The fabulous MMO Calendar is back for 2009.

If you are into MMOs, do yourself a favor and grab one. They're just $12.95 and proceeds benefit St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

They tend to sell out quickly, so don't wait too long to order.

Here's some info from the MMO Calendar press release:

With the help of some wonderful MMO developers we have put together our 3rd annual one-of-a-kind calendar featuring autographed artwork from the hottest released and upcoming MMO's!

MMO Calendar 2009 proudly includes:

    * Age of Conan
    * DC Universe Online
    * Dofus
    * Eve Online
    * EverQuest II
    * Free Realms
    * Guild Wars
    * Pirates of the Burning Sea
    * RuneScape
    * The Agency
    * Warhammer Online
    * World of Warcraft

...As always, 100% of the proceeds of the sale of MMO Calendar go directly to the amazing people at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, helping them in the fight for children's lives. Is there a more noble cause anywhere?

I've been playing Warhammer Online since it launched about two weeks ago and I'm thoroughly enjoying life as a squig herder. Might jump over to The Order on another server though. That Dwarf engineer looks like fun, too.

Right now my greenskin is a bit short on in-game cash to buy gear, but it looks like I'll have to make do. That's because WO developer Mythic is aggressively targeting gold sellers. In fact, Mythic co-founder Mark Jacobs recently wrote, “I HATE GOLD SELLERS WITH EVERY FIBER OF MY BEING.”

Decaf, Mark...

Over at Gigaom, Wagner James Au argues that Mythic's approach doesn't make much sense:

When launching a big-budget online game, it doesn’t strike me as a very good idea to risk alienating nearly a quarter of your user base right out the gate. That, however, is likely to be the consequence of an extreme anti-gold selling policy at Mythic Entertainment...

 

In a study by Nick Yee, a PARC research scientist... 22 percent of players surveyed reported purchasing game gold, with those ages 35 and over most likely to do so... let’s face it: If you have kids and a mortgage, you only have so many hours a week left over to play games.

 

So if Mythic succeeds in driving away gold sellers, it seems inevitable that it will succeed in hurting Warhammer Online’s retention, too. For surely players who like to buy their way out of difficult quests but no longer can are likely to get frustrated and leave for another game.

GP: I've fessed up in the past to buying WoW gold, which led to the most hate mail I've ever gotten. In my case, though, it's pretty much what Nick Yee found in his research. Kids + mortgage + job = less time to play.