World of Warcraft players certainly don’t mind that 7-Eleven has been dabbling in the field of selling videogames. Thanks to the apparent disregard for street dates, WoW players were able to secure early copies (albeit not early access) of Wrath of the Lich King. The retail chain has announced that its recent sales of games like WoW, Halo, and Madden isn’t a temporary holiday cash-in — they’re planning on permanently adding videogames to their inventory (via Joystiq).

“This is not just a holiday promotion for us,” explained 7-Eleven category manager for gaming and electronics, “but a brand new product line-up that will be available year-round. We may not be a total entertainment destination … yet, but we’re hoping to expand our selection beyond the high-dollar, hot-selling games to include options for all budgets, like value-priced video games as well as DVD movies. For consumers wanting convenient one-stop shopping for at-home entertainment along with groceries and gas or who just want to avoid big-store shopping inconveniences, their local 7-Eleven store is open and ready.”

In addition to Wrath of the Lich King, 7-Eleven is planning on selling the Guitar Hero World Tour band kit, Fallout 3, Quantum of Solace, Gears of War 2, WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2009, and Call of Duty: World at War. They’ll also begin selling subscription cards for around 20 games and services ranging from Xbox Live to City of Heroes to Runescape.

Picking up a game at 7-Eleven seems to be more of a convenience rather than an alternative, at least at this point. Unless you’ve got one closer to home than any other retailer, will gamers really opt to go there instead of GameStop, Best Buy, or Walmart? But if they decided to throw in a free Slurpee with the purchase of any full-priced game, that might just give them the edge that makes it the premiere destination for picking up big-name games. It would for me, at least.

Love World of Warcraft or hate World of Warcraft you have to give Blizzard some credit for the awesome commercials advertising their product.

In the past we have been been treated to commercials featuring Verne Troyer (man he really creeps me out), William Shatner, and my personal favorite of the three, Mr. T–however, my new favorite has to be the one that was just released this morning.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is with great pleasure that I present to you–The Prince of !#$%ing Darkness… Mr. Ozzy Osbourne.

I now bow down to the higher power that is the advertising geniuses at Blizzard.

Blizzard just keeps shattering records doesn’t it? Now, they have something else to brag about–with more than 2.8 million copies sold in its first 24 hours, Blizzard’s World of Warcraft expansion is now the fastest-selling PC game…ever.

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King sold more than 2.8 million copies in its first 24 hours of availability, which eclipses the previous record of nearly 2.4 million copies sold in 24 hours, set in January 2007 by World of Warcraft’s first expansion, The Burning Crusade.

Wrath of the Lich King was simultaneously released in North America, Europe, Chile, Argentina, and Russia on November 13; Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand on November 14; and South Korea and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau on November 18.

In celebration of the launch, more than 15,000 stores throughout the world had their doors open at midnight to welcome thousands of expectant players. Several of these locations were attended by Blizzard Entertainment representatives, who met players and signed copies of the game.

Prior to the launch of Wrath of the Lich King, World of Warcraft’s subscriber population had grown to more than 11 million players, further strengthening its position as the world’s most popular subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

Expect this record to be broken when they release the next expansion…whenever that may be.

It looks as though U.K. fans are just as crazy about the Call of Duty franchise as those in the U.S. because according to the All Formats charts from Chart Track, the week one sales of Call of Duty: World at War are higher than sales for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare when it debuted. Outselling CoD4 by more than 2 to 1, World at War is expected to be the most popular game during the Holiday Shopping Extravaganza across the pond.

If you look at the rest of the chart, you will notice that games published by Activision Blizzard dominate the chart by having 25 percent of all sales for the one publisher. Of course, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King is on the chart as well, taking spot number two while Guitar Hero: World Tour coming in at number six (full kits for this game were just released recently released).

Last week’s number one best-selling game was Epic’s Xbox 360 exclusive Gears of War 2, which dropped 64 percent and down to position number four.

To give you an idea what our British brethren are playing, here are the top selling games for week ending November 15:

1. Call of Duty: World at War
2. World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King
3. Football Manager 2009
4. Gears of War 2
5. FIFA 09
6. Guitar Hero: World Tour
7. Professor Layton and the Curious Village
8. Mario Kart Wii
9. Pro Evolution Soccer 2009
10. WWE Smackdown Vs RAW 2009

Thanks: GamesIndustry.biz

I got a nice little email this morning from iTunes stating that the World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Original Game Soundtrack is now available for downloading via the online music store. Granted, the soundtrack has been available since November 13, but I guess the folks that send out the emails have been having a bad week or something.

As we are all well aware, the expansion hit the ground running over the past few days and while not actually a WoW player, I do like the music, and the snipits I listened to are very interesting. Considering the fact that they were created by Blizzard Entertainment veterans Derek Duke, Glenn Stafford, and Russell Brower with performances by the Northwest Sinfonia Orchestra and Chorus, what else would you expect?

The iTunes edition of the World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Original Game Soundtrack contains 21 tracks, including three exclusives and each song is, of course, the usual $.99 or you can purchase the full soundtrack for $9.99. Right now, the most popular track is “Arthas, My Son” and following in a close second is the “Wrath of the Lich King”, main title track. If you happen to own an iPhone, those are also the most popular ringtones at the moment as well.

This is for North America–if you live in another region, you may wish to check with iTunes before you get too excited only to find out it is not available yet.

Not even a week removed from the launch of the second expansion to World of Warcraft, and Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime is already talking about future expansions. In an interview with MTV Multiplayer, Morhaime admitted that Blizzard is already thinking about what to include in the massively popular MMO’s next expansion although — for now — they remain completely focused on Wrath of the Lich King. Obviously it’s far too early to go into any specifics as to what the contents might be. He did, however, say, “[W]e will continue making expansions as long as we have players that want to play World of Warcraft — we want to keep them entertained.”

Asked if that means Blizzard will be making expansions forever, Morhaime replied, “Well, probably not forever. But for the foreseeable future, we’d like to be doing regular expansions.” That sounds good, but what constitutes “regular” expansions? Blizzard originally said it wanted to release expansions every year, but the span between The Burning Crusade and Wrath was nearly two years. Are yearly releases still the plan?

[O]ur goal that we’ve talked about is to put out an annual expansion, but we haven’t quite been able to do that. We had one early last year and now we’re sort of late this year, but we do want to decrease the amount of time in between expansions. Although we’ll probably never get it down to a year [between each one] because there’s just so much content. We do want each expansion to be considered a big value for players.

Morhaime realizes there’s a potential fatigue that could come with frequent releases. “I agree — I think putting too many expansions out too frequently, you probably get to the point where people do need to start taking a little break,” he said.

However long it is that Blizzard continues making expansions, you shouldn’t expect to see the monthly subscription fee to drop anytime soon. Morhaime said he thinks the $15 per month “feels right to us and our players,” claiming “there really isn’t a better value you can get in entertainment.”

Having surpassed the 11 million subscribers mark not too long ago, it really doesn’t seem like there’s any imminent need for Blizzard to change what it’s doing.

Gamers were outraged when they heard that StarCraft 2 would be coming in three different parts. Blizzard had claimed it wouldn’t let the merger between Activision and Blizzard parent company Vivendi impact the way it did business. But the move reeked of the type of thingthat would fit right in with Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick’s recent comments that the company want their games to be exploitable. But it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that Blizzard COO Paul Sams vehemently denies that StarCraft 2 is being milked.

Speaking with VideoGamer.com today before a midnight launch of Wrath of the Lich King in London today, he said:

The fact of the matter is, it’s absolutely, positively untrue about us trying to stretch it out and milk it. People think that it was a monetary driven decision. I can absolutely, positively tell you, with 100 per cent certainty, that that was not part of the conversation. I guarantee it. I give my word. There was never, ever a conversation where we said, ‘let’s do this because we’re going to make more money’. I guarantee it. As a matter of fact the sole reason we did it was because we thought it was going to be a better experience. Anybody that says otherwise is not correct. It is absolutely not what we did it for.

Sims’ denial is more passionate than the usual corporate line we get, so maybe it’ll be enough to convince fans that Blizzard truly is doing this to deliver the best game is possible.

But we doubt it.

Following the merger between Activision and Vivendi to form Activision Blizzard, it was announced that a number of games — including high profile titles like Ghostbusters and Brutal Legend — were being dropped. Disappointing as it was, it was a mind-boggling decision to many gamers, given that Activision decided to retain the rights to other Vivendi franchises like Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon. We’ve theorized that this was simply a matter of being able to milk those franchises more than you could the new Riddick, and sure enough, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick admitted as much during yesterday’s Activision Blizzard earnings call.

According to MTV Multiplayer, while answering a question on why some of Vivendi’s games were dropped, Kotick laid out the reality of the matter — albeit without referring to any specific games:

“[Those games] don’t have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million dollar franchises. … I think, generally, our strategy has been to focus… on the products that have those attributes and characteristics, the products that we know [that] if we release them today, we’ll be working on them 10 years from now.”

It’s a fair point given that Activision is, after all, a business, but it’s easy to be upset with that sort of strategy. Luckily, Kotick did say original properties are important, but they need to be careful with which properties they pursue. Of the 15 properties Activision Blizzard is planning to release next year, “three, maybe four” of those will be “exciting new intellectual properties.”Too bad none of them will be Ghostbusters or Brutal Legend.

As anticipation for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion mounts, Blizzard happened to mention this morning that at present, World of Warcraft has surpassed the 11 Million subscribers worldwide mark. This impressive number was reached during the MMORPG’s Beta testing for the upcoming expansion, and those numbers are only expected to grown once Wrath of the Lich King launches November 13.

Mike Morhaime, CEO and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment is currently basking in the love that gamers all over the globe have bestowed upon the gaming behemoth and promises not to let them down:

“It’s been very rewarding to see gamers around the world continue to show such strong support for World of Warcraft. We remain fully committed to responding to that enthusiasm with a high-quality, constantly evolving game experience.”

Not only has World of Warcraft won numerous awards and can boast of being the bestselling PC game of 2005 and 2006, its first expansion -The Burning Crusade–not only became the fastest-selling PC game of all time, but thanks to selling 2.4 million copies in the first 24-hours of launch and 3.5 million during its first month, it went on to be the best-selling PC game of 2007.

With such staggering sales numbers and subscribers, it is hard to speculate just how many more records World of Warcraft will shatter once Wrath of the Lich King invades retail. Be sure to check back with us because November 13 is looming just over the horizon and there’s no telling what heights will be reached. In the meantime, check out 1UP’s preview of the expansion here.

The second expansion to World of Warcraft is just a few weeks away, and it looks like that crafty bad guy, Arthas, is already wreaking havoc on the world… of Warcraft. As of a few hours ago, agents of the Argent Dawn have arrived in various locations throughout Azeroth, and in their wake, conspicuous crates in Booty Bay. Upon looting them, you’ll become diseased and, unless you find a cure from the Argent Dawn or a fellow player, you’ll become a zombie after ten minutes. After becoming a zombie, you’re able to attack NPCs and players of any faction, thereby further spreading the disease to more players. You’re also given zombie-specific abilities and will be unable to use any of your own abilities.

It’s not particularly difficult to be cured right now — something Blizzard poster Kisirani suspiciously pointed out in a thread on the official WoW forums — but it seems like the disease will inevitably infect everyone and everything.

Both MMO Champion and WoW Insider have more details on the happenings, but I’d recommend you login and see this disaster unfold for yourself.