World of Warcraft wows retailers

When World of Warcraft launched last month, some players complained on forums that regions of the MMORPG were overcrowded and servers so overwhelmed, gamers would have to wait up to two hours to access the game.

Today, it was made clear why the massively multiplayer role-playing game's relatively smooth launch hit some snags. Blizzard Entertainment eagerly trumpeted the fact World of Warcraft was the fastest-selling PC game to date, with retailers moving 240,000 units in 24 hours when it went on sale November 23. By the end of the Thanksgiving Day weekend, this number had reached in excess of 350,000 copies.

Buyers of World of Warcraft wasted little time in getting started. According to Blizzard, over 200,000 players created game accounts on the first day, and by 5:00pm PST, over 100,000 were playing the game. With the increasing demand, Blizzard was forced to add 40 more servers to the 40 original servers the company had set up for the game.

In fact, according to Blizzard, demand is so great for the game that it "is currently evaluating its ability to ship additional games to retailers, given the unexpectedly high demand on the servers." But rest assured; when Blizzard does get enough servers to "accommodate the growing number of players connecting to the game" they will send out as many copies of the game as they can.

To see why World of Warcraft is so popular, read GameSpot's full review of the MMORPG.