WOW: Burning Crusade to Launch January 16

Blizzard Entertainment has announced its World of Warcraft expansion The Burning Crusade will go on sale at midnight, January 16 with special in-store midnight events.

World of Warcraft publisher Blizzard Entertainment has announced its expansion pack for its popular World of Warcraft MMORPG game, The Burning Crusade, will go on sale at midnight, January 16, 2007. Although the company is still vague about pricing, the standard edition is expected to carry prices around $40, while a special collectors edition will reportedly run around $250.

To celebrate the release, Blizzard’s development team will be onhand to sign copies of the game at four special midnight events in the Los Angeles area, three at Fry’s outlets and one at the Universal Citywalk Gamestop/EB Games location.

The Burning Crusade is Blizzard’s first major expansion of to the World of Warcraft universe, which the company claims is currently played by more than 8 million people worldwide. Blizzard initially intended to publish the addition at the end of 2006 in time for the end-of-year holiday season, but was forced to push back the release to put the final spit-and-polish on the expansion. Blizzard has released a patch to support the new content.