We kind of already figured this (and who is really jumping into Northrend without first having finished up with Outland anyway?), but Datth has confirmed it on the forums: in order to install Wrath of the Lich King, you'll have to have Burning Crusade installed as well. Not a huge surprise, but just in case you were recruiting someone to come up to level 80 with you, make sure to tell them to buy all three versions of the game when Wrath comes out, because they'll need them.

The bigger question is: when will get a battlechest? It took about seven months for Blizzard to put Burning Crusade and World of Warcraft in the same box, but can we expect them to do it faster with Wrath of the Lich King? Probably not -- while the price may drop a bit on the current Battlechest (if you wanted to jump into the game the day of Wrath's release, it would cost you $70 total, and our guess is that that's about $10 more than Blizzard will end up charging), odds are that anyone getting in now would have to buy that and Wrath to play.

Of course, odds are that you've made up your mind about buying the expansion anyway. Anyone out there still playing with vanilla WoW? As much as Blizzard has been about skipping past all that 1-60 content as fast as possible, I wouldn't be surprised at all if they even tweaked the subscription pricing on that end to try and pull more people into buying the expansions. They already will let you try the game and first expansion for free, and you'd have to think eventually they'll try to convince the last few demographics holding out to join up as well.

WoW Insider has obtained a copy of the "sell sheet" sent to distributors about the upcoming WoW minis game, and it contains information about pricing, pack size, and even some hints at a release date.

Basically, the minis will become available in three different ways: there will be the core booster sets, which will contain three minis of the same Horde or Alliance faction, plus three character cards and six ability cards, and will have a suggested retail price (SRP) of $14.99 per booster. Additionally, each booster will have a chance to include an ingame Loot Card, supposedly from the Trading Card Game (there is no word if there will be loot cards specifically for the minis game), and a 1/8 chance to have an "epic" character.

More info on the starter sets, including the full text of the "sell sheet," after the break.

I can't say I shop the AH enough to spot a great deal when I see one (I mostly just use the AH to offload all the BoE junk I collect, and Auctioneer watches prices for me easily enough), but I can appreciate the feeling frostaholic talks about here: just like opening up a loot window and seeing that drop you've always wanted, there's definitely a thrill in finding a long-awaited AH bargain.

And I don't know that we've talked about Bottomscanner in any depth before, but that's exactly what the addon is designed for-- given the price information from Auctioneer, you can hit a button in Bottomscanner, and the addon will scour the Auction House for any items that are priced for less than they're worth. It's automatic speculation, really, and while it only works because not everyone is using Auctioneer (because if everything was priced right, no one would find it cheap), it can be used to find good deals.

But still, there's nothing like finding a diamond in the AH rough yourself. Checking the AH for an item and then finding it one day for half the price you expected to pay-- that's an entire realm of excitement in this game by itself.