Orange County Register

Watch the video of the event HERE.

Joe Simmons, a blog contributor, is out in Anaheim at the Fry’s Electronics where the ‘World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King” goes on sale at midnight. It’s the second expansion to the massively popular online game from Irvine developers at Blizzard Entertainment. Since Blizzard is based in O.C., Anaheim is the place to be tonight because a ton of Blizzard artists, developers and employees will be waiting inside the store to sign autographs for fans. Here’s Joe’s latest report at around 10:30 p.m.:  

The line is insanely long. Easily over a thousand people. It wraps all the way around the building, goes through the back alley and all the way down the chain link fence. And then it goes down the entire parking lot.

Speaking of parking, the parking isn’t too bad. I don’t know what the deal is, whether people are being dropped off. In fact, I’m standing in three parking spots right now.

(Photo by blog contributor Ryan Gallagher)

One thing I did learn is that if you bought a pre-release at Fry’s, you get it tomorrow. You can’t get it tonight. It’s first come, first serve tonight, manager Bob told me. He wouldn’t elaborate. All he would say is, “We have good line control and it’s not the first time we’ve done this.” 

I expect them to run out of games.  Since this is a global launch, I’m pretty sure they’re going to break -million in sales by tomorrow night. 

Oh, there are freebies. There’s also some outsiders here. The KROQ van is here and being the obnoxious KROQ dudes. They’re shouting stuff at the people in line like, ‘Do you have a girlfriend.” There’s also a Hot Dog on a Stick mobile here. It’s getting a steady stream of customers, but no long lines for hot dogs. On a stick.

It’s kind of nutty. I feel like I’m at a county fair. The smell of hot dogs doesn’t help.

They didn’t have any Port-A-Potties here last night, which made it uncomfortable for the guys who were here since yesterday. They told me that they just had to go out into the street. Tonight, there are 14 Port-a-potties. 

I’m heading in for an interview with Rob Pardo, Blizzard’s executive vice president of game design, and then we start the count down to midnight. Tick tock.

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