Blizzard began the fanfare of celebration yesterday after announcing record-breaking of in Europe, with the MMORPG entering the charts at number two only marginally shy of Knights of the Old Republic 2. 280,000 copies were sold across on day one - a figure previously thought to be the total size of the European MMORPG market! The game then went on to sell over 380,000 copies over its debut weekend - outstripping sales. Concurrent user figures rivalled even Korea - with 100,000 simultaneous players over the weekend, while the games data centres in Frankfurt and Paris are prepared to add extra servers to cope with demand.

The game has shifted 600,000 copies stateside - an incredible figure for a subscription game - and registered 200,000 concurrent users over the festive season. This grandiose success should be mirrored in Europe where 400,000 tested the game last year, and the WoW developers tribute their European triumph to lessons learnt in America previously: "Our experience of launching World of Warcraft in North America last year has helped us to prepare for Europe by providing more boxes at launch than we had previously planned and deploying more servers from the start, which we hope will allow us to provide a smooth and fun game experience from the outset for everyone playing," the developer's president enthused. More on this cash cow, which may well aid publisher Vivendi's plight hugely, as we get it.

By Luke Guttridge