| Statistics have shown that in August of 2005 | | | | Austria in late November of 2004. World of |
| there were over 4 million players online, playing | | | | Warcraft sold over 240,000 copies within the first |
| WOW. There is no doubt that this is the-most | | | | 24 hours. Compared to other games, WOW has |
| popular Online-RPG in the world. More than 1 million | | | | made history. On January 18, 2005 World of |
| of these players are based in the United States | | | | Warcraft hit the shelves in South Korea, but in |
| of America and more than 1.5 million are based in | | | | some stores the game had already been seen on |
| China. The amount of estimated players includes | | | | the shelves since November the previous year. |
| those players that are under free-promotional | | | | Europe saw the game on its shelves on 11 |
| subscriptions, including canceled or expired | | | | February 2005, and it was available in the French, |
| subscriptions. Blizzard has also stated that the | | | | English and German language. 2 March 2005, |
| minimum amount of players online at a time is | | | | around 100,000 game testers enrolled for China's |
| around 500,000. Due to the high sales that WOW | | | | WOW beta-test within an hour. The game was |
| has received, it was described as been-a | | | | officially released on 6 June of that same year. |
| "runaway success". The popularity is just | | | | World of Warcraft received nothing but high |
| overwhelming, and compared to another online | | | | praise in 2003 at E³, including the |
| game "The Matrix" doesn't come anywhere close | | | | Best-of-Show award from Gamer's Pulse. In the |
| and they are blamed for their flat sales. | | | | gaming industry, WOW was declared by |
| When WOW was released, it was done so | | | | GameSpy and Gamespot, and many others - as |
| simultaneously on both Macintosh and Windows | | | | the game of 2004. |
| systems in the United States, New Zealand and | | | | |