With a total subscriber base of 11 million, World of Warcraft is one of the biggest online games in the world. Now, with the release of its second expansion, the Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard sets records for selling boxes as well as bits. Blizzard sold more than 2.8 million copies in the first 24-hours.
By: Simon "Soulrift" Ludgate
Published: Nov 20, 2008
Updated: Sep 2, 2010
With a total subscriber base of 11 million, World of Warcraft is one of the biggest online games in the world, with players paying ten to fifteen dollars a month for their connection to the game. Now, with the release of its second expansion, the Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard sets records for selling boxes as well as bits. With more than 2.8 million copies of the expansion sold in the first 24 hours, this expansion pack has vastly outpaced most full game releases.
The Wrath of the Lich King expansion is an absolute must have for anyone playing World of Warcraft. It opens up a whole new area, the land of Northreach, and raises the level cap from 70 to 80. Players have already flooded into the frigid northern landscape of Azeroth, with some intrepid (and possibly obsessive-compulsive) players already reaching level 80 in as few as 28 hours after launch. Most players, however, are enjoying the wonderfully sculpted landscape, oodles of new and fun quests, and the brand new achievement system that gives every WoW player a bunch of added goals to work towards.
Also featured in the expansion is the first Hero class, the Death Knight, which allows players with a character above level 55 to start a new Death Knight character at level 55, skipping past the boring low levels. Death Knights join the ranks of melee fighters and tanks, and are in many ways similar to the existing warrior class, though they have many of their own unique skills and talents drawn from their unread heritage.
{slot15}One of the most surprising parts of Wrath of the Lich King has been the smooth launch of the expansion. Despite enormous server problems that rendered the game nearly unplayable for many days leading up to the release of the game, and the well known server outages that plagued the release of the first expansion, the Burning Crusade, World of Warcraft has been running near flawlessly since the launch of Wrath of the Lich King.
Unfortunately, with so many players returning to the game to try out the new expansion content, many servers have become overcrowded, leading to long queues as players wait to log in. With more than a thousand players in queue for the most populated servers and wait times exceeding an hour, many players have become justifiably upset. Blizzard has opened up free character transfers from some of the busiest servers to new empty servers, but not every crowded server has been extended this offer and many players are reluctant to leave their friends and guilds behind to transfer to a new world.
Nevertheless, Wrath of the Lich King looks like it will be a fantastic addition to the World of Warcraft legacy. Expect to see our full review of the expansion here at GameSHOUT as soon as we can tear our reviewers away from actually playing the game.
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