There's something magical about that aggressive opening chord of Diablo. It's probably fair to say that no sound was more burned into the minds of late-90s PC gamers than those first few gothic guitar strums.

That music is evocative of late-night looting and hushed duping; of our old friends The Butcher, and his pal King Leoric; of Fallen Ones, and Godly Plates of the Whale, and a peg-legged jerk named Wirt.

But it's also evocative of an entire era, of a time when games were exceeding our expectations in leaps and bounds. A time when the art form was just becoming capable of wonders like online multiplayer and CD-quality sound, but still felt personal, hand-crafted, intimate.

Matt Uelmen is a product of that era. Rather than attempting to mimic a marketable Hollywood ideal, his music is trademarked by live recordings and eclectic instrumentation. He's a humble, multi-talented guy, who can both conjure sound effects out of thin digital air and compose symphonic scores by hand.

I originally set out to run a tribute to the Diablo soundtracks in 2007... Read more

World of Warcraft has netted 8.6 million sales across its various releases, expansion packs and bundles from US retail, according to NPD data provided to Gamasutra.

The figure includes the base edition of World of Warcraft, the Collector's Edition, its two expansions The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, and Battle Chest bundle.

Dabbling in speculation and presuming an average selling price of $30, Gamasutra calculates that the Blizzard MMORPG's retail sales could come to a grand $258 million.

Blizzard won't be done with World of Warcraft expansion packs after the release of the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King. It won't even be done adding landmass to the 10-million-player-strong MMO, according to Wrath of the Lich King designer Tom Chilton.

"We actually already have ideas on how we're going to expand on that in the future," Chilton said to Videogaming247. "There are still areas of the game that we've talked about and set up story-wise that we haven't revealed yet. So there's definitely more to go," he added.

Wrath of the Lich King, currently in an exclusive beta, adds the continent of Northrend to the virtual world and opens to the public later this year.