Computer Games - First, World of Warcraft has had perhaps the biggest launch in terms of initial sales than any other US developed MMORPG. Did the sales figures exceed Blizzard's own internal expectations for its release?

Shane Dabiri - Well, we weren’t necessarily surprised at the number of people who wanted to play World of Warcraft. What we were surprised at was how quickly it happened. Our internal projections were that we would probably see over 500,000 accounts creations and 200,000 peak concurrency, but only after a year of slow steady growth. Instead, as we all know now, that happened after just a few weeks. We’re very grateful and despite our faith in our game, still a little surprised at the rapid adoption of World of Warcraft. But as for being taken completely by surprise, we weren’t. We’re just surprised it only took three months instead of the 12+ months we thought it would take.