And that’s just in the first 24 hours after launch:
IRVINE, Calif. — December 13, 2010 — Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that World of Warcraft®: Cataclysm™, the third expansion for the critically acclaimed massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), sold through more than 3.3 million copies as of its first 24 hours of release, making it the fastest-selling PC game of all time.* This milestone eclipses the previous record of more than 2.8 million copies sold in 24 hours, set in November 2008 by Blizzard’s second World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King®.
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm was simultaneously released in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Europe, Russia, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand on December 7, and became available in Korea and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau on December 9. More than 10,000 stores throughout the world opened their doors at midnight to welcome players who wanted to be among the first to obtain a copy of the expansion. In addition, more than 15,000 players attended official launch events hosted by Blizzard and key retail partners in the US, Canada, France, Germany, Russia, Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain, the UK, and the region of Taiwan.
“We had to bring Azeroth to the brink of destruction in Cataclysm, but the result was our best expansion yet,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We want to thank all of our new, existing, and returning players throughout the world for their incredible enthusiasm and support, and we look forward to hearing what they think about all the new content.”
As cited in the full press release, that makes this expansion officially bigger than Wrath of the Lich King, but not bigger than Activision-Blizzard’s other Q4 release, Call of Duty: Black Ops. Of course, we’ve got to remember that game had months and months of in-your-face promotion and it released on many different platforms with three different SKUs at the same time. Cataclysm also hasn’t hit mainland China yet, and going by the general release schedule for such things, may not do so for awhile.
Grats, Blizzard! You once again have the fastest-selling PC game of all time!
On one hand, it truly is an amazing acheivement (I wonder if the Blizzard employees came in the following day, turned on their computers only to have an acheivement notice flash on the screen). On the other hand, it really doesn’t surprise me. A lot of folks KNEW the expansion was coming, knew what was happening, and while the hype wasn’t commercially widespread, the word of mouth hype was nothing short of astounding. In all honesty, that’s what drove the success and WILL drive the success of WoW from here on in…or at least I’m willing to bet on it.
Wooh, Canada!