Premium WoW Cross-Realm Play

Battle.net has the announcement that Blizzard is working on a service to allow World of Warcraft players to invite Real ID friends of the same faction to party, even if they play on a different realm. They explain why part of this service will be offered at a premium: "As this is a fairly complex service to develop, we don’t have a release date to share quite yet. It’s important to note that as with some of the other convenience- and connectivity-oriented features we offer, certain elements of the cross-realm Real ID party system will be premium-based, though only the player sending the invitations will need to have access to the premium service. We'll have more details to share with you as development progresses -- in the meantime, you may begin to see elements of the feature appear on the World of Warcraft PTR." There is some backlash from users unhappy that this will involve a fee, and the controversy is summarized on IncGamers.