Seven years ago today, Blizzard Entertainment launched World of Warcraft, the company's most successful game to date and one of the most influential online games of all time. The MMORPG, with 10.3 million current global subscribers, has seen tremendous success since its launch in late 2004, and still serves as the gold standard by which the industry judges the commercial success of an MMORPG. Of course, the game has gone through quite a bit over the last few years. It has seen three major expansions, broken numerous sales and activity records, and has certainly been the focus of its fair share of controversies. Yet despite how the game or the industry may have changed since 2004, World of Warcraft remains a highly relevant force in the games business. To celebrate the game's latest anniversary, Gamasutra took a look back at the history of World of Warcraft, recalling its most pertinent developments, its significant milestones, and the most memorable moments from throughout its development. The story starts to take root even further than seven years ago, as it was in 1994 when Blizzard introduced us to the world of Warcraft with the real-time strategy game Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. The company officially announced World of Warcraft in 2001 at the European Computer Trade Show in London. Shortly after that announcement, DFC Intelligence analyst David Cole, years before the game's launch, was quoted as saying, "I expect World of Warcraft to reach 300,000 to 400,000 users very quickly--three to six months would not be unreasonable. The question will probably be: Can it keep those subscribers?" The analyst's comment exemplifies just how no one could have expected Blizzard's first MMORPG to become such a worldwide phenomenon. Here are the past seven years of World of Warcraft: -November 23, 2004 - World of Warcraft Launches in North America, coinciding with the 10th anniversary of the Warcraft franchise. -December 2, 2004 - World of Warcraft becomes the fastest selling U.S. PC game in history. It begins. World of Warcraft sells 240,000 units in one day, selling faster than any previously-released PC game in the U.S. -December 13, 2004 - Blizzard cracks down on World of Warcraft item sellers. Just shortly after launch, the studio threatened strict penalties against those who broke terms of service, including deletion of characters and accounts, and even legal action. Blizzard's bouts with virtual item sellers won't end here. -February 11, 2005 - World of Warcraft Launches in Europe. -March 14, 2005 - Blizzard bans more than 1,000 accounts for gold farming. -March 17, 2005 - World of Warcraft reaches 1.5 million subscribers worldwide. By this point, World of Warcraft was available in North America, Europe, and Korea. Along with this record subscriber number, the game also broke the record for the most concurrent users, surpassing 500,000 players simultaneously. -June 7, 2005 - World of Warcraft debuts in China. Several months after the initial U.S. launch, Blizzard goes after China, whose internet cafes and time-based subscriptions will add substantially to the MMORPG’s user base. -June 14, 2005 - World of Warcraft hits 2 million subscribers. -June 29, 2005 - Blizzard announces its first BlizzCon convention will be held in October in Orange County, California. -July 21, 2005 - World of Warcraft accumulates more than 1.5 million paying customers in China, pushing the worldwide consumer total over 3.5 million. 
-August 1, 2005 - Blizzard North merges into Blizzard South. With World of Warcraft quickly gaining steam, Blizzard decided to consolidate its North and South branches into its Southern California headquarters. With this move, the Diablo team at Blizzard North now shared a roof with the StarCraft and Warcraft teams at Blizzard South. September 13, 2005 - Blizzard is put to the test as the "Corrupted Blood" epidemic spreads throughout World of Warcraft's player base. A glitch in a fight with high-level dungeon boss Hakkar saw his highly contagious "Corrupted Blood" attack spread unexpectedly from player to player, killing them off. Blizzard had to reset the servers as the virtual disease spread out of control. -October 28, 2005 - Blizzard announces Burning Crusade. At the very first BlizzCon, Blizzard officially announced World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, the game's first full-fledged expansion. Most notably, this update introduced Outland, the game's new otherworldly continent, as well as two new playable races, the Blood Elves and Draenei. -December 19, 2005 - World of Warcraft reaches 5 million subscribers. Just over a year since launch, the game hits a new record milestone, further bolstered by the game's steadily increasing European subscribers. In early 2006, the game hit more than 1 million European players, pushing the worldwide subscriber count over 5.5 million. "World of Warcraft's growth continues to exceed all our expectations," said Mike Morhaime, president and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment. "We want to reiterate our thanks to the millions of players worldwide and to all the retailers who have enthusiastically supported the game over the past year." -December 22, 2005 - Blizzard closes 18,000 accounts for gold farming and item selling. -February 10, 2006 - Blizzard apologizes for trying to stop a gay and lesbian-friendly guild. In early 2006, Blizzard found itself in a bit of controversy after a game master threatened to ban player Sara Andrews for advertising a "GLBT-friendly" guild. At the time, Blizzard head of customer service Thor Biafore said, "[the warning] was an unfortunate interpretation of our current policies, which are under review." -March 1, 2006 - Worldwide subscriber numbers surpass 6 million. -April 14, 2006 - Blizzard reconsiders its deal with Chinese distributor The9. Following a number of complaints that players in China experienced "widespread delays of over an hour when logging into the game," Blizzard put out a cryptic press release noting that the company "is currently actively exploring and discussing cooperation opportunities and further expansion of its business with local potential partners for mainland China." This release foreshadowed a number of future management and service-related problems the game would eventually face overseas. -September 6, 2006 - Blizzard VP of game design Rob Pardo emphasizes World of Warcraft's accessibility. "First we try to come up with what are really cool things, things that will get people to play for two to three years. Then we actually start talking about accessibility, how to make the content approachable and easy to learn. But it starts with depth first," said Pardo at the 2006 Austin Game Developers Conference (now known as GDC Online). -October 4, 2006 - World of Warcraft receives its very own episode on the hit TV comedy South Park. During South Park's 10th season, show creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone collaborated with Blizzard to create an episode titled, "Make Love, Not Warcraft." Much of the episode was set within World of Warcraft itself, and used machinima animation featuring assets taken straight from the game. The episode was received warmly by fans and critics alike, and went on to receive an Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program (for Programming Less Than One Hour). -January 11, 2007 - World of Warcraft reaches 8 million subscribers. -January 16, 2007 - Burning Crusade launches in multiple territories, including North America, Europe, Australian, Thailand, and more. -January 23, 2007 - Burning Crusade sells 2.4 million copies in 24 hours, breaking the sales record previously set by the game's initial release. -February 1, 2007 - Blizzard signs deal with The9 for Burning Crusade release. After months of speculation over Blizzard's plans to continue World of Warcraft in China, Blizzard announced that The Burning Crusade would debut in China under the supervision of the game's current overseas publisher, The9. Under this renegotiated agreement, The9 would supply "provisions for hardware upgrades to the existing World of Warcraft infrastructure," local community management, tech support, and customer service, and would run the game on local servers. -March 7, 2007 - Burning Crusade sales hit 3.5 million units. 
-July 24, 2007 - The game sees more than 9 million subscribers. -August 3, 2007 - Blizzard announces the game's second expansion: Wrath of the Lich King. At the second BlizzCon, Blizzard officially debuted Wrath of the Lich King, which brought back Arthas, a fan-favorite character from Warcraft III, as well as the frozen continent of Northrend. In addition, the expansion introduced the the game's first -- and so far, only -- hero class: the Death Knight. -December 3, 2007 - Vivendi and Activision merge to create Activision Blizzard. In a sudden and shocking move, Activision and Blizzard parent company Vivendi announced that the companies would soon merge into a single entity, to be known as Activision Blizzard (dropping the Vivendi name in favor of Blizzard's). Of course, this new company now exists as one of the biggest and most influential publishers in the industry, serving as home to some of video games' biggest juggernauts -- from Call of Duty to World of Warcraft itself. -January 22, 2008 - World of Warcraft hits 10 million subscriber milestone. -February 7, 2008 - Rob Pardo discusses Blizzard's slow build toward World of Warcraft. "We've taken steps toward our success. We didn’t come out of the gate and try to do World of Warcraft from day one," he said at the 2008 D.I.C.E. Summit in Las Vegas. -April 14, 2008 - The9 announces plans to release Wrath of the Lich King in China. -July 10, 2008 - Activision Blizzard merger becomes official. -August 4, 2008 - Blizzard announces cross-game achievements between
No tags.
