Blizzard Scores Again with Warcraft

Healthy uptake among American PC gamers.

As European gamers prepare to place pre-orders for World Of Warcraft from Friday, North Americans are already snapping up Blizzard's massively multiplayer online RPG in droves.

Blizzard announced on Wednesday that World Of Warcraft is seeing healthy uptake among American PC gamers, racking up over 250,000 sales on its first day of release.

"We had a lot of confidence in World Of Warcraft, but the success on day one far exceeded our expectations," said Mike Morhaime, president of Blizzard Entertainment.

"We are extremely happy that players are enjoying our game, and we are doing everything we can to meet the demand and maintain a fun and smooth game experience for everyone playing."

More than 200,000 of those early buyers rushed home to create accounts on the game's North American servers, and by Wednesday afternoon 100,000 of them were playing together.

Demand has been such that Blizzard has announced several new servers will be set up for the North American market.

Europeans eager to get in on the action should, however, heed Blizzard's caveat that North American versions of the PC game will only be able to access severs in North America, which would make it impossible to interact with those on European servers when the game is released here next year.

World Of Warcraft is one of the most anticipated online PC RPGs. The game was fine-tuned during extensive closed and open beta tests, growing a thriving and receptive market in the process.

Several American retailers have reported stock sell-outs, with GameStop executives stating that World Of Warcraft "enjoyed the best day-one sell-through GameStop has ever seen on a PC title."

European retailers will start taking pre-orders for World Of Warcraft as of Friday, 26 November. The game is expected to ship in early 2005.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games