At this point it doesn’t come as much of a surprise that an expansion pack for World of Warcraft sets a new sales record on release—they’ve been doing it for years—but that doesn’t mean Blizzard Entertainment isn’t any less proud of itself. According to the company, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has set a new record for fastest-selling PC game, moving 3.3 million copies in its first 24 hours of availability. Of course, that figure includes digital pre-sales from eager players who paid in advance to make sure they’d have a copy right at launch.
“We had to bring Azeroth to the brink of destruction in Cataclysm, but the result was our best expansion yet,” said Blizzard co-founder and CEO Mike Morhaime, in a statement. “We want to thank all of our new, existing, and returning players throughout the world for their incredible enthusiasm and support.”
The previous record for first-day sales of a PC game had been set back in 2008 by Blizzard’s Wrath of the Lich King expansion pack, which moved 2.8 million copies on its first day of availability. World of Warcraft currently boasts a global player base of over 12 million people.

not quite ben, from an earlier article about call of duty i found this line
"At an average of $60 per copy, the game has sold somewhere between 5 and 6 million units"
so not as many copies, but an astounding amount for an online specific game nonetheless…
within the first 24 hours*
Did this beat Treyarch for release numbers on BlackOps?
Fantastic stuff!
Congrats to the team at Blizzard on a great job!