right after WotLK comes out. Moving to a much quieter server might be a nice change of pace.

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Speaking of Diablo III, there have been plenty of people whispering and wondering about whether or not Blizzard will end up porting it to one or more consoles. It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen a game in the franchise on a console, and the more simplistic control scheme that they have talked about certainly seems like it would fit. But the question is whether or not they’ll do it. When asked, Blizzards Mike Morhaime said this:

“Every game we have the discussion about which platforms make the most sense. As Diablo 3 takes shape, I think we’ll do an evaluation.”

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