Have you remembered to get World of Warcraft a present for its birthday? For shame! Blizzard's MMO adores its players so much, it's actually giving players presents to celebrate the seventh anniversary of its launch on November 23. Now, don't you feel guilty for not returning the thoughtful gesture?

Read more: Free feat and fireworks. With bonus Chuck Norris! »

Developer Blizzard sure is good at raising money for charity. Sales of the Cenarion Hatchling, one of World of WarCraft's virtual pets that was created to support Red Cross Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami relief, have generated $1.9 million.

The Cenarion Hatchling was offered through Blizzard's Store, with a $10 price tag. 100% of the proceeds of purchases made before July 31 "will be donated to the American Red Cross's Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami relief efforts."

Read more: Previous WoW charity efforts »

Starting today, anyone with a Battle.net account can play any character they want to in World of Warcraft up to level 20 completely for free. You heard right. World of Warcraft has taken what could be the first step in a move toward going free to play. The new "trial" mode replaces the 10- 14-day free trials originally offered to new players and will now known as World of Warcraft Starter Edition. Players are free to reactivate dormant trial accounts for use with the new model or create characters based on any race and class from the base game, including The Burning Crusade races draenei and blood elf. Read more »

It's always unfortunate in World of Warcraft when a friend chooses, for whatever reason, to play on a different server than you. However, 1up spotted that Blizzard is now working on a feature which will allow you to reunite with your chums on any server to slay monsters together.

A post by World of Warcraft community manager 'Nethaera' on the forums explains that a "cross-realm Real ID party system" will allow players of the same faction on any Realm, who are Real ID friends, to party up and queue to play 5-person regular and Heroic dungeons together. Read more »

Speaking at Activision's earnings conference call last night, Blizzard president Mike Morhaime revealed that the developer is planning to hasten development on World of Warcraft expansions to reduce the amount of subscribers lost--the "churn" rate--once the new content has been exhausted.

"What we have seen so far is that people have been consuming this content very quickly and so the subscriber levels have decreased faster than in previous expansions," Morhaime said, speaking about WoW's latest expansion Cataclysm, which was released in December 2010. Read more »

Tickets for Blizzard's annual fan convention BlizzCon will be go on sale in late May in two lots, the developer has announced. If you're painfully desperate to go, you might want to book two days off work so you can sit in the queue.

The first batch of $175 tickets will go on sale at 10am PST on Saturday, May 21. The second round will be available on Wednesday, May 25 at 7pm PST. BlizzCon 2011 is on October 21 and 22 at the Anaheim Convention Center in California. Read more »

As part of its 20th anniversary celebrations, much-loved developer Blizzard Entertainment has released a lengthy retrospective documentary delving into, and retelling, its history.

The 48-minute video spans from Blizzard's beginnings as Silicon & Synapse, formed in 1991 by a handful of UCLA graduates, through to the present day, when it's known and loved for series including StarCraft, Diablo and Warcraft. Heaps of Blizzard luminaries appear, offering opinions and anecdotes about the company whose games we so adore. Read more »

In preparation for the December 7 release of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, Blizzard has patched all versions of the game up to 4.0.3a which has shattered the world of Azeroth.

Those that do buy the expansion will get two new playable races and new content for five additional levels from 81-85, but all World of Warcraft players will get to experience tons of new content in the old zones. Read more »

Blizzard will be deploying a massive World of Warcraft patch this week, which will bring new class mechanics and the talent tree overhaul to the live game in preparation for the December 7 release of Cataclysm (via MMO Champion).

Talent trees will likely be refunded as they shift from 71-point system to a 41-point system. The game will now only allow progress down a single tree until the 31st point is placed in a single tree and the number of talents has been drastically reduced. The Glyphs system will also get an overhaul. Read more »

Having stalled at around 11.5 million "subscribers" for a fair while, World of Warcraft has finally received a bump and passed the 12 million mark, developer Blizzard Entertainment announced today.

Blizzard declared in December 2008 that its fantasy MMORPG reached 11.5 million subscribers following the launch of its second expansion pack, Wrath of the Lich King. However, it stalled around then and by February 2010 still only had 11.5 million. Read more »

The World of Warcraft auction house is now viewable outside Blizzard's MMORPG via the Armory website and iPhone App, which will also allow players to bid on, create and manage auctions if they pay a $2.99 monthly subscription.

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There's something magical about that aggressive opening chord of Diablo. It's probably fair to say that no sound was more burned into the minds of late-90s PC gamers than those first few gothic guitar strums.

That music is evocative of late-night looting and hushed duping; of our old friends The Butcher, and his pal King Leoric; of Fallen Ones, and Godly Plates of the Whale, and a peg-legged jerk named Wirt. Read more »

World of Warcraft has netted 8.6 million sales across its various releases, expansion packs and bundles from US retail, according to NPD data provided to Gamasutra.

The figure includes the base edition of World of Warcraft, the Collector's Edition, its two expansions The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, and Battle Chest bundle. Read more »

Blizzard won't be done with World of Warcraft expansion packs after the release of the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King. It won't even be done adding landmass to the 10-million-player-strong MMO, according to Wrath of the Lich King designer Tom Chilton.

"We actually already have ideas on how we're going to expand on that in the future," Chilton said to Videogaming247. "There are still areas of the game that we've talked about and set up story-wise that we haven't revealed yet. So there's definitely more to go," he added. Read more »