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.

Some McDonald's restaurants in China have been redesigned with a World of Warcraft theme to promote Blizzard's popular MMO to gamers in the country. Kotaku has plenty of photos of McDonald's establishments in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou made over with paintings, character art, banners for the Hoarde and the Alliance, and gigantic statues from WoW.

To quote Michael Corleone, "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!" Those who deleted their high level World of Warcraft characters and walked away from the game can bring them back from the dead thanks to a new feature being added by Blizzard via the upcoming 6.0.2 patch. Patch 6.0.2, which will lay the groundwork for the Warlords of Draenor expansion's release later this year, will let players "undelete" most of their characters if they meet certain criteria:

Players with old World of Warcraft characters who have not logged into the game for a very long time may want to pay attention. Blizzard announced that it will institute a game-wide "character name reclamation" along with the release of upcoming major patch 6.0.2. This move by Blizzard will remove names from characters who have not logged in since November 13, 2008. This character purge will free up four years' worth of unused names.

Tabytha and David Armstrong, long-time World of Warcraft players (who play on the Eldre’Thalas server), recently found out just how wonderful Blizzard and the vast community that plays its long-running MMO truly is. Of course, the couple already knew that. Last week David Armstrong posted a heartfelt thank you in the World of Warcraft forums to the game’s developers for the game, which has impacted he and his wife's life so dramatically over the years.

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.

Children in Sweden are learning English by playing western games - most notably Blizzard's popular MMORPG, World of Warcraft. This is according to a new study (PDF) by Swedish academics Pia Sundqvist and Liss Kerstin Sylvén.

Blizzard has revealed that when the next expansion for World of Warcraft is released later this year, subscribers in the UK will have to pay a slightly larger amount for their monthly subscriptions. When the Warlords of Draenor expansion for World of Warcraft releases this November, the game's monthly subscription fee will increase to £9.99.

An Anaheim, California couple have been sentenced for neglecting their two young daughters to play World of Warcraft over a three-year period. Lester Louis Huffmire and his wife Petra Huffmire, both 41-years-old and resident of Anaheim, were sentenced to five years in prison on August 5.

An interesting article in the Wall Street Journal highlights the pros and cons of putting your World of Warcraft leadership skills on your resume. In the article several people highlight why it can be a boon or a bane to do so, and ultimately concludes that it might be a good idea to have several versions of your resume at the ready, depending on the situation. The tricky part is knowing when that right situation is.

A petition on Change.org asking that comedian Robin Williams be immortalized as a character in World of Warcraft has caught the attention of Blizzard Entertainment.

Blizzard saw 800,000 players walk away from its popular MMO World of Warcraft during the April-June quarter. The subscriber numbers were revealed yesterday as part of a conference call to discuss the company's latest financial results. As of June 30, the game had 6.8 million paying subscribers, down from the 7.6 million paying subscribers it had as of March 31.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron's chief adviser on intellectual property and Member of Parliament Mike Weatherley is pushing for penalties related to theft in virtual worlds and online. According to several reports, Weatherley, an avid World of Warcraft player, has asked members of Parliament to consider new laws that would make it so that “people who steal online items in video games with a real-world monetary value receive the same sentences as criminals who steal real-world items of the same monetary value."

BioWare's Star Wars MMO remains strong, and World of Warcraft is still leading the MMO space with subscriptions by a wide margin, according to new data from research group SuperData.

According to that data, EA's Star Wars MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic, made $165 million in revenue worldwide last year. That figure comes from revenue generated by subscriptions, expansion packs and microtransactions.

Over the weekend, a 22-year-old man went on a stabbing, shooting, and vehicular rampage in Isla Vista, California that left seven people dead (including himself from a reportedly self-inflicted gunshot wound) and 13 others injured.

Syracuse University researchers have conducted a study that aims to suss out whether female avatars in games are actually women in real-life or just men role-playing as female characters.

Research that included work at Syracuse University considered 375 people playing a multi-player World of Warcraft quest. Researchers found that 23 percent of the men chose opposite-gender avatars, compared to 7 percent of women who played as male characters.

Blizzard Entertainment announced that World of Warcraft level 90 character boosts are now available to purchase from inside the MMO's store, along with pre-orders for its next expansion Warlords of Draenor.

It looks like Blizzard will soon offer World of Warcraft players the ability to purchase Level 90 characters.

Last week WOW Insider uncovered a level 90 boost on the World of Warcraft store selling for $60 and took a picture before it was removed by Blizzard.

Sales of Blizzard's popular online-only action-RPG Diablo 3 have reached 15 million to date worldwide, according to Activision Blizzard. The new milestone was revealed as part of the company's latest financial report. Those 15 million in sales include versions of the game across all platforms. Activision Blizzard chief Bobby Kotick said that these numbers also bode well for the upcoming launch of the expansion pack Reaper of Souls in March.

Blizzard Entertainment is warning World of Warcraft players that they should be on the lookout for what it calls a "dangerous Trojan" that is capable of stealing their account information - even if they are using Blizzard's WoW account authenticator for extra protection.

According to Kotaku, late last week ten men in China were sentenced to two years in prison (each) and fined for their part in hacking World of Warcraft accounts. The sentencing took place in Zhejiang province's Songyang county court (China).

Last night on Comedy Central's the Colbert Report, host Stephen Colbert spent a bit of time picking on the idea of the National Security Agency snooping around Second Life. Recently reports revealed that new documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden showed that the NSA was lurking in World of Warcraft, on Xbox Live, and in Second Life (of all places) to keep tabs on terrorists who they believed might be organizing attacks in these virtual worlds. Stephen Colbert poked fun at the recent revelation, showing clips from the game while cracking jokes like this one:

Last week we asked our readers, "Do Publishers Know the NSA Is Conducting Surveillance Operations In Their Games?" An overwhelming majority of voters believe that publishers are lying about their knowledge of the NSA's activities in games like World of Warcraft and Second Life, or they are blissfully unaware of what's going on.

According to a lengthy report co-published by Pro Publica and the New York Times, American and British spy agencies have infiltrated World of Warcraft and Second Life, conducting surveillance and collecting data in the games played by millions of people around the globe, according to newly disclosed classified documents. Agents supposedly created characters to snoop and to try to recruit informers, and collected data and contents of communications between players, according to the documents disclosed by former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden.

World of Warcraft Lead System Designer Greg Street has left Blizzard this week, according to this Polygon report. Street confirmed the news on his Facebook account, saying that he was moving on for a new and exciting opportunity elsewhere.

Blizzard Entertainment is teaming up with Make-A-Wish Foundation to help the charity make the dreams of sick children in the United States fulfill a wish. World of Warcraft players can purchase the Alterac Brew Pup pet ($10) today, with $5 going to Make-A-Wish.

Australian nurse Katrina Fincham had struck it big by playing World of Warcraft. After earning around $75,000 by farming and selling gold in the popular MMORPG from Blizzard, she decided to convert that cold hard cash into cold hard gold bullion. After doing that she put it in her wall safe at her Adelaide home. All was right with the world, but then something horrible happened: her house was robbed and her wall safe was emptied!

As part of its announcement this morning that it would break the iron grip of Vivendi's controlling interest, Activision Blizzard revealed that World of Warcraft subscriber numbers have fallen to 2007 levels. The number of paying World of Warcraft monthly subscribers has dropped to 7.7 million, according to Activision Blizzard. That's close to what the game had in 2007 before The Burning Crusade helped it break into the 8 million subscriber mark.

The World of Warcraft version 5.4 update is alive and kicking on the Public Test Realm today, according to Blizzard. According to the patch notes, the update adds a new siege, flexible raid difficulty, a redesigned arena system, and a few other odds and ends. More importantly, the update adds an in-game store where players can buy a variety of buffs and other items. No doubt the selection of offerings will be limited for the purposes of the test phase.