Wrath Of The Lich King Sets Sales Records

[Andy Chalk]

Wrath Of The Lich King Sets Sales Records

Stop the presses! Wrath of the Lich King [http://www.blizzard.com], the recently-released expansion to the most popular MMOG in the universe, sold like gangbusters on release day.

2.8 million copies of Wrath of the Lich King were punched out on the first day of release, in fact, making it the fastest-selling PC game of all time. And which title has been relegated to runner-up by Blizzard's second expansion to the chart-topping The Burning Crusade [http://www.worldofwarcraft.com], Blizzard's first expansion to the chart-topping World of Warcraft MMOG, which hit 2.4 million copies sold on the first day.

Sales of the highly-anticipated title were helped by midnight launch events held at over 15,000 stores worldwide, several of which were attended by Blizzard reps who talked with players and signed copies of the game. "We're grateful for the incredible support that players around the world have continued to show for World of Warcraft," said Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime. "Wrath of the Lich King contains some of the best content we've created for the game so far, and we look forward to seeing even more players log in to experience it in the days ahead."

Bob McKenzie, GameStop's [http://www.gamestop.com/] senior vice president of marketing, added that in just one day, Wrath of the Lich King had become the retailer's best-selling PC game for 2008, and one of the year's most successful games overall. And despite its age, the World of Warcraft behemoth shows no signs of slowing down; in fact, Blizzard announced in late October that the subscriber base for the game had broken 11 million people worldwide.

(Gang Busters [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_Busters], by the way, was a popular 1930s G-Men radio serial that opened with a loud, attention-grabbing blast of sirens, screeching tires and machine-gun fire. Since then, the term "like gangbusters" has come to mean anything that happens forcefully and aggressively. Now you know.)


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[uppitycracker]

lol i was actually going to ask wtf that "like gangbusters" comment meant, exactly. glad i read all the way through!

 

[smallharmlesskitten]

I have one word....

WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY*breath*YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?

 

[maxusy3k]

(Gang Busters [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_Busters], by the way, was a popular 1930s G-Men radio serial that opened with a loud, attention-grabbing blast of sirens, screeching tires and machine-gun fire. Since then, the term "like gangbusters" has come to mean anything that happens forcefully and aggressively. Now you know.)

And knowing is half the battle!

Edit : Contribution! It confuses me a bit that it 'only' sold 2.8 million when the subscriber base is as large as it apparently is. I mean... I know pretty much anybody who enjoys playing the game wouldn't skip up buying the expansion.

 

[tendo82]

Edit : Contribution! It confuses me a bit that it 'only' sold 2.8 million when the subscriber base is as large as it apparently is. I mean... I know pretty much anybody who enjoys playing the game wouldn't skip up buying the expansion.

My understanding, and our Warcry editor John Funk probably knows better, is that the content targets two groups of players: those at level 55 looking to create a death knight, and those who reached the previous level cap of 70.

I'm actually pretty interested in what percentage of the WOW population fits into either of those two categories. I'm sure Blizzard knows, and I'm sure the percentage is a large one.

 

[smallharmlesskitten]

Edit : Contribution! It confuses me a bit that it 'only' sold 2.8 million when the subscriber base is as large as it apparently is. I mean... I know pretty much anybody who enjoys playing the game wouldn't skip up buying the expansion.

My understanding, and our Warcry editor John Funk probably knows better, is that the content targets two groups of players: those at level 55 looking to create a death knight, and those who reached the previous level cap of 70.

I'm actually pretty interested in what percentage of the WOW population fits into either of those two categories. I'm sure Blizzard knows, and I'm sure the percentage is a large one.

What about the people who want to explore Northend? And how big is Northend anyway, and what level do you have to be to go there?

fairly high... You wont survive very long.

Also there are level 78 PvP zones and stuff

 

[Amnestic]

Edit : Contribution! It confuses me a bit that it 'only' sold 2.8 million when the subscriber base is as large as it apparently is. I mean... I know pretty much anybody who enjoys playing the game wouldn't skip up buying the expansion.

My understanding, and our Warcry editor John Funk probably knows better, is that the content targets two groups of players: those at level 55 looking to create a death knight, and those who reached the previous level cap of 70.

I'm actually pretty interested in what percentage of the WOW population fits into either of those two categories. I'm sure Blizzard knows, and I'm sure the percentage is a large one.

What about the people who want to explore Northend? And how big is Northend anyway, and what level do you have to be to go there?

fairly high... You wont survive very long.

Also there are level 78 PvP zones and stuff

Not as far as I know. To my knowledge the Deathknights get themselves up to 58-60 in their own special "new" area in the Eastern Plaguelands with quests with a bunch of backstory about how they're breaking free of the Lich King and joining the Horde/Alliance, bugger off to Outland to run around there for a while until they get to 68-70, then they can go off to Northrend.

Northrend, by the way, being a whole new continent and (to my knowledge) about the same size as Outlands.

;p As far as I know. I haven't *yet* bought WotLK, but this is what I've garnered from reading guild chat.

(Gang Busters [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_Busters], by the way, was a popular 1930s G-Men radio serial that opened with a loud, attention-grabbing blast of sirens, screeching tires and machine-gun fire. Since then, the term "like gangbusters" has come to mean anything that happens forcefully and aggressively. Now you know.)

And knowing is half the battle!

Edit : Contribution! It confuses me a bit that it 'only' sold 2.8 million when the subscriber base is as large as it apparently is. I mean... I know pretty much anybody who enjoys playing the game wouldn't skip up buying the expansion.

Some people won't have reached 55/hit the level cap, and thus wouldn't be interested in buying WotLK straight away (as Tendo said), others may simply not choose to buy it on the day it was released. The 2.8 million figure was 1 day of sales. If people knew that they'd be busy/unable to play on the first day, they may simply hold off on buying it until they know they have free time.

Or they might not have the cash on hand...*grumbles* Still, it gives me a chance to upgrade my rogue's gear with ez-mode PvP epics while I'm waiting for my brother to go buy it.

 

[Zer_]

Yeah and some guilds have already cleared all the endgame content there is. I'm glad I didn't buy it. Gone are the days of challenging raid bosses.

 

[Dr Pussymagnet]

Bob McKenzie, GameStop's [http://www.gamestop.com/] senior vice president of marketing.

Wasn't there a guy by the same name who did some kind of album with his friend Doug and they sang a Twelve Days of Christmas spoof?

 

[Mythnomer]

The big reason its only 2.8 million is that it didn't launch simultaneously in Asia as well. Last time I heard figures thrown around, EU and NA combined were only like 5 million of Warcraft's "11 million" player base with the remaining 6 million being Asian players.

So based on those figures over 50% of the players (EU and NA) bought the expansion on the first day.

 

[Amnestic]

Yeah and some guilds have already cleared all the endgame content there is. I'm glad I didn't buy it. Gone are the days of challenging raid bosses.

To be fair that was a joint venture by the two best guilds (now one, I suppose) in the game and they were kitted out with quite literally the best equipment they could have, not to mention the bosses would have been practised on in the beta, as far as I know. It's not like SKNihilum just ran in for the first time. The majority of the bosses were Naxx ones anyway, which they already knew the encounters from 'Vanilla' WoW.

So while I do agree that within 3 days is a bit ridiculous, bear in mind that these are A) entry level raids for 'new' raiders (so they can't scale the difficulty too high) and b) bosses which the guild already knew inside and out. I'd like to think that it was the execution, rather than the gear, that was important and that's why they beat it so fast. Contrary to popular belief you can be "better" at WoW than other people and not to start fanboying but the aforementioned guild is better than most other people.

 

[Archereus]

yeah BLizzard we all know who holds she championship belt in the mmo industry we shall prevail and never fail hoora!!!

ok that over reacting a bit but i am a game enthusist and for my fave game to acheive this makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside

 

[Da_Schwartz]

The big reason its only 2.8 million is that it didn't launch simultaneously in Asia as well. Last time I heard figures thrown around, EU and NA combined were only like 5 million of Warcraft's "11 million" player base with the remaining 6 million being Asian players.

So based on those figures over 50% of the players (EU and NA) bought the expansion on the first day.

And you know a percanetage of those as well are running multiple accounts and pling themselves.

 

[Skrapt]

And you know a percanetage of those as well are running multiple accounts and pling themselves.

Ofcourse there will be, but of overall sales 'multiboxers' or people with multiple accounts would probably make up less then 5% of total sales.

I recently quit WoW anyway, it's a brilliant game but it held no charm for me after a couple of years. Even with the new content

 

[TomNook]

Yeah and some guilds have already cleared all the endgame content there is. I'm glad I didn't buy it. Gone are the days of challenging raid bosses.

Go back to the raids and dungeons forum and ***** some more.

 

[Andy Chalk]

Wasn't there a guy by the same name who did some kind of album with his friend Doug and they sang a Twelve Days of Christmas spoof?

"Hi, I'm Bob McKenzie and this is my brother, Doug."

"How's it goin', eh?"

 

[John Funk]

Edit : Contribution! It confuses me a bit that it 'only' sold 2.8 million when the subscriber base is as large as it apparently is. I mean... I know pretty much anybody who enjoys playing the game wouldn't skip up buying the expansion.

My understanding, and our Warcry editor John Funk probably knows better, is that the content targets two groups of players: those at level 55 looking to create a death knight, and those who reached the previous level cap of 70.

I'm actually pretty interested in what percentage of the WOW population fits into either of those two categories. I'm sure Blizzard knows, and I'm sure the percentage is a large one.

What about the people who want to explore Northend? And how big is Northend anyway, and what level do you have to be to go there?

68 is the level to go to Northrend. And Northrend is... not as big as the first two continents, but certainly much, much bigger than Outland.