Blizzard’s MMO juggernaut “World of Warcraft”
is showing no signs of slowing down.
The company announced Monday that the game’s latest expansion – “World of Warcraft: Cataclysm” – had sold 4.7 million copies worldwide in just one month. That makes it the fastest-selling PC game of all time, displacing “Wrath of the Lich King,” the previous “WoW” expansion.
Activision’s “Call of Duty” franchise continues to 
set new bars in the entertainment industry. The latest installment in the series — subtitled “Black Ops” — has hit $1 billion in sales in just six weeks. The only other entertainment property to reach that milestone so quickly, according to the publisher, was James Cameron’s “Avatar.”
Like its predecessor, “Black Ops” came out of the gate strong. In its first five days on shelves, the game had sales of $650 million. It hit the $1 billion mark nearly a month quicker than “Modern Warfare 2,” and now stands poised to assume the crown of the top-grossing videogame of all time.
[Ahead of BlizzCon, Gamasutra editor-at-large Chris Morris looks at the role of the fanfest in video games, talking to Blizzard COO 
Paul Sams about this weekend’s Anaheim event and its key role in Blizzard’s marketing and community relations.]
When 20,000 people converge on Anaheim this weekend for BlizzCon, their minds are likely to be on what items will be in their goodie bag and what sort of sneak peaks they’ll get at upcoming Blizzard Entertainment games.
For the folks at Blizzard, though, the event, now in its fifth year, is a critical piece of their marketing plan.
Chris Morris: Journalist 