World of Warcraft: Will Wrath of the Lich King Expand the Game to Even More Players?

World of Warcraft is a very large game, in that there are a lot of things to do, a lot of levels, and many different instances which you can run with a group of friends. With each expansion pack, more things are added to the game.

Before the first expansion pack, players were limited to only build their players up to the level of 60, and they were stuck on two islands, both Kalimidor and the Eastern Kingdoms. The game was still great even at this point! However, I believe that eventually players would have become bored.

The first expansion pack, the Burning Crusade, was released in January of 2007. This increased the maximum level capacity to 70, giving users the ability to gain another 10 levels, get new abilities, and get new gear. This not only increased the level capacity, but it also added a whole new world to the game, essentially. The "Outlands" were what everyone was thriving about when the Burning Crusade came out. Everyone wanted to go to the outlands and do new raids/instances, and visit the wonderful Shattrah city. Not only that, but the attractive races of Blood Elf and Dranei came out in the new expansion pack, increasing game play even further!

Now, Blizzard has released the new expansion pack, the Wrath of the Lich King. Since the release of the expansion back, the level of game play has dramatically increased. I've seen Blizzard servers become completely full and I was unable to login for the first time in history due to the overwhelmingly increased traffic because of players interested in playing the new expansion pack.

The game sold over a million copies on the first day it was out, and copies continue to fly off the shelves. It's amazing now how Blizzard markets the game. It's not everyday that you see a MMORPG be marketed on such a level that Blizzard markets their World of Warcraft. I've even seen commercials now where Ozzy Osbourne appears as the "death knight" which is a character/class in the new expansion pack of World of Warcraft.

Blizzard will never cease to amaze me in how popular they have made the World of Warcraft, both in players, advertisements, and tremendously increased marketing of their game.

New players are dragged in with every expansion pack. Not only are there old players who continue playing because they wanted to try out the expansion pack, but other people see the advertisements or just hear about the game for the first time and decide to play. This is what causes the vast amounts of people logging into the game shortly after the expansion pack is released.

I see further expansions coming out in the near future, along with the creation of further hero classes, such as the death knight. People are going to start playing more and more World of Warcraft, and more and more players are going to subscribe.