World of Warcraft (mostlyabbreviated as WoW ) is an MMORPG , a massive multiplayer online role-playing game developed by Blizzard Entertainment. It wasthe 4thgame in the Warcraft series, first introduced with the Warcraft: Orcs & Humans gamereleased in 1994, but the games before this game are in real time strategy (RTS) type. The theme of the game, which continues after Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne game, continues on the virtual planet called Azeroth like the previous games. World of Warcraft was first announced by Blizzard
Entertainment on September 2, 2001 [2] and was launched on November 23, 2004, in the 10th year of the Warcraft series.
The first expansion pack of the game, The Burning Crusade , was released on January 16, 2007. [3] With this expansion pack, Outland joined the game world. The second expansion pack, Wrath
of the Lich King , was released on November 13, 2008. [4] At the BlizzCon 2009 conference, the
game's third expansion pack, Cataclysm, was announced. [5] [6] The new plug-in package was
released on December 7, 2010. [7]The destruction of the former Azeroth continents, Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, introduced at the time of the game release with this add-on pack, has had many permanent changes. As of June 30, 2011, the classic version of World of Warcraft has
been updated to include the content of The Burning Crusade expansion pack. [8]
With over 12 million users worldwide [9] , World of Warcraft has entered the Guinness Book of
Records as the “most popular MMORPG game”. [10] As of April 2008, World of Warcraft holds 62 percent of the huge online games market. [11th]