World of Warcraft hits 8 million users worldwide! Just days before The Burning Crusade launches
Blizzard Entertainment announced today that World of Warcraft, its subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), is now played by more than 8 million gamers around the world. World of Warcraft has also achieved new regional subscriber milestones, with more than 2 million players in North America, more than 1.5 million players in Europe, and more than 3.5 million players in China.
World of Warcraft will soon see the launch of its first expansion, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, which will be available in North America and Europe on January 16, 2007. The expansion will be available in Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Thailand the same week, with availability in mainland China and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau to be announced at a later date. The Burning Crusade will add a tremendous amount of new content to the game, including an entire new continent to explore; an increase in the level cap up to 70, complete with new talents and abilities; flying mounts; new quests, creatures, and items; new dungeons; two new playable races; a new profession; and more.
Since debuting in North America on November 23, 2004, World of Warcraft has become the most popular MMORPG around the world. Today, World of Warcraft is available in seven different languages and is played in North America, Europe, mainland China, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.
“We’re ecstatic that the World of Warcraft community has continued to grow steadily since we launched the game,” said Mike Morhaime, president and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “This milestone wouldn’t have been possible for us to achieve without the incredible support of our players. With the release of our expansion pack, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, coming next week, we’re looking forward to welcoming more players to Azeroth and offering even more quality content for our community to enjoy.”
Next week World of Warcraft’s servers will be undergoing their weekly maintenance on Monday instead of the regular Tuesday. So when The Burning Crusade launches in the night of Monday to Tuesday, there won’t be any interruptions for gamers, that’s assuming the 9,000+ servers won’t melt. 
PS: It’s interesting to note that if the World of Warcraft were a nation, CIA’s World Factbook says that it would be the 94th most populated country on Earth after Burundi.
11 January 2007 21:49chris
Hell yea about time !
6 April 2007 07:21michael
Hey blog readers, here’s an article I wrote on WOW, mainly on the Burning Crusade – hope you’ll find it interesting:
Almost 8 million World of Warcraft players around the world have been waiting for the release of the extension pack named The Burning Crusade. The WOW community was very excited to enter the new territories imagined and created for them by the ingenious Blizzard team. This extension brought to light two new races with new starting areas and quests, new dungeons, jewel crafting: the newest trade profession, PVP arenas and new battlegrounds. The big majority of WOW fans were very impressed of Blizzard’s work.
The newest two races mentioned above are the “draenei” and the “blood elves” and they are great to start playing with all over again and no doubt new players will find the way up to level 70 very exciting.
The new territories look fantastic and the quests you have to pass in order to level up are very interesting. Many players’ reviews agree that blood elves are more popular than the draenei and this fact can be easily explained. The Horde was never given the chance to play a good looking character until now while most Alliance characters are looking good and are physically attractive. Horde’s characters are all looking funny; after all they don’t have anything human in their look, but they have great jokes and it is a real pleasure to play as a troll, undead, orc or tauren.
Another important aspect to mention is that Horde was finally given the chance to play as paladin with blood elves. Blizzard balanced the two new classes by allowing draenei to play as shamans. However chances for the two new classes to interact with their neighbors are low while they are leveling up. The new classes will probably experience trouble in finding trainers and even some quest givers. The new profession, jewel crafting can be really profitable, especially when combined with mining.
The flying mount was something new for WOW players, but many reviewers agreed that flying mounts are cheap indeed but very slow, even slower than a non epic mount. The epic flying mount is fast and crucial for some quests and territories but it’s a bit expensive to some players. However, camping in the new territories can be a real pleasure because the player is now able to raise more gold in a shorter time span than before and also has great chances to loot precious items they needs or they can sell in auction houses.
Patches are regularly released in order to improve the balance and the quality of the game. In addition Blizzard performs weekly server maintenance so they can prevent game bugs, account break in or other problems related to the technical support of the game engine. Game masters are always online and they solve players’ problems very fast and in a professional manner. The Burning Crusade can be considered a great new real-time game and also the valuable proof that WOW was and still is an unique PC game that fascinated millions of people around the globe.
Michael
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