The news is out: World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade sold 2.4 million copies worldwide in the first 24 hours alone. [UPDATE: Earlier I'd mis-reported that the sales figures were for North America only]. That's a sales record that shatters anything previous. To give you some context, the original World of Warcraft game had previously held the 24-hour sales record... by moving 240,000 copies. These days, a PC game that sells a million units is considered a successful product -- so the response to Burning Crusade so far is what we in the industry would describe as crotch-kickingly phenomenal.

I have a number of observations:

• Once your MMO has eight million subscribers worldwide, customer churn is your biggest concern (in some ways even more important than finding new customers.) Big expansions are a way to keep the game relevant, new, and exciting to people so they don't move on to something else.

• If you had asked me before, I would've said waiting more than two years for the first expansion was a bad idea (EverQuest II released three expansions in the same time-frame, although to be fair their market position demanded that they be more aggressive). But the overwhelming uptake of the expansion shows that the audience is still around and still hungry. Blizzard's famous patience and perfectionism prevailed.

• PC games have historically never blown through retail like this. The difference is that this is an online game, with a massive online community. It wasn't enough just to get the expansion: you wanted to get into the new content first. Every hour counted!

The full GameSpy.com review is coming soon, but GameSpy's out-of-the box impressions are all positive. IGN's Impressions were a little more reserved. As for me? Sleepless nights abound as I lay waste to the new content. It's clear to me that the games industry will be talking about World of Warcraft for many, many years to come.

      -Fargo

• Miyamoto to Give GDC Keynote -IGN
• Driver En Route to PSP -IGN
• Dragon Ball Z Blasts Onto Handhelds -IGN
• Virtual Console Mondays -IGN
• Gears of War Second Mandatory Update -TeamXbox
• Take-Two Receives Nasdaq Notice, Reports Backdating -TeamXbox
• 10th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards Finalists -TeamXbox
• Current Best Sellers -Next Generation
• Wii 'Official' Console of Six Flags -Next Generation
• Burning Crusade Sets Charts Ablaze -GameDaily Biz
• Examining MMOG Investments -GameDaily Biz
• The PS3 Will be Difficult to Cost-Reduce -Joystiq
• Nintendo Says it Learned from its GameCube Mistakes -GamePro
• The Xbox 360 is Perfect for ... Japanese Buisnesswomen? -Kotaku

• Battlefield 2 - BF2 Deathmatch Update -Planet Battlefield
• Battlefield 2 - Eve of Destruction Update -Planet Battlefield
• Battlefield 2 - Stargate: La Relève Update -Planet Battlefield
• Morrowind - 19 New and Updated Morrowind Mods -Planet Elder Scrolls
• Half-Life 2 - Resident Evil: Twilight Update -Mod DB

• Boards: Intel P965: abit AB9 QuadGT - Anandtech
• Cases: Antec Nine Hundred - Boot Daily
• Cooling: Alpha Novatech PRE9060M92P Socket 775 Heatsink - Frosty Tech
• Cooling: Spire Fourier IV Intel/AMD Copper Heatpipe CPU Cooler - Tweaknews
• Cooling: Noctua NF-S12 and RF-8 Cooling Fans - Big Bruin
• Cooling: Noctua NC-U6 Northbridge Heatsink Madshrimps
• Cooling: VIZO Voyager HDD Cooler - Gideontech
• Cooling: Value Cooling: Two Towers for under $30 - Anandtech
• CPU: Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 CPU Quad Core - MVK Tech
• CPU: Intel QX6700 Core 2 Quad Extreme Edition CPU - i4U
• Keyboards: Saitek Eclipse II Illuminated Keyboard - Tweaknews
• Mice: Logitech MX Revolution Laser Mouse - ASE Labs
• Power Supply: Antec EarthWatts 500W - Overclockers Online
• Video: MSI's NX8800GTX-T2D768E GeForce 8800 GTX - HotHardware
• Video: MSI NX8800GTX Review and Mixed-Vendor SLI - NVNews
• Video: Real-World Gaming CPU Comparison with 8800 GTX SLI - [H]
• Video: Sapphire Ultimate X1650PRO 256MB - Virtual Hideout
• Video: The GeForce 8800 in SLI - Tech Report
• Windows: Top 8 Vista Annoyances - TechAge