World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft (WoW) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the "Warcraft" fantasy universe. "World of Warcraft" takes place within the "Warcraft" world of Azeroth, approximately four years after the events at the conclusion of Blizzard's previous "Warcraft" release, "." The game was announced in 2001, and was released for the 10th anniversary of the "Warcraft" franchise on November 23, 2004. Since launch, "World of Warcraft" has had seven major expansion packs released for it: "", "", "", "", "", "", and "".
Role-playing video game
Among the best-selling PC RPGs overall is the massively multiplayer online game "World of Warcraft" with 11.5 million subscribers as of May 2010. Among single player PC RPGs, "Diablo II" has sold the largest amount, with the most recently cited number being over 4 million copies as of 2001. However, copies of the "Diablo: Battle Chest" continued to be sold in retail stores, with the compilation appearing on the NPD Group's top 10 PC games sales, list as recently as 2010. Further, "Diablo: Battle Chest" was the 19th best selling PC game of 2008—a full seven years after the game's initial release; and 11 million users still played "Diablo II" and "StarCraft" over Battle.net in 2010. As a franchise, the "Diablo" series has sold over 20 million copies, not including "Diablo III" which was released for Windows and OS X in 2012.