Burning Crusade sells 3.5 million

By Robert Purchese Published 7 March, 2007

In the first month on sale.

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade sold 3.5 million units in its first month on sale, Blizzard has announced.

European gamers snaffled up more than 1.6 million of those, America over 1.9 million, and Australasia topped 100,000. The game launched in Korea on 12th February, and is currently being translated for Chinese regions.

The figures smashed previous records for PC game sales, and have helped push the subscriber population of the game over 8.5 million.

"We're thrilled about the overwhelming response that we've received for The Burning Crusade," said Mike Morhaime, president of Blizzard Entertainment. "We have worked hard to build upon nearly every aspect of World of Warcraft with this expansion, and it's gratifying to see that players and reviewers are enjoying the new content."

The news coincides with the release of a new patch for the game, v2.0.10, which fixes numerous class skills and talents introduced by the expansion. It also fiddles with the price of arena PvP rewards, by adjusting the amount of points needed for specific items. There's the normal barrage of bits and bobs that have been tweaked, and you can quest to the furthest reaches of the Internet for more information.

Blizzard has also recently released a beta-test for the new searchable database service, The Armory. Here you can check out information taken from live servers, and find out in-depth information about other characters, arena teams and guilds. Head over to the website for a closer look.

The Burning Crusade is the first expansion pack for Blizzard's online adventure World of Warcraft. It increased the level cap to 70, added two new races, a new profession, flying mounts, plus scores of new equipment and quests. You can see what we made of it all elsewhere on the site.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (14) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • gamesport #1 5 years ago

    Well i think this is potentially..... Head over to gamesindustry.biz for my full comments

  • bdc #2 5 years ago

    Gamesport, you know none of us can be bothered.

  • Machiavel #3 5 years ago

    Well, I like his satire! :)

  • SeesThroughAll #4 5 years ago

    In related news, Colombian drug lords announce they're moving to the MMO business, as it seems to be more lucrative.

  • skillian #5 5 years ago

    ROFL @ gamesport :D

    Wow @ 3.5m :o

  • Cloudane #6 5 years ago

    To this very day, I have no idea what makes WoW an attractive game to buy and play.

    Meet person, wait, wait, wait, fight, walk a bit, wait, wait, meet different person, wait, wait, wait, fight, LEVEL UP!!, walk a bit, wait, wait, fight and so on.

    The structure makes me wonder how and why people pay for the game every month.

  • spliffhead #7 5 years ago

    I'll wager there will be a lot less than 3.5M after the initial couple of months.

    I know I canceled my re-subscription after 10 days I was so bored.

    So that's at least now only 3.499999 people left playing it.

    Not so clever now huh Blizzard ;)

    Oh wait, they still have my £20!
    Edited by 1 at 07/03/07 @ 15:11

  • #8 5 years ago

    I went over to gamesindustry.biz but there was nothing there ffs

  • rudedudejude #9 5 years ago

    Currently level 41 on my first Char and loving it!!!

  • Iora #10 5 years ago

    Surprise Cocaine addicts want more Cocaine.

    I found it amusing to see how quickly folk have hit lvl70 then looked around and thought eh? ooh shit at least another year of grinding the same instance before they release the next expansion.

    What a horribly soulless game this is.

    I particulary liked this one. Bring me 20 Murloc heads [sigh] okay kill 20 murlocs. But guess what only 1 in 4 murlocs actually possess heads. I fully expected the next quest to be Bring me 20 Murloc testicles only too find that a) only 10% of murlocs are male and b) there all one balled wonders!!

    It was at this very instant i thought screw this game. I now consider the money i had spent on it to be a harsh and pricely lesson on human stupidity. I have learned my lesson. :)

    ;) Now i generally just scoff and point out how your paying Blizzard to fiddle with shit ;)

  • El_MUERkO #11 5 years ago

    Gamesport wins comments \o/

  • Charroux #12 5 years ago

    @Iora "But guess what only 1 in 4 murlocs actually possess heads"

    The typical player explanation for this is that 3 in 4 heads get so damaged in combat that they are unusable for the quest.... hey, I didn't say it was a *good* explanation.

  • Laserbream #13 5 years ago

    @Cloudane - reductionism is a game everyone can play. Here's an example:

    To this very day, I have no idea what makes God of War an attractive game to buy and play.

    Press button, press button, press button, watch cut scene, press another button, press button, press button, press button, watch another cut scene and so on.

    The structure makes me wonder how and why people buy this game.
    Edited by 1 at 08/03/07 @ 11:52

  • EzyRyder #14 5 years ago

    I don't like God of War, Okami or Rogue Galaxy ...

    I like World of Warcraft, Supreme Commander and Company of Heroes. I also think these are much better games than the console titles I mentioned.

  • f00b_inc #15 5 years ago

    I played WoW for a couple of months, got up to level 30 something. It was fun but only when I was playing with a couple of RL friends - we all sort of stopped finding time to play together, then I stopped completely shortly afterwards. I have to admit I can't see the appeal of the 10 hour raids and stuff, but it was always entertaining to see 'what happened next'