The wide World of Warcraft broadened its horizons a little farther today with the massively multiplayer online role-playing game's official launch in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. After more than 800,000 gamers participated in the beta-testing period for Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau, players can now buy the boxed game at retail or download it directly from the official Taiwanese Web site. A number of rate plans are available, but players may purchase unlimited access to the game for 112.5 HKD (about $14.50) per month.

　　This launch comes shortly after the game surpassed the 4.5 million worldwide customer milestone, and a day after Blizzard launched six new realms to accommodate the growing online community. Four of the new realms are Azshara (player vs. player), Agamaggan (player vs. player), Lightninghoof (role-playing player vs. player), and Malfurion (player-vs.-environment). The other two new servers, Frostmourne and Khaz'goroth, have world clocks set to Melbourne's time zone (GMT +11) and are intended for use by players in Australia and New Zealand. Frostmourne is a player-vs.-player server, while Khaz'goroth is player vs. environment.