Personally, I ran an i7-950 X58 with 12GB of RAM and a 9800GT with 2 7200RPM drives in RAID0 and it worked like a champ for my 4 alts. It even worked good for my 4 Rift alts. I would stay away from SLI/Crossfire as it causes more trouble than it's worth. The 940 should do just fine in WoW. Upgrading to 8GB from 6GB is the easiest improvement, then an SSD after that, though it is not really required. Also no need to go with watercooling on an i7 -- just grab a decent copper block heatsink with a 120mm fan and be done with it.
So, personally, I'd go with the i7 system above and put 2 more GB of RAM in it. RAM is cheap right now.
[edit] How close are you to your budget limits at $1500ish?
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