This was something of the scale of a console launch - beyond it, frankly - only for an expansion pack for an online game.
I remember covering the midnight launch at HMV in London's Oxford Street and being gobsmacked by the size and fervour of the crowd. One moment that sticks out for me was the launch of first expansion, The Burning Crusade, in January 2007. Its peak audience size didn't come until late 2010, six years on from its launch, but it was in the first three or four years that it seemed to loom largest in the culture.
Its success was both immediate and gradual, which is to say that it launched big and then got bigger, at a rapid rate, for years. You can point to many moments from World of Warcraft's early history that define, comment on, or cement its status as the biggest game in the world at the time and a potent pop-cultural force.
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