Blizzard unveils second WoW expansion - 'Wrath of the Lich King'

Blizzard Entertainment, Inc., a division of Vivendi Games, on Friday announced the release of its long-awaited World of Warcraft: The Wrath of the Lich King, the exciting new expansion to Blizzard's award-winning subscription-based massively multi-player online role-playing game (MMORPG).

Unveiling the newest expansion to its highly successful MMO video game at the company’s BlizzCon gaming festival before an audience of more than 8,000 gamers, Blizzard said the second WoW expansion will be focused on the frigid wastelands known as Northrend, packed with new zones, quests, dungeons, monsters, as well as the Lich King's host, Arthas.

Besides improvements and lots of new content, including improved levels of power (raised the level cap to 80), new dungeons and encounters and an exciting new character profession, “The Wrath of the Lich King” features the first hero class, named the Death Knights and a new character-customization options, such as hairstyles and dances.

While the new character profession feature, called inscription, will allow players to customize their characters' core class abilities, the new character-customization would enable gamers to change how characters look and express themselves, with different hairstyles and dance animations, Blizzard explained at the presentation.

“This expansion will add some of the most infamous characters and settings from the Warcraft universe to World of Warcraft,” said Mike Morhaime, president and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “In addition to new story content, Wrath of the Lich King will introduce a number of features specifically requested by players over the past couple of years. We’re looking forward to sharing further details with everyone as development progresses.”

Blizzard is the Irvine, California based premier developer and publisher of entertainment software widely known for creating many of the industry's most critically acclaimed games.

Since its launch in 2004, the original World of Warcraft has easily become the most popular online role-playing game, with a subscriber base of more than 9 million players.
World of Warcraft subscription is priced differently in different regions of the world. U.S. players pay a subscription fee of $14.95 each month to play WoW.

The US game publisher, best known for blockbuster hits including World of Warcraft and the Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo series, launched the first exciting expansion of WoW simultaneously in North America, Europe, Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia on January 16, with Australia and New Zealand following on January 17.

During the first 24-hour period, the first expansion, titled World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, sold an average of 100,000 copies per hour, breaking PC-game sales records in North America and Europe. According to Blizzard’s estimates, approximately 1.2 million copies were sold on the first day in North America, which is nearly half of overall sales, and an estimated total of another 1.1 million copies were sold in Europe.

Blizzard sold nearly 3.5 million copies of the Burning Crusade, which is available in seven different languages, in its first month.