Agreed. Blizzard is a for-profit organization, and *everything* they do is for profit, directly or indirectly (ie good PR).

On the same line, it's amazing to see how many players are "really interested" in charity, now that Blizzard sells pets for real money. Hey, let's donate 5$/€ to a poor child and 5$/€ to Blizzard for a so-cute panda, instead of going out and drop 5$/€ to any random beggar who could have a hot meal. Nah, let's donate 5G and show how we're awsome by popping out the panda in Dalaran and going so people can admire us.

Bliz should have offered the pets for free, devoting the full amount of money to charity... if they really care about that. So far it's like trying to grab more attention and explore a new way to make some profit (using the charity wagon).

Yeah, Blizzard is never interested in charity. Like how they didn't do something awesomely cool for a kid who was dying.

Oh wait. They did. And it was talked about extensively on this very site.

http://www.wow.com/2007/05/22/blizzard-and-make-a-wish-bringing-wow-to-life/

http://www.wow.com/tag/ezra/

Douche.

http://www.wow.com/2008/10/23/ezra-chatterton-passes-away/

To a certain extent, it may be true that any of the charitable stuff they do is "for good PR", but stop and think about what they did for Ezra for a moment. Sure, it undoubtibly gave them great PR, but they could have got the same PR for just meeting with the kid, showing him around and maxing his character's level and gear out like they did.

Did they stop there? No, they went even further and let this kid design his own PvP weapon! How freaking amazing is that?

Did they stop there? No, they then let this kid design his own in-game quest, which he got to even do the voice acting for.

Did they stop there? No, they then let this kid not only design his own flying mount, but made it the faster than any other mount in the game at the time, and to top it all off, they gave it to his character so he could be the first ever person to own it.

Blizzard could have stopped at any time with the charity for that kid and still had spectacular PR, but they went way over and beyond the call to give Ezra the memories of a lifetime.

I agree with a lot of people, saying that for the cost of the pets, more of the money should be going to charity than is, but you have to consider that the MAJORITY of the players that are going to use this pet shop, are going to do so while the money is going to charity, and as the pets are sent to EVERY character you'll ever have, they'll never be purchasing the Panderin again. So practically 90% of the sales or more are going to be made within the charity time; and I'll bet and arm and leg that they EASILY raise over $100,000 with this single pet for the MAW foundation. That's a ton of money. That's a life-changing amount of money.

So please stop acting like the ass-weasels that you are by trying to cheapen this amazingly generous donation.