WOTLK was launched Wednesday night

Last night, I think over 2,000 people were waiting, in centre of Bucharest, at Diverta store, to buy the 2nd expansion of World of Warcraft. After launching last year Burning Crusade, Blizzard came out, at midnight, with Wrath of the Lich King, the 2nd WOW expansion.

So all Romanian gamers, orcs, humans or NE (counting randomly I found five priests, three shamans, three mages, two rogues, three warriors and a paladin), stayed in line at Diverta, on a terrible cold, to get the game. And not even the game, if I stay and think that most of player’s computers already had the game installed, they just needed the key.

Diverta was nicely decorated on this occasion, loads of posters, some figurines to make pictures with, a disperate guy that was running around with a sword and a shield, unsuccessfully trying to look like a warrior. Anyways, all in all, inside was very nice and cosy.

I can say that at WOTLK I was in a double role: as a journalist and as a player. From journalist’s point of view, the event was nice. And again, warm and good inside.

From the gamers point of view – because after the press conference I stayed with my friends to get the game- , some security dude was acting all mighty and smart, sending me at the buildings corner with a very rude attitude, I frozen my ass off, the access in the store started the earliest at half past 12 (well, at least that’s how we saw it from the corner of the building) and nobody even tried to set up some line set-up to make an organized line.

What “impressed” me the most was the tea and warm drinks for the security guys. Because why would someone give a f*** about the people that actually come buy the game. Well, besides I don’t think anyone to get warm drinks for free, but it would have been useful to actually have the opportunity to buy them.

And I was calculating. Last night, at the WOTLK launch, there were around 2,000 people. In the store there were 3,000 copies of the game. I think, last night, Diverta and Best Distribution won around Euro 75,000 from the game.

So yea, there are gamers in Romania, yea, video games generate income and yea, there are people that actually buy them instead of cracking them.