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WOW: Lich King sells 2.8m in 24 hours

It's the fastest-selling PC game ever.

Blizzard has announced that second of World of Warcraft expansion Wrath of the Lich King racked up 2.8 million sales worldwide in its first 24 hours on release.

This makes it the fastest-selling PC game ever released. It also keeps the title in the family; the previous record-holder was first WOW expansion The Burning Crusade, which managed 2.4 million in one day in January last year.

Most of those 2.8 million sales will have come from North America and Europe, although Lich King benefited from the addition of Chile, Argentina and Russia to Blizzard's domain. Australasia and south-east Asia got the expansion a day or two later, and China's still waiting.

World of Warcraft has 11 million players worldwide now, versus the 8 million it had when Burning Crusade launched - so in terms of sell-through to subscribers, Lich King performed fractionally less well than its predecessor.

The 3.5 million copies Burning Crusade sold in its first month will be the next of its own records Blizzard is looking to beat. One analyst has predicted that Lich King could net 5 million in the same period, according to Gamasutra.

Lots of big numbers there, but as far as we're concerned, there's only one big number that matters.