World of Warcraft online role-playing game's 11.5 million subscribers to be targeted with quarterly subscription-only title

Future Publishing is launching a lavish "coffee-table" magazine simultaneously in four languages for the phenomenally successful online role-playing game World of Warcraft.

World of Warcraft: The Magazine will be a 148-page subscription-only title, carrying no advertising.

FuturePlus, the company's contract publishing division, will produce the magazine under an arrangement with Blizzard Entertainment, which created the online game in 2004.

World of Warcraft: The Magazine

World of Warcraft has 11.5 million subscribers globally, each paying a monthly fee to join role-playing adventures in a fantasy world that has similarities to the Lord of the Rings series and the Dungeons & Dragons games.

FuturePlus promise a beautifully crafted magazine that will provide readers with information about the game's complicated backstory and history.

The magazine will publish four times a year with the print run determined by the number of subscribers, who will be able to sign up through a website, worldofwarcraftthemagazine.com that goes live at 5pm today.

Dan Amrich, a senior editor of the Official Xbox magazine, will be editor-in-chief. FuturePlus has hired Ryan Vulk, a designer at Wired, as art director.

"It is halfway between a coffee-table book and a magazine," said the FuturePlus international director, John Gower. "It's all about exclusivity – we feel that we don't want to dilute the game for the magazine."

World of Warcraft: The Magazine will cost £29.95 for four issues in Britain, €34.95 in Europe and $39.95 in the US and the rest of the world.

The magazine will publish simultaneously in English for the US and UK markets and also in French, German and Spanish. The first issue will be delivered to subscribers in about two months.

Blizzard Entertainment will formerly unveil the magazine at the BlizzCon 2009 convention on Friday and Saturday in Anaheim, California.

The FuturePlus editorial director, Julian Rignall, said World of Warcraft's online world was suited to a print magazine. "We believe that people still intrinsically like the look and feel of magazines," Rignall added.

He said subscribers would get great benefit from the magazine despite the plethora of information about the game on websites. "You can have that in your lap while you are playing the game," he added. "It's hard to look that up on a website when you are trying to fight some dragon with 25 other people."

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