For all you rich players who are worried about losing a chunk of your hard-earned gold if you transfer from your server, Blizzard has responded to your fears.

Starting Nov. 4 after weekly maintenance, the gold limit for paid character transfers for characters level 70 or higher will be increased from 10,000 to 20,000 gold in preparation for Wrath of the Lich King. This will also apply to free character transfers when they’re offered. If you have more than 20,000 gold, I suppose you’re still out of luck.

The full announcement can be found here or after the jump.

In preparation for the upcoming launch of Wrath of the Lich King, we will be increasing the gold limit for paid character transfers from 10,000 to 20,000 gold. Players who wish to transfer a level-70 (or higher) character carrying up to 20,000 gold will be able to do so starting Tuesday, November 4, after weekly scheduled maintenance is completed.

Please keep in mind that all other transfer-eligibility requirements, restrictions, and policies remain the same. The new gold limit also applies to free character moves (when offered). For more information, please visit our Paid Character Transfer FAQ (http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=20558&categoryId=2317&parentCategoryId=&pageNumber=1 ).

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We’ve joined forces with The Eminence Symphony Orchestra to produce Echoes of War: The Music of Blizzard Entertainment – a compilation of pieces from the Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo universes, all recorded with stunning new orchestration.

The Echoes of War package features 15 unique arrangements from Blizzard Entertainment’s catalogue, with several pieces coming from yet-to-be-released titles including Wrath of the Lich King, StarCraft II, and Diablo III. Ninety minutes of music are featured in all, with bonus tracks arranged by special guests including the critically-acclaimed composer Kow Otani (Shadow of the Colossus).

In addition to the $29.95, two-CD standard version, a Legendary Edition is also available for $49.95, and comes with a bonus documentary DVD, nine art cards, and a detailed booklet.

For more details, check out the , or head to the to order your copy.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Blizzard, Lore, Wrath of the Lich King

Our good friend Kevin Kelly (who writes for Joystiq) has apparently turned traitor — over at the Spout blog, he’s written up four reasons why they shouldn’t bother making a Warcraft movie at all. His arguments go from shaky to solid — he first claims that movies made from videogames just don’t work anyway, In response, I’d submit to you Doom, and — oh wait. Never mind. His second reason is that they just wouldn’t make enough money, even if every Warcraft player bought a ticket, but I don’t know if I’d worry about that: Transformers made money, and that movie was a high-budget pile of junk.

His last two points are probably more solid, though — he says that unlike Lord of the Rings, which the Warcraft movie is often compared to, most people (even players of the games who skip cutscenes) would walk in having no idea what the story was about, which means the story would have to be dumbed down or just be a confusing mess. And finally, we can’t really argue with the last point: since that first piece of concept art, we haven’t heard a peep out of Legendary or Blizzard about what’s happening, so maybe the flick’s not getting made anyway.

And by the end of the piece, we’ve got to agree with Kevin: even if a big-budget worldwide movie release didn’t get made, we’d much rather have a high-quality DVD of Blizzard’s cinematics anyway (or maybe even a feature-length put together by the same department — they do awesome work). The odds are against a live-action Warcraft movie already, it seems — maybe it would be a better idea for Blizzard to just release something themselves.

Why they shouldn’t make the Warcraft movie originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Expansions, Wrath of the Lich King

I showed you the Alliance airship on yesterday’s Ask a Beta Tester, now you get to see the Horde version! And now that that’s out of the way, let’s start with a couple of questions from Aerei…

I’ve got possibly the most important question ever asked in this column! Are we going to see NPCs rocking the new hairstyles now available? I don’t think it’s fair only PCs should get them.

Yep! You’ll spot the new hairstyles on NPCs here and there. Not super often yet, but you definitely see them. A lot of the guards in the Argent Crusade camp are rockin’ the new styles. They’re very progressive!

Also, if Dalaran gets mage trainers because it’s the mage city, how come Shattrath doesn’t have paladin trainers? Huh?

Because Shattrath sucks.

Continue reading Ask a Beta Tester: The mystery of Crystalsong and other things

Ask a Beta Tester: The mystery of Crystalsong and other things originally appeared on WoW Insider on Fri, 31 Oct 2008 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Happy Halloween! Blizzard has selected the top five pumpkins in its annual pumpkin-carving contest. Each winner will receive a Logitech G51 Surround Sound Speaker System.

You can browse the entire photo gallery, which also contains 18 honorable mentions.

Are you doing anything Blizzard-related today for Halloween? Let us know.

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