My 1st post and hopfully I have something to contribute and hope its not a double post.
Just a theory, but let say you have a character name that someone else wants. You could sell it to them for gold. Probally most suited to RP servers. You might find someone willing to pay X ammount of gold and pay the blizzard fee, which you would have to fork out yourself aswell. (unless your level 1 where delete works) Everybody wins, even blizzard if the guy that wants your name is willing to pay the price in gold as well. I guess there are some people out there that would do this. Alternativlety you could use this as an excuse to take the gold and run.
so its kinda like paying the name change fee and getting gold from a player.
in the case of WoTLK Im sure you could grab all the deathknight names for now, and see if there's any profitable business for yourself in the future. New Servers, RP servers ect ect. Although I would suspect you'd probally get banned for advertising it.
for what its worth.
scain.