Many World of Warcraft fans are familiar with The Instance, a popular WoW podcast hosted by Scott Johnson and "RandyDeluxe" Jordan. Last week, during show #168 on Nov. 8, the hosts were able to score an interview with Blizzard head-honcho (and former WoW lead developer) Tom Chilton. Since the main topic of the interview was Blizzard's newly-launched Pet Store, some listeners might have missed a brief digression―about 23 minutes in―when Chilton mentions the most "obvious" paid-service coming next; the ability to transfer entire guilds across servers:

"It's a real pain right now to move your guild from one server to another," he told The Instance. "We'd like to develop a way to do a guild transfer [...], so you can move your guild bank and all that stuff at the same time. I think that's going to become more important in Cataclysm, because we're introducing the concept of guild leveling and all that kind of stuff."

Chilton said that Blizzard doesn't have any developers currently working on the guild transfer service yet, but he believes it's "a likely candidate for the future." We've known since BlizzCon 2009 that WoW's entire guilds system is slated for drastic upgrades, set to coincide on or shortly before Cataclysm's release. It sounds like a much-needed feature; one that probably would have held numerous guilds together in the past, if they would have been able to switch servers as a group and retain all items, member data and stats. But how much will it cost? The usual price, per "individual character" transfer? Or maybe an alternative and cheaper "flat-rate," that a handful of guild officers can afford?

For better or worse, it's finally happening; Blizzard took its first big step into the ever-expanding world of micro-transactions earlier this week, offering two in-game vanity pets for World of Warcraft in its online Blizzard Store. Many players said this day would never come (or at least feared it), while others recognized the company's already-existing services like paid server transfers and faction/race changes, considering them precursors of what's to come.

But did the majority of Blizzard's customers think it would ever come to this, even after the announcement of the company's newly-improved, marketplace-ready Battle.net service, announced at BlizzCon 2009? We knew that Blizzard was prepping alternate revenue models to offer saleable content like maps and mods for games like StarCraft 2 and Diablo III, but many longtime World of Warcraft subscribers assumed their favorite MMO would continue to remain off-limits when it came to buying actual in-game content, even as ineffectual as vanity pets.

Blizzard has updated its Tier 10 sneak peek page with the priest and paladin armor sets. The shaman set is currently the only one that's missing on the official site. You can view high-resolution images of the priest and pally designs after the jump.

So what do you think of the priest and paladin sets? How about Tier 10 as a whole? Do the designs live up to your expectations for patch 3.3 or were you expecting more?

ZAM user teacake noticed an interesting post made by Wryxian on the official European forums that states Blizzard is aiming "to implement the ability to exchange bind-on-account items between your Horde and Alliance characters in patch 3.3." Wryxian reminds players that this is subject to change since the patch is not yet live.

Wryxian said in another post that players will only be able to trade BoA items and not gold or other items, unless the plan changes before the launch of 3.3. So what do you think about the upcoming connection between Horde and Alliance mailboxes? You can discuss the topic in teacake's thread.

Breaking News! Blizzard has just put up the two new companion pets, Lil' K.T. and the Pandaren Monk, for sale in the Blizzard Online Store. They've even donating 50% of the proceeds (from the monk) to the Make-A-Wish foundation! This looks to be just the beginning, the FAQ indicates that there will be more pets to come.

The items are for sale for $10 USD each, and can be gifted to another player's account. The pets are BoA, and will apply to all future characters on the account it was purchased for.

Edit: Nethaera has just posted about it here. Full text after the jump.

Bornakk announced on the official forums that free character transfers to select PvP realms will begin tomorrow, Nov. 5, at 11:15 a.m. PST. The transfers are scheduled to end on Nov. 12 at 11:15 a.m., but be sure to make the move ASAP since the tranfers could be disabled early if Blizzard's goals are met before the deadline.

All of the transfers are for Alliance only. Players from select North American PvP servers can transfer to Cho'gall or Mal'Ganis, which are both Central time zone PvP realms. Players from select Oceanic PvE servers can transfer to Thaurissan, an Oceanic PvP realm. The full list of servers can be found after the jump.

In the upcoming 3.3 content patch, as some of you already know, Icecrown will be home of the updated instance difficulty setting which can be changed on a boss per boss basis. It will be able to be switched at any time during a raid without leaving and reentering the instance. Some restrictions on when you cannot change it will be in place. Such as, you cannot change the difficulty in combat or during certain scripted events. To enable it you will have first have to have defeated the Lich King on normal mode, and heroic mode will not affect trash in anyway and will only change the bosses.

You can read more after the jump.

Have you ever wanted to join a PUG with members of the World of Warcraft development and community teams? Well now's your chance! Zarhym announced on the official forums that blue posters will be on the PTR today at 4 p.m. PST (7 p.m. EST) to test out the new dungeon system.

For a chance to group with the Blizzard team members, you need to use the Dungeon system and choose the "Random Heroic" option. All employees will have the <GM> tag next to their names and be able to choose whichever class, realm and faction he or she wants. 

So last month we had two contests running on the site. One from the staff here and one from our very own Poldaran.

Our contests were a 20 item scavenger hunt and a best Halloween story contest from Poldaran, who graciously offered to pay for premium for 3 months to the winner.

World of Warcraft turns five years old in less than three weeks, and Blizzard is kicking off the celebration with an anniversary sweepstakes. The company will be giving prizes to random players every week for the next five weeks based on how long they've been playing the game. For example, five players who created an account on or before Oct. 26, 2008 will be chosen tomorrow to receive a Charge of the Great Dragonflights stein.

Those of you who have been with WoW for the long haul and created an account on or before Nov. 23, 2004 will be in the running to receive a Nvidia video card or an ASUS Republic of Gamers 3D Vision enhanced laptop, as well as a year of free game time and a signed Onyxia print. The two lucky winners who receive laptops can honestly say it paid for them to play WoW for five years.

The sweepstakes is only open to residents of the United States, Canada and New Zealand. You can read the official rules for more information and check out the full list of prizes after the jump. You can also discuss the sweepstakes in this thread in our WoW general forum.