http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3NkFxpb4hI

-You can use ingame currency (gold) or real life currency (money, obviously, I think they don't accept donkeys as a currency).

-Items, gold, and components like gems, crafting resources can be sold.

-Player-managed economy and listings, no interference from the Blizzard crew (in a way that they won't put items there or mess with the listings in some way).

-Every week people will be allowed to put several items on the real money auction house, for free. Meaning that you will be able to make money while playing the game, without previously investing money to put the items on the auction house.

-Smart search feature, that automatically lists you useful items based on your character.

-Advanced search feature, where you can detail your search query.

Updating...

This is ok, seems really fair, but still I don't like where the company is heading.
There is too much focus on squeezing every last dime out of their games and the quality usually suffers.

Don't get me wrong, these are great games, high production value, great gameplay, really polished and so on, but monetizing everything marked Blizzard really makes me hurl.

Oh, and I can't forgive them the rape of lore done to the Warcraft series starting with Warcraft 3 and shit hitting the fan with WoW.
Some people are pissed because Fallout 3, some because the new X-Com, other with Syndicate, well this is my favorite series that got shat on.

Blizzard has a long history of ripping off other stories/franchises/etc for ideas. But when they ripped off their OWN story with Kerrigan/Sylvanas, I genuinely had to laugh. Really hard. Literally the only difference between the two characters is that one has pointy ears and the other has an angsty love interest.

To name but one of many parallels between the Warcraft and Starcraft stories. :)

What about camels?

Just to be clear, this is all on the honor system. No one would know if Blizz did what they say they won't do.

WarCraft had lore before 3?

Yeah, you wouldn't believe it, but games back then came with beefy manuals with novel-like stories.

For example Warcraft 2 came with a 100 page manual where 50 were back story and lore.

Not to mention that the in-game story was based on normal military strategy like conquering key military fortifications, destroying oil supplies or assassinating traitor leaders.
None of the grand save the world, it's your destiny crap.

Another good example was the Diablo manual where you had a mini novel of some 20 pages how the situation that is came to be.

And to boot both had great hand drawn artwork to go with it.

I still have the original StarCraft manual. It didn't occur to me that they did that with earlier games as well. >_>

Warcraft was never about saying the world. It was and it still is all about the characters' stories.

Exactly, like Thrall's destiny and story to lead the orcs to the promised land, or Arthas becoming the Lich king, or Illidan's betrayal and I'd say these were poorly written.

None of those in Warcraft I & II, they had some key characters but it was all about strategy, conquest, it wasn't personal but logical like warfare (or should I say warcraft) should be.

I won't touch D3 until it inevitably goes F2P.

Blizzard also announced their Pandaria expansion for WoW, where a previously gag character gets an entire expansion and continent.

Then I read an interview with Metzen, where he also comments on how much he enjoyed watching the Last Airbender with his daughter...

... and then someone points me towards this sketch map of Pandaria.

Yes, that's a giant wandering turtle and there are Water, Earth, Fire and Air quests in the new expansion.

The Pandaren are an old, old race. They were supposed to be the Alliance's new race in The Burning Crusade.

So their whole existence is not a joke. (judging by everything WoW said in BlizzCon 2011)

They were a joke in Warcraft 3 imitating Jackie Chan's The Drunken Master and displaying Samwise Didier's strange fascination with pandas.