Over 140,000 gamers queue to buy WoW Celestial Steed
£17 virtual item expected to generate millions in revenue for Blizzard
Demand for Blizzard's latest virtual items - the Celestial Steed mount and the Lil'XT Pet - has reached unprecedented levels, with queues of 140,000 people forming within hours of the items going on sale.
The two items were released on April 15, with the Celestial Steed selling for $25 on the US Blizzard Store and £17 in the UK.
Within three hours of their release, the queue for the Celestial Steed was seven hours long, according to wow.com, with a 140,000-strong queue worth $3.5 million for the one item alone.
In response to concerns that stock of the items would run dry, a Blizzard spokesperson said on the game's official forum that their numbers would not be restricted.
"The number of available mounts is limited in the sense that there is a fixed number of codes available in the store. These codes are not generated automatically with each purchase, instead they are generated separately and then added to the store in batches," they explained.
"The Celestial Steed is not supposed to be a limited time offer only, so we will of course add more codes in case the current batch of codes gets sold out."