Two Year Anniversary From Shane Dabiri

On the eve of the second anniversary of World of Warcraft in Europe, we wanted to reiterate our gratitude to our European audience for helping us achieve a record-breaking launch with The Burning Crusade. Since the launch, we’ve already begun looking ahead to the great new content in store for players.

Lead Producer Shane Dabiri's Letter:

Greetings Travelers of Azeroth and beyond,

On the eve of the second anniversary of World of Warcraft in Europe, we wanted to reiterate our gratitude to our European audience for helping us achieve a record-breaking launch with The Burning Crusade. Since the launch, we’ve already begun looking ahead to the great new content in store for players.

On February 16th, the first season of the Arena tournament will begin. Blizzard has a longstanding tradition of providing compelling multiplayer competitive gaming, dating all the way back to Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, and we are continuing that tradition with the World of Warcraft Arena System (see link below) Stay tuned to the community website for more details on the upcoming tournament.

Farther ahead are the Black Temple and its master, Illidan. In Warcraft III we watched Illidan’s transformation from controversial hero to demon. His ambition and sorcery nearly tore Azeroth apart in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. Despite his efforts, he failed to destroy the Lich King and thus earned the wrath of Kil'jaeden, leader of the Burning Legion. Badly wounded, Illidan retreated to Outland and worked to solidify his base of power there. Now, in The Burning Crusade, Illidan fights to retain his grip on Outland. We hope players will look forward to venturing into the Black Temple and facing this immensely powerful fallen hero.

Looking specifically toward the European community, we are still seeing amazing -- and ever-increasing -- activity. This enormous growth, however, has not stopped us from managing to keep queues to a minimum across all regions and realms; we will continue to employ free and paid character transfers, in addition to opening new realms as the need arises.

Speaking of the community, our fan site program now includes over 40 fan sites in more than 15 languages. Furthermore, we now have a total of 6 European most valuable posters (MVPs) who, in addition to our many players, continue to enrich and enlighten the forums with information, advice, and banter. And we recently opened the Community Events forums, making it even easier to keep track of the huge amount of weekly events organized by players and fan sites.

Once again, we thank you for your continued support of World of Warcraft over the past two years. Every day, we’re humbled by players’ enthusiasm for the game, and it fuels us to create new and exciting content. We’re looking forward to celebrating the next year with you as we all continue our adventures together in Azeroth, and now Outland as well.

Shane Dabiri,
Lead Producer.

http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/arena/index.html