World of Warcraft breaks the records
Within the first day, over 200,000 players created World of Warcraft accounts. By 5:00 p.m. PST, over 100,000 were playing the game concurrently. These two record-breaking numbers made World of Warcraft the fastest-growing MMORPG in history. Within a single day, all original 40+ World of Warcraft servers were filled to capacity, and by the end of the Thanksgiving weekend, more than 40 additional servers were deployed to meet the rapidly growing player base, as the number of new accounts and concurrent users continued to grow.

"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."

Retailers across North America reported that the World of Warcraft launch was unequivocally their biggest day-one sales in PC gaming history. Leading industry retailers, such as Wal-Mart, Best Buy, EB, and GameStop, all reported that hundreds of their stores sold out of World of Warcraft within the first day.

"World of Warcraft has once again shown that Blizzard consistently delivers the best games in the industry," said Robert McKenzie, vice president of merchandising at GameStop. "It sold better than any other PC game this year – in fact, World of Warcraft enjoyed the best day-one sell-through GameStop has ever seen on a PC title!"

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, players continued to buy World of Warcraft in record numbers, with a total of over 350,000* copies of the game selling through. Blizzard Entertainment and its retail partners expect the remaining supplies of World of Warcraft to sell out soon. Blizzard is currently evaluating its ability to ship additional games to retailers, given the unexpectedly high demand on the servers. The company continues to increase server capacity to accommodate the growing number of players connecting to the game. As the additional servers are brought online and proven stable, additional copies of World of Warcraft will be made available at retail. Blizzard will announce the availability of those additional games as soon as they are on shelves.

Deadly plague hits Warcraft world
A deadly virtual plague has broken out in the online game World of Warcraft. Although limited to only a few of the game's servers the numbers of characters that have fallen victim is thought to be in the thousands. Originally it was thought that the deadly digital disease was the result of a programming bug in a location only recently added to the Warcraft game.

However, it now appears that players kicked off the plague and then kept it spreading after the first outbreak. Since its launch in November 2004, World of Warcraft (Wow) has become the most widely played massively multiplayer online (MMO) game in the world. Its creator, Blizzard, claims that now more than four million people are regular players.

Wow is an online game that gives players the chance to adventure in the fantasy world of Azeroth that is populated by the usual mixture of humans, elves, orcs and other fantastic beasts. As players explore the world, the characters they control become more powerful as they complete quests, kill monsters and find magical items and artefacts that boost abilities. To give these powerful characters more of a challenge, Blizzard regularly introduces new places to explore in the online world.

In the last week, it added the Zul'Gurub dungeon which gave players a chance to confront and kill the fearsome Hakkar - the god of Blood. In his death throes Hakkar hits foes with a "corrupted blood" infection that can instantly kill weaker characters. The infection was only supposed to affect those in the immediate vicinity of Hakkar's corpse but some players found a way to transfer it to other areas of the game by infecting an in-game virtual pet with it.

This pet was then unleashed in the orc capital city of Ogrimmar and proved hugely effective as the Corrupted Blood plague spread from player to player. Although computer controlled characters did not contract the plague, they are said to have acted as "carriers" and infected player-controlled characters they encountered.

YouTube Video Contest
YouTube is holding a video contest that asks you to record your funniest World of Warcraft moments. Have a pickup group go all wrong? Pulled a prank on your guildmates that had them all rolling with laughter? Capture it on video, and you could have the chance to win a gaming PC powered by the new Intel Core  TM   2 Extreme quad-core processor.

“YouTube and Intel are looking for your funniest World of Warcraft® moments. Show us your biggest debacle. A PUG gone wrong. An amazing prank. And be entered for a chance to win an unbelievable gaming rig powered by the new Intel® Core™2 Extreme quad-core processor. It's time for you to expose the funny side of Azeroth.”
Contest Dates
Submissions:
-March 1, 2007
-March 21, 2007
Voting
-April 1, 2007
-April 15, 2007
Results
-April 26, 2007

World of Warcraft banned over 5400 and suspended 10700 accounts!
In keeping with Blizzard’s aggressive stance against cheating in World of Warcraft, they have since patch 1.10 banned over 5400 accounts and suspended 10700 more for participating in activities that violate the game’s Terms of Use, including using third-party programs to farm gold and items.