The world of MMO websites has been seeing some stealth and not-so-stealth takeovers recently, and Grimwell Online has details on the latest machinations of noted and controversial gold-seller IGE, whose holding company has purchased Allakhazam.com, one of the biggest MMO item info sites out there.

Over at Broken Toys, Scott 'Lum The Mad' Jennings has plenty more insight on the move, and, among other things, cites a post to Allakhazam which suggests: "The value of the purchase is really obvious. Thottbot and Allakhazam are the two largest sites for the largest MMO game in the world. The two have cancelled each other out financially, since anything one would charge for in a premium service was offered by the other for free. Now with both sites, we can expand our premium service to cover all WoW players."

But in reality, this is all a little confusing - are all these legitimate sites owned by IGE and partners (and not blatantly advertising gold sales yet) just being bought for legitimacy, or is IGE just one obsessed-over corner of a business empire that just includes MMO info sites too? Or are we overanalyzing this? We do want to know who's funding the whole caboodle, though.