World of Warcraft European release date announced

Blizzard Entertainment has today announced that their massively successful MMORPG, World of Warcraft, is to be released in Europe on February 11th 2005. After breaking records in North America and receiving critical acclaim across the board, Europeans will finally get a chance to see what all the fuss is about.

Beta registrations for the game topped 400,000 and retail pre-orders have exceeded 110,000 units. Mike Morhaime, president and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment had this to say about the European launch: “We are thrilled to welcome European players into the World of Warcraft. It’s been exciting to see so many people playing the game in North America and Korea, and we hope that European players will enjoy World of Warcraft just as much.”

Ensuring that European players will get the best gaming experience possible, Blizzard has set up a dedicated team that will provide 24/7 technical support. In game support will also come through French, German and English-speaking game masters.

The standard package will retail for £29.99 on the PC and Mac, and will include one month of free game-time. An exclusive collectors edition will also be available at launch, but in limited numbers, at a suggest retail price of £44.99. Included in this limited set is a making of DVD, an exclusive in-game pet, a cloth map, a soundtrack CD, an Art of the World of Warcraft coffee table book and a game manual signed by all the development team. Not a bad package at all.

Subscriptions are available in three flavours: Monthly, costing £8.99 per month; a three-month plan costing £8.39 per month and a six-month plan costing £7.69 per month. Subscriptions can be paid using all major credit cards, local cards, direct debit and pre-paid game cards. These pre-paid cards will be available in retail stores.