380,000 units sold in europe by first weekend

[Ukle]

Title says it all really...

Blizzard Press release

 

[Gat_Decor]

yeah and all 380,000 were playing on the Bloodscalp server

 

[Ralgedi Smurf]

IRVINE, Calif. - December 1, 2004 - Blizzard Entertainment® today confirmed that World of Warcraft® has broken day-one sales records in North America, making it the most successful PC game launch ever. World of Warcraft, the company's subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), sold through to over 240,000 customers at retailers in North America on Tuesday, November 23, selling more in its first 24 hours than any other PC game in history.
In addition to shattering sales records, World of Warcraft also broke peak concurrency and account creation records for a MMORPG. 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.*

PARIS, France. 15th February, 2005
Blizzard Entertainment® today announced that World of Warcraft® has become an overnight success in Europe, achieving record-breaking sales in its first 24 hours since the game launched on Friday, 11th February. World of Warcraft, the company's subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), has sold-through an estimated 280,000* copies at retail on day-one, selling more units in one day than what was previously thought to be the overall cumulative size of the European MMORPG market. This figure rose to more than 380,000 units being sold-through by the end of the first weekend.
As the fastest-growing online game in European history, World of Warcraft has shattered previous records for highest number of accounts created, concurrent user populations and number of servers. More than 290,000 players created World of Warcraft accounts during the first weekend, and 100,000 of those were playing the game concurrently on the first day. A first time ever peak concurrency of over 180,000 players in Europe was reached during the first weekend. To support the European launch, Blizzard deployed over 80 servers at the World of Warcraft data centres in Paris and Frankfurt; additional servers are on standby as new players subscribe to the game.

Impressive figures

 

[Evoknox]

They once again did it!

 

[Hrogar]

Holy cow... does that mean we got 80+ servers to choose from in Europe now? Would be pretty cool.

 

[Phelon]

Got to give um credit thats a lot of copies sold.

Hopefully with the money they are making from it, content should be interesting as the game develops.

 

[Danya]

I checked on sunday and there were 77 servers up, so we're almost there already.

 

[Fana]

They are very impressive numbers, and lets not forget this means good things for all of the mmorpg market - some of those people will want to try other mmorpg's when they are "done" with WoW. Can only mean the entire mmorpg community will expand Will also likely cause other operators to shape up and try to bring over some of those numbers to their games by really listening to their customers, as we see Mythic doing now with daoc (never seen so many good changes in daoc as after the release of wow in the US).

560k copies released to retailers

 

[Gungo]

Very Impressed

 

[Draylor]

lets not forget this means good things for all of the mmorpg market

Not sure that it does.

When (for example) Mythic started on DAoC they were a very small company, having only done a few games previously with very low sales. Starting a MMORPG at that point was realistic for a small company: it didnt require spending millions on development.

Now we'll have the players moving towards a few 'big' titles from the usual 'big' companies: what chance would the small unknown company have of launching anything remotely successful now? We'll see what happens - CoH seems to be doing ok so its probably too early for the doom & gloom

Anyway, back to the point

A first time ever peak concurrency of over 180,000 players in Europe was reached during the first weekend.

180k simultaneous players - wow! No wonder there were queues at peak times

 

[Driwen]

CoH seems to be doing ok so its probably too early for the doom & gloom

CoH is from NCsoft which produced lineage 1, which is almost unknown on the US and european market. It is or was big in Korea, so CoH isnt really a good example of a small company.

However I do think this is good for the european mmorpg community, as other companies will take this market more seriously and not launch here whenever they have time left and just launch soon after or at the same time as the US/other market.

 

[Bone_Idle]

Not sure that it does.

When (for example) Mythic started on DAoC they were a very small company, having only done a few games previously with very low sales. Starting a MMORPG at that point was realistic for a small company: it didnt require spending millions on development.

Now we'll have the players moving towards a few 'big' titles from the usual 'big' companies: what chance would the small unknown company have of launching anything remotely successful now? We'll see what happens - CoH seems to be doing ok so its probably too early for the doom & gloom

Anyway, back to the point180k simultaneous players - wow! No wonder there were queues at peak times

City of Heroes had a massive multi million dollar budget given to them by NC Soft. Wouldnt call that small.

 

[Draylor]

CoH is from NCsoft which produced lineage 1

Published by: yes. Created by: no.