The long-awaited release of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade has gone on sale across Europe and North America.
Hordes of Warcraft fanatics queued outside high street shops last night as they attempted to get their hands on the first major expansion of the popular online role-playing game.
Leading games shops across the two continents opened up at midnight for those who had queued during the day.
The Burning Crusade, which costs $39.99 in the US, will add new lands, quests, monsters, magic items and abilities, two new player races and an increase in the level cap to 70.
California-based developer Blizzard had originally planned to release the expansion pack by the end of 2006.
Mike Morhaime, Blizzard: "We're excited to share all of the new content with players, and we're certain that they'll enjoy the quality and breadth of new experiences that The Burning Crusade offers."
However, the firm announced last October that it was delaying the launch in order to "further refine the new content that will ship with the game".
"The Burning Crusade is the single largest expansion we've ever created, and we're grateful for the support shown by our beta testers and the millions of World of Warcraft players worldwide during its development," said Blizzard's Mike Morhaime.
"We're excited to share all of the new content with players, and we're certain that they'll enjoy the quality and breadth of new experiences that The Burning Crusade offers."
World of Warcraft, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), was launched in North America, Australia and New Zealand in early 2004.
The adventure game was then released across mainland Europe and Asia in February 2005.
Earlier this month, Blizzard announced that the game had reached more than eight million players worldwide.
Players pay a monthly subscription fee to access the game over the internet.
Blizzard, a unit of French media company Vivendi SA, will release the expansion in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Thailand on January 17.
The article Burning Crusade finally makes its debut originally appeared on 999 Today
comments
What do you think? Give us your opinion on the comments page.