World of Warcraft: Cataclysm sells 3.3 million units in one day

by Griffin McElroy on Dec 13th 2010 10:25AM

Half of everyone on the planet plays World of Warcraft -- that's just scientific fact -- so, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the game's recently released expansion made quite a splash on its launch day. According to Blizzard's calculations, the Cataclysm add-on sold 3.3 million units within 24 hours of its release, becoming the "fastest-selling PC game of all time." The previous record holder? World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, which sold 2.8 million copies in one day back in 2008.

Frankly, we're a little appalled at Blizzard. Like, they've obviously found a golden goose here. Why not let other developers create World of Warcraft expansions as well, giving them a chance to capitalize on this lucrative market? Why are they being so darn greedy?

Source: Blizzard

Tags: blizzard, Cataclysm, expansion, mmo, pc, sales, software, World-of-Warcraft-Cataclysm

Reader Comments (45)

Its what i expected, same game, new look and feel. Vashj'ir (the zone under water) isn't bad at all. I thought i was going to hate it, but ha! I'm at work now, day dreaming of under water adventure.

Hi, i'm lame! Pleased to meet you!

@Negatron

I love the new Underwater system. To people who dont know, Vash'jir is 100% underwater. Obviously they had to revamp the Underwater system so they added a kind of No Gravity effect. You can "latch" onto the bottom and run around like normal, but you can hold space to swim anywhere you want too. It works really well.

It should have been named World of Warcraft: Capitalism.

You wanna talk about "greedy". Apparently it costs $25 to convert your character into a goblin or a wargen (2nd hand source so I could be wrong), and people are converting their toons by the dozens. Forget the profit from the expansion sales, this is where they make their money, 'cause how long does it take to do the conversion - probably 2 minutes for the automated part and another 5 to double check everything, 7 minutes later you got another $25 - cha ching!

@2late2die It's good for the game to have a "real" barrier for race-change. Otherwise it isn't a commitment at all. They don't want people switching race between battlegrounds and raiding.. because that's what would happen lol

I am one of those loser 3.3 million. As well as waiting in line for 7 hours for the midnight launch to get a free WoW mouse at my local Best Buy

@KinseySS,
I... I bought a copy too! /shame

soooo, 3.3*30 (taking the price in pounds)=£99mil.
Not too shabby for 1 day!.
Plus, throw in the Digital Download which, in my experience, was just as widespread as buying a hard copy (for the purposes of calculation lets call it half of the hard-copy buyers, we have no solid figures anyway), + 12 million people paying £8 a month, that need to buy at least 1 month's worth of subscription.
So, 99000000+96000000(1 month sub price)+ 50000000(digital download purchase, just a guess, we have no solid figures)= £245000000.
Right, if we say that 90% of the player base will buy Cataclysm at some point, that makes 10.8 million people. Take away the 5 mil of those already in the calculations and we get another 5.8*30=174000000.
So, very roughly, ActiBlizz would have made roughly £400 Million. For a game that cost $100mil to develop 10 years ago, to still be making profits in the hundreds of millions is surely unprecedented.
Sadly, as impressive as those numbers are, WoW is still suffocating the MMO market. Here's to hoping that SW:ToR will, even if slightly, dislodge ActiBlizz from their throne where they, like Jabba have been occupying, and maybe release some details on Codename Titan, their supposed new IP, next-gen MMOFPS!

@Halgrimur
Did you factor in how much it costs to power, maintain, and run hundreds if not thousands of servers? As well as the salaries for the sysadmin and support staff involved, and the internet bills. Someone has to make the "cloud", and it sure ain't free.

Personally i think its the best expansion yet. Not counting The Shattering (The completly revamped 1-60 world) as that is free for everyone. Cataclysm still adds 2 new races, 3 new zones, 5 new levels and a crapton of changes. Funnest expansion yet imho.

@Billlop
Agreed, so much to see and do, and if i make an alt. The mostly everything is different so that process has my attention again.

@Billlop
(holy hell im all over the place on this post, i dont know wtf i just wrote in my initial response LOL. /sleeptyping

"Agreed, so much to see and do and for my alts, most everything is different so the leveling process is more interesting then grueling."

@Billlop

for some reason, i think your last part was beginning to become sarcastic

@Billlop 5 new zones, actually.

Why did they have to release it during exams. WHY?!

@CaptainFaith

I know what ya mean, I bought the game and didn't unwrap it till my final was done. Also had to lend out my GT5 so I wasn't tempted to play it while I was studying.

@CaptainFaith I feel that. I wasn't going to buy a copy until this Thursday and then my girlfriend comes home from Best Buy with a copy.... Damn it.

It's a great expansion so far, though. I've not tried the Goblins yet, but the Worgen starter zone is easily the coolest zone in the entire game.

@CaptainFaith

totally agree with you there

@RickGhastly Goblin starting area is pretty damn cool as well. Both the new race starting areas are very well done, utilizing the phasing that we saw with the Death Knight starting zone.

You zip through the 80-85 leveling content pretty fast, which is sad; I guess we're supposed to roll new characters until Blizzard graces us with new content.

It's definitely a cheap expansion, just not in terms of pricing.

@Crsh

Dude The Shattering is also part of the Cataclysm, although its free. Also if you "Zipped" through it then you must have no life...seriously. I play WoW a LOT but im only 83 on my Hunter.

@Billlop
Eh, I'm not 85 yet either, I'm just a little disappointed in the time it takes to level; I sure wouldn't want to spend 6 months of my life on it, but somewhere around the same time it took in BC and Wrath (couple of weeks or so) would be reasonable.

@Crsh Hate to tell you this. but neither BC or WOTLK took people 'weeks' to get to max level.

It took somebody 28 hours to reach level 70.

It took somebody 27 hours to reach level 80.

It took somebody 5 1/2 hours to reach level 85. Though, it was obtained through questionable means and I'd consider 8 hours a more reasonable. But, even then they were using some pretty cheap tactics to level that quickly.

@Hahke
I'm talking about normal players, not the crazy few who go for realm first achievements; 10 levels did take me 3 weeks in BC and Wrath, but now I'm already lv83 without so much as trying less than a week after Cata came out.

@Crsh

Ive had it since launch and im still less than half way through 84... god i suck at leveling :O(

@Crsh

unless you play your WoW only to level, then please stop playing altogether. Save yourself some money and others your QQ.
The game is more about end-game content. I hardly care about leveling cause i prefer to pvp, experience new arena and the new raids...

@shadowhowl1900 That's right. Leveling is fast because the focus of this game is endgame. I'm finishing up all the new zones at 85 while waiting for my heroics to queue at 45 minutes.

They give tons of gold and are fun to do if you care about the story at all.

@s256

Actually i'd argue that there are 2 main focuses now. 1-60 leveling and level 85 end game. Any level between those is just boring.

@Crsh I agree and disagree. Cataclysm is a difficult expansion to narrow down, really; as a paid expansion, there's just not nearly as much content in the box as WotLK or BC. However, factor "The Shattering" in there and it's one of the most insanely ambitious things to ever hit an MMO. The Shattering is free but would it exist without the retail release of Cataclysm? Maybe? Probably not? Who knows.

The whole mess makes my head hurt so I've decided to stop questioning it and just enjoy. They made WoW fun again. That was worth $40 to me.

@RickGhastly Well said. I started a new goblin and I hit level 55 tonight...I have been playing a ton, but man the new zones & quests are fantastic! For those who have leveled too quick - roll a goblin or undead....play through at least level 40. It's a whole new experience!

You want other people to make expansions for the game?

That would introduce what we call suck. When a company produces an expansion for a game they didn't originally create, they have no reason to make it as good as possible, and instead care just for the sales.

The only two official non-official expansions released for Blizzard games ever were Hellfire for Diablo (Sierra made it) which added a few single-player quests, added 2 new classes (the third was never officially implemented, and had to be hacked in using the .inf files) and they reused the existing character sprites, and it was not supported on Battle.net because Blizzard didn't like it to begin with, but Sierra being an owner back then released it anyway.

The second was StarCraft: Insurrection. Which was nothing more than a map-pack with no new audio, no new cinematics. But Blizzard gave them an OK stamp, and they could call themselves an official expansion, despite none of it being canon.

@Drakkenfyre The author should have put a /s at the end of that article, so more people could guess he was being sarcastic.

I thought of that, but you would be surprised.

After having an editor admit he really didn't know the characters in Poker Night at The Inventory, then rant about how he didn't get the humor, and how the game sucked because it wasn't online poker, which wasn't the intent of the game to begin with, sometimes you are careful with what is sarcasm and what is not.

Sometimes you decide to err on the side of caution.

@Billlop
Agreed, so much to see and do and for my alts, most everything is different so the leveling process is more interesting then grueling.

Hmmm... A WoW dev kit? I'd pay a good amount of money for that. I don't really play WoW myself (I have a player on my friend's acc), but I'd love to take a crack at creating something for the world. Plus, none of the expansions made have to be official. Maybe the dev kit could have a testing mode, and if Blizzard sees a good mod online, they could approve it?

What I'm saying is, I want Blizzard to be as open to it's userbase as Valve. Actually, I want ALL developers to be as open as Valve. But not as time-wise.

i think blizzard has added game mods to the actual game itself (someone correct me if im wrong)

You can't be as open as Valve.

With CounterStrike, you have nothing. With TF2, you have unlockable weapons and items.

You can't create a mod and play it in something that has characters and RPG stats, because then you could just cheat your way thru everything. You aren't going to create a map, then upload it, then play your character on it, then go out with the best of everything because you cheated.

If you want modibility, look at StarCraft 2. The built-in editor lets you do just about anything.

more like world of capitalism anyone with me?

@PedoJokerBear
No, but I suppose you're with Pure Black World Tendency, who posted the same thing more than an hour before you did.

So what exactly would be the point of the mod? You can't play single player as this is an MMORPG, and you can't upload the mods to the game itself because Blizzard doesn't take public stuff like that. They have an entire team devoted to that.

Not every game can be as modifiable as Valve games. Doing a mod for an online FPS is different than doing a mod for an MMORPG which can have thousands of people playing at once.

I didn't mean the mod you use would actually work in-game. You'd have a testing mode where you can generate a specific type of player, then test the mod outside of the actual game, to see how well your mod would work for different types of players. You thought I was stupid enough to not know that people could cheat if they could mod whatever they wanted in-game?

@ The author

Wow, I hope you are kidding...

Why should a company that has had success "share" with its corporate competitors, that is completely insane!!! Not to mention WoW has a good thing going, why chance a 3rd party producing garbage and ruining the games good name.

@veyper
"Wow, I hope you are kidding"
You know, you may be onto something there, Sherlock!

units include the digital pre-order or just the ones bought at the store.
if latter, the whole number is such a false since 90% of my guild cancelled their store pre-order and got the digital one.

reading this, there was a primal sort of urge to want it, but i quit already ... I'll avoid gaming websites until this blows over.

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm sells 3.3 million units in one day

Reader Comments (45)

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 10:33AM Negatron said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 10:47AM Billlop said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 10:39AM Pure Black World Tendency said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 2:20PM 2late2die said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 2:58PM s256 said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 10:40AM KinseySS said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 11:29AM vmenge said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 10:43AM Halgrimur said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 12:31PM sigma8 said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 10:44AM Billlop said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 11:21AM Negatron said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 11:24AM Negatron said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 1:42PM shadowhowl1900 said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 6:09PM Draimen said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 10:45AM CaptainFaith said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 10:49AM KinseySS said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 11:54AM RickGhastly said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 1:41PM shadowhowl1900 said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 5:50PM TheAngryIntern said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 10:54AM Crsh said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 11:02AM Billlop said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 11:23AM Crsh said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 11:55AM Hahke said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 12:17PM Crsh said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 12:24PM Oskiee said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 1:40PM shadowhowl1900 said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 3:02PM s256 said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 3:22PM Billlop said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 3:55PM RickGhastly said

Posted: Dec 14th 2010 5:09AM Chesterton said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 11:06AM Drakkenfyre said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 11:52AM Kaiser said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 12:08PM Drakkenfyre said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 11:22AM Negatron said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 11:27AM EliminatorZigma said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 11:54AM PedoJokerBear said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 12:12PM Drakkenfyre said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 11:52AM PedoJokerBear said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 12:34PM sigma8 said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 2:12PM Drakkenfyre said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 1:30PM EliminatorZigma said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 1:26PM veyper said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 5:45PM twocows said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 1:37PM shadowhowl1900 said

Posted: Dec 13th 2010 8:18PM ructus said

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