As Blizzard prepares for the November launch of its fifth World of Warcraft expansion, Warlords of Draenor, it has decided to give active players and those who reactivate their accounts for the expansion Mists of Pandaria for free. Blizzard is also offering a deal where you can buy all the rest of the expansions - the Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm, and  Mists of Pandaria for $19.99 at the Battle.net Store.

Evolution Studios says that it may be able to turn on some of the features that are currently disabled in DriveClub. Last night on its Facebook fan page the studio said that continual upgrades to the servers are making performance better for players.

"Continual upgrades to the DriveClub servers are building a steady increase in performance, meaning that we're getting more and more players connected," the studio wrote on Facebook.

At the end of last week, Tommy Refenes - one of the co-creators of the indie hit Super Meat Boy - held a three night fundraising event to raise money for his sick mother. On Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, Refenes took to Twitch to play and stream Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and Grand Theft Auto V in the hopes of helping his sister raise $15,000 to get their mother a diabetic alert dog.

Eidos President for Life Ian Livingstone has applied to launch a free school in England that will deliver lessons to students using video games. Livingstone told the BBC that he wanted to start a school that uses games-based learning and get away from what he called the  "relentless testing" method used and most schools in the country.

"I'm passionate about children who have been born into the internet," he told the BBC. "I think they learn in a different way."

While Mojang has had a rocky relationship with its community over the last few months following some changes to Mojang’s EULA (that some interpreted as a threat against the business of Minecraft video casting), the company is trying its best today to reassure fans that Minecraft YouTubers will continue to have its support, despite being bought by Microsoft.

Tommy Refenes, one of the co-creators of the indie hit Super Meat Boy, is hosting a fundraising event on the evenings of October 9, 10, and 11th to raise money for his sick mother. Specifically, Refenes says that he is trying to raise enough money to buy his mother a diabetic alert dog because she is having a difficult time with her type 1 diabetes.

GitHub revealed that it will give free access to a suite of development tools that small-scale game makers may find useful. The only catch? You have to prove that you are a student.

The offer is part of the GitHub Education initiative, and is available to students over the age of 13 and currently enrolled in an academic program. If you can do that, you can get access to project development help and tools like the Crowdflower crowdsourcing platform, a hosting plan with the DNSimple DNS management service, and free access to Unreal Engine 4.

Twitch announced plans yesterday to tighten up how it discloses "paid-for and sponsored content" after some in the community expressed concerns over transparency. Moving forward, Twitch says that it will label videos more boldly that are created as part of a partnership between the content maker and another party.

Bandai Namco Games America has teamed up with the National Breast Cancer Foundation (NBCF) for Breast Cancer Awareness Month with the launch of its Ms. PAC-MAN Pink Ribbon Campaign. Headlined by special DLC featuring Ms. PAC-MAN, this effort is aimed at raising funds for NBCF to help women with early detection, education and support services related to breast cancer.

The GoFundMe funding campaign for writer Tom Chick, founder of the popular gaming site and forum Quarter To Three, who has a rare form of stage 4 cancer, has managed to raise $22,211 from 338 people in five days. The campaign has another five days to go if you are interested in helping Tom out.

In a recent update to the GoFundMe page for Tom, PR ninja Stephanie Schopp (who works for Tinsley PR) expressed her surprise and joy that so many in the video games industry, press, and gaming community have helped Tom out in his hour of need:

Several major publishers doing business in the United Kingdom have teamed up with the British government to fund a whole new generation of game designers, according to Gamasutra. Sony Computer Entertainment Europe and Ubisoft Reflections have teamed up with the British government to back The Next Gen Skills Academy, which will fund video game developers, visual effects and animation professionals.

Last year, with the help of the gaming community and companies like Sony Online Entertainment, game-related charity Extra-Life raised more than $4 million dollars to help battle serious ailments affecting children like cancer and cystic fibrosis. This year SOE has renewed its commitment to the cause with the goal of making 2014 a banner fundraising year for the charity.

Riot Games announced that the North American Collegiate Championship (NACC) is ready to kick off its 2014-2015 season. The NCAC is a League of Legends collegiate competition featuring hundreds of teams from universities across the U.S. and Canada. Last year 540 teams from over 300 universities competed for a chance to win thousands of dollars in scholarship money.

The 2014-2015 NCAC competition will now span the entire academic year and North America has been divided into four new regional brackets: North, South, East, and West.

PR ninja Stephanie Schopp has launched a GoFundMe funding campaign for writer Tom Chick, founder of the popular gaming site and forum Quarter To Three, who has a rare form of stage 4 cancer.

Chucklefish, the developer behind the popular space adventure RPG Starbound, claims that it has earned enough money to be in continual development for nine more years. Chucklefish financed development of its "Terraria in space" adventure game through Steam Early Access and through pledge drives on the official Starbound website.

Rovio has teamed up with Room to Read, a non-profit literacy advocacy group whose goal is to promote reading and gender equality in Asia and Africa. For the next two weeks Rovio will offer a "Good Deed" coin as an in-game purchase for Angry Birds Epic. Rovio will donate $1.40 from each $3.99 purchase to Room to Read to help drive its initiatives abroad.

President Barack Obama will announce a nationwide public service campaign that urges young people to do more to help prevent sexual assaults on college campuses across the United States, the New York Times reports. The campaign, "It’s on Us,” will utilize celebrities (to be named later) and partner with game publisher Electronic Arts, according to the report.

An interesting report on Polygon highlights the fact that some high-end reward tier backers of the highly successful Kickstarter campaign for Uber Entertainment's RTS game Planetary Annihilation have made their money back.

King.com's Catharina Lavers Mallet and Marie-Claire Isaaman from the Norwich University of the Arts are the latest inductees in the European Women in Games Hall of Fame. Created in 2011 and sponsored by EA, the Hall of Game is part of the European Women In Games conference which took place yesterday. Other nominees considered for this year's honor were Roberta Lucca and Debbie Bestwick.

Valve Software is increasing its support for iD Tech by providing attendees with free access to Valve-created games, free Steam accounts, and access to the company's Source SDK. Valve has been a long-time corporate sponsor of the iD Tech educational program.

UK-based gamer charity SpecialEffect announced the winners of SpecialEffect Soccer Fives and that it managed to raise a cool £3000 for its ongoing mission of helping individuals with disabilities find new and exciting ways to play video games. The soccer event took place last Friday in the shadow of Wembley Stadium, with the Sports Interactive (makers of the Football Manager series) team winning the 2014 SpecialEffect Soccer Fives Trophy by beating out RuneScape maker Jagex.

Relic Entertainment said back in May of this year that ridding Dawn of War 2 and Chaos Rising of its Games For Windows Live multiplayer components was going to take a lot of extra work. Apparently it wasn't kidding around, because it took them until today to implement a different solution for people still playing the game.

WoWHead has located several NPCS in the World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor beta that pay homage to the late Robin Williams. You may recall that Blizzard said last month that it would add the late comedian - who was a big fan of World of Warcraft - into the game to pay tribute to him.

Epic Games announced today that it is giving away its Unreal Engine 4 game development suite for free to universities and students. Teachers and students interested in obtaining Unreal Engine 4 for free can now submit their credentials through Epic's official site at www.unrealengine.com/education. Once approved, they will have access to the suite for free. Normally that Unreal Engine 4 license would cost $19 per month.

An open letter signed by a number of game developers is asking the gaming community at large to respect everyone who plays, criticizes, and makes games. The thrust of the letter is that people should respect each other even when they disagree, and should never tolerate harassment or threats.

The letter is signed by a number of game developers working for such companies as BioWare, Bungie, Boss Key, Google, Sports Interactive, Sony Computer Entertainment America, Oculus VR, Ubisoft, Spry Fox, Vlambeer, EA, Kickstarter, Humble Bundle, and many more.

At least one good thing came out of the state of Rhode Island losing $75 million dollars (plus an undetermined amount in related costs including penalties, etc.) from the failed loan deal with Curt Schilling's 38 Studios: the success story of Danny Mandel and Ben Chichoski.

When 38 Studios went bankrupt and left dozens of its employees unemployed and abandoned - including many who relocated to Providence and the surrounding area to work there - employees like Danny Mandel and Ben Chichoski had to find something else to do in order to survive.

Gaymer X has launched the Kickstarter for Gaymer X3, though the next event is a long ways off and will not bear the "Gaymer X" name. The name of the event has been changed to "GX3: Everyone Games," in an effort to offer a fan gathering that was more inclusive to all including those who do identify with the "gaymer" label and those who don't but want to hang out with their friends in a safe and welcoming space. While the venue has yet to be determined, co-founder of the event Matt Conn notes that it will take place in the Bay area due to popular demand.

A new game from Budding Biologist created in collaboration with scientists at UC Davis teaches first- and fifth-graders to think like a scientist using inquiry-based tools on a fun adventure.

Game researcher Annakaisa Kultima had a blunt answer at the Game Developers Conference Europe's #1ReasonToBe panel today about why she's in the video games industry:

"I have a fucking right to be here," she said to attendees (as detailed by Polygon).

Depression Quest, an interactive fiction game about dealing with the peaks and valleys of depression, has finally made its way to Steam this week. Available for free, Depression Quest is the creation of Zoe Quinn. The game was originally released on February 14 of last year, but had to wait until January of this year to get the "greenlight" from Steam.