[citation][nom]thaile4ever[/nom]All the money blizzard will be making is going to charity. Of course you have things like ebay fees, paypal fees, listing fees, and the seller fees, which is why they said Net Profit.What Blizzard is getting is Free PR. They had all these server sitting around gathering dust and instead of throwing them out they decided to auction them from a charity. Why do people try and make a conspiracy theory out of everything?[/citation]
I am far from a conspiracy theorist, but I know Bobby Kotick's history. I also played WoW from launch until this past June. My observing them post merger makes me question their motives.
Something along the lines of "We don't have the time to include the content for Wrath/Cataclysm we talked about" becomes days later "We have this new pet/mount on the Blizzard store". And of course with the latest pet they just announced a few days ago, it won't be like the previous pets where if you buy it and it unlocks on all characters. No, if you buy it, you can use it on a SINGLE character so if you want it on more then one, you have to buy more copies of it.
Then there was the original intention of making Real ID grouping only available for premium fee. This would have made World of Warcraft the first pay-to-pay-to-play game. The plan was only cancelled after player uproar.
So unless you have examples of Blizzard's altruism post merger where Vivendi made Kotick CEO of Activision Blizzard, don't try to make those who question Blizzard's motives seem like wacky conspiracy theorists. The above cited things are only a few of the many things that can be brought up.