On January 16th, 2007, the first expansion of the most popular video game in history will hit store shelves. Over 8 million people currently play World of Warcraft and have been eagerly awaiting the first expansion in the game's two year history. The good news is that it will be finally released after several months of delays and beta testing.
Every Warcraft player and ex-Warcraft player has this day circled on there calender as a day not to miss. Many stores will be opened at 12:01 that day to have Warcraft Expansion release parties, but their is one problem that is not being mentioned by anybody.
With the new released expansion, there will be an increase in land mass of approximately 25%. This means that with the 8 million, and the reactivating of a few more million accounts that Blizzard will be expecting players to all purchase the expansion and be expected to zone into a small area only a quarter the size of the original game. It has been shown in many different games that this is unfeasible.
What is going to happen?
Blizzard won't say this publicly, but this is exactly what is going to happen. Blizzard is going to ship a limited number of expansion packs to the general public per week. I am making a guess that they will be distributing only a small amount ranging between 400,000 and 600,000. This, through the power of numbers, will be able to limit the people that can play the expansion upon release and not give an incredibly horrible gaming experience to gamers via bottle-necking the game and the servers.
We all know very well that a lot of stores do not guarantee results with pre-orders if there is too much demand for supply. So come that fateful Tuesday morning, there will be many disappointed gamers, what I would suggest is to start lining up now so that you will ensure that you get your copy and are able to experience the burning crusade as soon as it comes out.
