Wrath Shatters One Day Sales Record

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Nov. 20 10:16 AM by Mandifesto

We know that people were flocking back to WoW in anticipation of the release of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, and yes, I promised myself no more Wrath news, but this is the press release I've been waiting for since we attended the Wrath launch event in San Francisco. Now it's official: Wrath has beaten the one day sales record by selling 2.8 million copies in its first 24 hours of availability. Who held the record previously? World of Warcraft, naturally, which sold 2.4 million in 24 hours. Personally I like that number better, it has more symmetry.

This sales number, even with the fact that it represents only one day of sales, catapaults Wrath to the bestselling PC game at Gamestop for all of 2008. This is not that surprising considering the plethora of midnight launch events Gamestop partnered with Blizzard to hold for the public to get their Wrath on. While I am excited by the prospect of PC RPGs getting their day in the sun, I'm not really all that surprised by these numbers. After all, there were 11 million people subscribed to WoW before Wrath hit, and I assume all if not most of that number will be picking up the expansion. Add to that the people returning to WoW, some of them after years of being estranged from the fold, and my guess is this one little expansion will sell around 12 million copies before it's done.