World of Warcraft: Cataclysm obliterates Warcraft sales record

Sorry, did someone say World of Warcraft was on the way out? Hm? It was the game’s own publisher? Oh, right. D’oh.

Far from being on its last legs, expansion World of Warcraft: Cataclysm hit stores last week, and proceeded to shatter the first-24-hour sales record previously set by the series.

In its first whole day on sale, Cataclysm shifted 3.3 million copies across the world. That means 35 gamers were handing over Cheetos-stained banknotes per second somewhere in the world on that day. Back in November 2008, the last WoW expansion Wrath of the Lich King could only manage 2.8 million on day one. Ha! PATHETIC!

Here’s Blizzard co-founder and CEO Mike Morhaime, who must be feeling pretty pleased with himself:

“We had to bring Azeroth to the brink of destruction in Cataclysm, but the result was our best expansion yet. We want to thank all of our new, existing, and returning players throughout the world for their incredible enthusiasm and support, and we look forward to hearing what they think about all the new content.”

While impressive, that doesn’t quite topple Call of Duty: Black Ops‘s all-time record, which towers at 5.5 million copies sold on launch day. Of course, that game is also published by Activision. Basically, being Activision really, really rocks right now.

[Via press release]