If anyone had any doubts whether World of Warcraft reached its peak here’s another record in the game’s resume: the third World of Warcraft expansion from Blizzard Entertainment “Cataclysm” sold more than 3.3 million copies in the first 24 hours of its release thus making it the fastest selling PC game of all time,topping 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 released concurrently in the US, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Europe, Russia, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand on December 7 and in Korea and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau on December 9 as more than 10,000 stores throughout the world opened their doors at midnight and about 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.
Last week Michael Pachter, an industry expert, was quoted in an interview to Eurogamer “Nothing will topple World of Warcraft for another 20 years” and with more than 12 million subscribers prior to the launch of Cataclysm it seems the game will only keep on growing and improving and according to Blizzard’s CEO and co-founder, Mike Morhaime, the Cataclysm is the game’s best expansion so far:
“We had to bring Azeroth to the brink of destruction in Cataclysm, but the result was our best expansion yet”
