This figure climbed to 3.5 million after the first month working out to just under US$140 million income, in addition to the monthly subscriptions.
On the first day of Burning Crusade’s release in Europe and North America, Blizzard had sold a whopping 2.4 million copies, making it the fastest selling PC game of its time. You can see that as games like this added expansion packs, the entry price point for late newcomers to the game was starting to become more than the cost of the standard PC game.
If you were a new player to the game at this point in time, you must outlay US$49.99 for the base game, US$39.99 for the expansion pack and then after the 30-day free period, pay the US$14.99 monthly subscription fee. A lot of players looked the same as there were limited gear sets at end-game and limited ‘cookie-cutter’ builds to optimise each class. Players didn’t have to buy this expansion, but the base game and dungeons were getting stale. Prior to the expansion’s release, WoW was sitting around 7.5 million monthly subscribers, dwarfing any other MMORPG on the market. The first expansion for WoW was titled The Burning Crusade and was released on JanuThis expansion cost players US$39.99. The reason I’m giving WoW’s expansions a focus over other games is sheer numbers, both in initial sales and subscriptions to the game at that time, as well as some great innovative game system updates. Whilst all great content additions for those games, it took Blizzard just over two years to produce their first expansion. Up until January 2007, games like EverQuest had 12 expansion packs under its belt and Star Wars: Galaxies had three major expansions. In Part 8.3 I will be exploring the first World of Warcraft expansion called The Burning Crusade.Ĭatch up on previous entries in this series:Įxpansion packs aren’t uncommon with MMORPGs. I am going to take you down my memory lane as I explore my origins playing MMORPGs from the late 90’s through to today in a multi-part series. My favourite genre of games, and where some of my fondest gaming memories come from, is Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs).