Going to the midnight launch of World of Warcraft : The Burning Crusade expansion pack I expected to see one or two nuts (besides the one accompanying me) and a lot of geeks. What I didn’t expect to find was a pretty accurate demographic spread of Southern California ; ranging from dyed in the wool geeks to what one less politically correct than I might term "hot chicks". Even a square-jawed security guard sidled up to me at the top of the line to ask me if I played. He’s a level 60 mage.

We’ve seen a lot of crazy lines for launches recently, what with the PS3 and Wii launching at the end of 2006 ; but I didn’t expect to find people who had been queuing up since 6.30am for a videogame, easier to mass manufacture than a console as it is. Still, if ever there was a living example of how far video gaming has progressed in terms of the demographic it reaches - everyone, basically - it was this World of Warcrack line.

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