According to developers Blizzard Entertainment, massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG)
World of WarCraft has become North America’s fastest selling PC game ever. The company is claiming the game has broken day one sell-through records, with over 240,000 units sold.
The game has also apparently broken initial concurrency and account creation records for a MMORPG, with 200,000 players creating an account on the first day and over 100,000 users playing concurrently by 5pm, PST on the first day.
The original 40 servers were filled to capacity within a single day, with 40 more being brought online to meet demand. Over the Thanksgiving weekend, over 350,000 additional copies of the game were sold, with supply expected to run out before Christmas. Further copies are not expected to be shipped until new servers can be brought online to support them.
Although it remains to be seen whether the game can outsell
The Sims in terms of total lifetime sales, this is certainly the most enthusiastic retail response to a MMORPG yet, and shows that, while many companies have had trouble bringing massively multiplayer game to market, top level MMORPGs can still be extremely profitable.
