One year ago today, World of Warcraft was released in North America, Australia, and New Zealand.

That opens WoW Lead Producer Shane Dabiri's remarks on the one-year anniversary of the launch of World of Warcraft. Dabiri goes on to thank the community and briefly touch upon upcoming content, including the 1.9 patch and the Burning Crusade expansion.

If you're interested in seeing a timeline of the past year's events, Blizzard has provided one. It's been a fun year for me in the game -- I've tallied more than 40,000 kills of Alliance players and loved every minute of it. Now if only they would stay dead....

So happy birthday World of Warcraft! Let's blow out the candle on that birthday cake -- er, not you dwarves -- no one wants dwarf  slobber on their cake. Ssh, you'll still get a piece.