The latest World of Warcraft expansion sold 3.3 million copies in its first day, lifting the game's global subscriber base passed 10 million.

Were you one of the players hammering at the World of Warcraft servers during the launch of Warlords of Draenor last week? According to Blizzard, you definitely were not alone.

In its latest press-release, Blizzard Entertainment states that over 3.3 million copies of WoW's latest expansion were sold within the first 24-hours of the game's availability, bringing the global subscriber base passed 10 million across all major regions. CEO and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment, Mike Morhaime, had this to say regarding the new expansion.

“We’re thrilled that so many players jumped in to play Warlords of Draenor on day one and are having a great time with the new content. We poured a lot of hard work and passion into this expansion, and we appreciate all the kind words from players and the overwhelming support they continue to show for World of Warcraft.”

Despite the overall positive reception of this latest World of Warcraft expansion, Warlords did suffer from some technical difficulties in its first week of release–leaving many players with queue times of several hours or simply unable to log in to the game at all. While things aren't completely fixed, they seem to be going a lot smoother as of today due to several server and tech improvements made by the company. Additionally, Blizzard has openly acknowledged the issues and has offered five days of free game time to all subscribers across the Americas, Oceania and Europe, as long as they were subscribed to the game as of Friday, November 14th.

World of Warcraft Executive Producer, J. Allen Brack, appologized for the launch issues and shared his appreciation of the community's support.

"WoW Community:

I know how much everyone was looking forward to this expansion, and once you were able to get in and start having fun, all the comments I've seen indicate that this is one of our best yet. But the quality of the content does not excuse the subpar launch experience we delivered, and I apologize for that.

The first two days of the expansion were not a great experience, with many of you facing high queues or significant gameplay problems. We worked around the clock to tackle the demand issues and technical challenges, and fortunately things started looking better on Saturday. While millions of you were able to get in and play over the weekend, with many already reaching level 100, others still ran into very lengthy queues, particularly on the highest-population realms.

To help address this, we’ve expanded the new instancing tech we used to improve queues on Saturday and we’re continuing the process of applying that to raise the capacity of all realms again. This will result in approximately double the prelaunch capacity on each realm, which should greatly reduce queue times for most realms if not eliminate queues altogether.

In recognition of the difficulties so many of you ran into when trying to play over the first few days, we're adding five days’ worth of extra time to every subscription in the Americas, Oceania, and Europe that was active as of Friday, November 14. Things are already in a much better place than they were going into the weekend, so I hope you’ll now be able to focus on having a ton of fun with this expansion.

I also hope you'll accept my apology and keep your faith in us. The support voiced by many of you as we worked through the challenges was immensely appreciated. We're extremely grateful to be part of such a passionate community. We love World of Warcraft, and we're very proud of this expansion, so stumbling out of the gates like this was very disappointing for all of us.

On behalf of the World of Warcraft development team, as well as everyone at Blizzard, thank you all again for your patience and understanding.

See you in Draenor."

If you're one of the many people playing Warlords of Draenor, be sure to share your experiences and thoughts with us in the comments below! For more World of Warcraft news, updates and information, keep it locked to ZAM and Wowhead.

Corey "Cyglaive" Jenkins

Follow Corey on Twitter @Cyglaive