When SPOnG turned up to HMV in London late last night to attend Blizzard’s World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade midnight launch event, we seriously did not expect to see a queue of around three thousand hardcore WoW fans snaking all the way down Oxford Street to the alley at the side and then all the way around the back of the major retailer’s flagship store.

Not on a cold, wet Monday night in January. Surely? Not 3,000 people?

We were proved gloriously wrong. The sweeping horde of WoW fans, many in outlandish costumes and caked in slightly disturbing face-paints, were out and proud in the West End drizzle last night. Even Blizzard and Vivendi’s PR guys seemed to be a little nonplussed at the huge turnout for the event.

After all, unlike certain bits of recently-released must-have gaming kit, the highly anticipated new expansion to the world’s most popular online PC game is now freely available to buy anywhere (and has been for a couple of days now via a few retailers).

There’s certainly no chance of supply shortages with this WOW, with Blizzard hopeful that most of its hardcore community of over eight million WoW gamers worldwide (around 0.1% of the world’s population) will want to upgrade to The Burning Crusade sometime very soon.

SPOnG caught up with WoW game designer Jon LeCraft and Blizzard’s vice president of business development, Itzik Ben Bassat earlier in the day yesterday who told us – among other things – that they would be more than happy to discuss a follow up to South Park’s wonderful ‘Make Love Not Warcraft’ episode from last year. Watch out for a full transcript of that interview shortly.

A smiling Ben Bassat told the assembled throng crowding into HMV last night that it was the “first time we've done a Blizzard launch in Europe and we were a little concerned… so it's a great, pleasant surprise to see so many people with us to celebrate the launch of Burning Crusade."

He also hinted that a new Starcraft would be on the way sometime before 2008.

Most of the costumed players in attendance last night were the first to receive their limited copies of the Collector's Edition, which includes the game, a making-of DVD, a hardcover art book, an exclusive in-game netherwhelp pet, two World of Warcraft Trading Card Game card packs and three exclusive cards, a map of Outland mousepad, and a soundtrack audio CD. We can’t help but wonder how much they will be fetching on eBay later this week.

In the meantime, enjoy the pics of last night’s launch right here. None of the leggy models interviewed were WoW players.



Share this item on... Comments >>