December 01, 2004 - World of Warcraft is selling well. Very well, according to Blizzard, which announced today that the ambitious MMORPG title is already the fastest-selling PC game ever in North America.

Blizzard's internal numbers and reports from various national retailers, including EB Games, Wal-Mart, and GameStop, show that at least 240,000 eager gamers grabbed World of Warcraft on November 23. Blizzard reports this means the game sold more in its first 24 hours than any other PC title has, ever.

World of Warcraft also broke records in account creation and concurrent players. More than 200,000 players created accounts during the first day. By 5:00 p.m. PST, more than 100,000 were playing the game concurrently. Blizzard points out that these numbers make World of Warcraft the fastest-growing MMORPG yet.

The game, which lets players adventure together in the vast realms of Azeroth -- the world of the Warcraft real-time strategy games -- has sold so well that many retailers have already run out of copies. Blizzard is scrambling to add new servers -- more than 80 are already on-line -- but may limit retail shipments based on new server availability.

"We were all extremely pleased with the success of World of Warcraft on its first day of launch," said Mike Morhaime, president of Blizzard Entertainment. "Once we saw the numbers for the first day, we knew that we had to immediately increase capacity to accommodate the huge numbers of players joining our game. We're glad so many people are enjoying World of Warcraft, and we are dedicated to supporting a fun and smooth game experience for everyone."

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