Blizzard Entertainment, long opposed to the exchange of real currency for in-game items, has added World of Warcraft mini-pets to their online store for $10 a piece.

A mini-pet in World of Warcraft, for those who don’t play the game, is essentially a cute little companion. These non-combat pets offer no practical advantage to the user; they simply follow the player for vanity’s sake. However, now that Blizzard has established that they’re willing to take your money for a useless in-game pet, who knows where they might end up going with this?

Careful, Blizzard. Your zero-tolerance policy on gold sellers is now on awfully shaky ground.

Blizzard announced today that they have brought Sam Raimi (director of the Spiderman movies) on board to direct an upcoming tale of Horde vs. Alliance on the big screen, with a big Hollywood budget.

Of course, the speculation begins now. Will Sam Raimi’s previous translations of fantasy worlds to the big screen serve the Warcraft universe well? Will the screenplay capture the epic struggle of Horde vs. Alliance? Video game-to-movie skeptics that we all are, there’s a good chance of “fail” here. Hopefully they got the screenwriters right.