Warcraft
In 2004, Blizzard Entertainment moved the series away from the real-time strategy genre and released "World of Warcraft", a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). Requiring a subscription fee to be paid to play, it also introduced regular additional content to the series in the form of patches. "World of Warcraft" gained popularity worldwide, becoming the world's largest subscription-based MMORPG in 2008. The game reached a peak 12 million subscribers worldwide in October 2010. "World of Warcraft" has had seven expansions as of 2018. During the production of "", Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce stated that "If there's a team that's passionate about doing another "Warcraft" [real-time strategy], then that's definitely something we would consider. It's nothing that we're working on right now, we have development teams working on "", "", "Diablo III", and when those teams are all off the projects they're working on, they'll be intimately involved in the discussions about what's next".
Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness
"Warcraft II" debuted at #2 on PC Data's monthly computer game sales chart for December 1995, behind "Myst". It held the spot in January 1996, but dropped to #3 in its third month. The game stayed in PC Data's top 3 from April through October, securing first place in April, August and September. After falling to #5 in November, it exited the top 10 the following month. "Warcraft II" achieved worldwide sales of 500,000 units within three months of release, and of over 1.2 million by November. This made it the world's most commercially successful computer game of the year as of November, according to PC Data. In the United States, it was the second-best-selling computer game of 1996, again behind "Myst". The game sold 835,680 copies and earned $34.5 million in the region for the year. To capitalize on this success, Blizzard released the "Warcraft Battlechest" on November 11, which bundled "Warcraft: Orcs & Humans" with "Warcraft II" and the "Into the Dark Portal" add-on.