A new wave of World of Warcraft® boxes to hit European retail on April 15!

PARIS, France. 1st April, 2005 - Blizzard Entertainment^® announced today that an additional 250,000 standard box copies of World of Warcraft^®, its successful massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), will be available in retail stores across Europe on 15th April. This new shipment of boxes follows the sales of more than 620,000 copies in Europe since its launch on 11th February.

"The success of World of Warcraft has proven our belief in Europe as a strong online gaming market", said Mike Morhaime, president of Blizzard Entertainment. "We are delighted to now be in a position to provide more boxes to retail and to welcome more players into the game."

As part of a new initiative, players will find a 10 day Guest Pass in each of these 250,000 boxes, which will allow them to invite a friend to play World of Warcraft with them on a 10 day free trial. At the end of the trial period, the guest will be able to continue playing with his existing character by purchasing a retail copy of the game.

World of Warcraft is available for Windows 98/ME/2000/XP and Macintosh at a suggested retail price of £29.99, and includes a one-month subscription to the game. After the initial one-month subscription ends, players will be able to continue playing under one of three different subscription plans. The basic month-to-month subscription plan costs £8.99 per month while the three-month plan costs £8.39 per month and the six-month plan costs £7.69 per month. Subscription fees can be paid with all major credit cards, many local credit cards, direct debit (such as ELV in Germany) and pre-paid game cards which carry a SRP of £18.49 for 60 days of gaming time.