Blizzard Entertainment announced today that World of Warcraft, its subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), is now played by more than 8.5 million gamers around the world.
In less than two months the number of World of Warcraft players has increased with half a million users. No doubt this is thanks to the launch of its first expansion, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, which was first available in North America and Europe on January 16th, 2007. Since then The Burning Crusade has sold approximately 3.5 millions copies total. TBC sales hit 2.4 million units worldwide in its first 24 hours of availability, and Blizzard claims it has “now established the new one-month record for PC game sales.”
Just don’t play it too much WoW fans, as CVG points out a man was accused of stealing women’s underwear from a shop at knifepoint believing he was a female elf after playing an RPG, or at the very least stay far away from a player with the name Beho.
It’s interesting to note that if the World of Warcraft were a nation, CIA’s World Factbook says that it would be the 91th most populated country on Earth after Rwanda.