Word comes in from World of Warcraft developer, Blizzard, this morning that World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, has been put back to January 2007.

Yes, the highly anticipated expansion for planet earth’s most popular (and, following the recent South Park episode, most notorious) online videogame will be a post GreedFest* event.

The reason for this? “By adding a few extra weeks to the development cycle beyond its original target date, Blizzard will be able to extend the closed beta test and further refine the new content that will ship with the game,” they inform us.

Blizzard’s president Mike Morhaime added, “We appreciate the enthusiasm surrounding World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, and we’re excited about putting the finishing touches on all of the new content… We feel confident that the extra time spent polishing the game will result in the high-quality experience that our players expect and deserve.”

The current closed beta test of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade began earlier this month. SPOnG will bring you more WoW news on specific dates, pricing and anything else that will keep WoW players away from entering the real-world for as long as is feasibly possible as soon as we get it.

SPOnG is unaware at this time of any emergency counselling centres being set up to deal with the global epidemic of W.O.W. trauma.

*GreedFest - the annual December celebration of all things greedy.