World of Warcraft hits 10 million players
by Michael Zenke 
Jan 22nd 2008 at 1:30PM
Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Bugs, Culture, Economy, Events, real-world, Expansions, MMO industry, News items
Blizzard has announced that the little game that could has hit another big, round number: they are now claiming 10 million World of Warcraft players globally. Gamasutra is reporting that WoW has about 2 million subscribers in Europe, about 2.5 million in North America, and approximately 5.5 million in Asia.
They've also taken the step of qualifying what they mean when they say 'subscriber', something critics have used as a knock against their impressive subscriber numbers in the past due to the way that accounts are used in Korea and China. A subscriber, according to Blizzard, is someone who has "paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access."
That number notably doesn't count promo subscriptions, expired accounts, canceled subscriptions, or unused prepaid cards. They are counting 'PC Bang' players by considering an account active if it has been used within the last 30 days. Subscribers that connect to the game under licensees like The9 are counted under the same guidelines.
It's a little staggering to consider the sheer number of people playing this game now. When I started playing these games 50,000 people in one world was a big deal; Lineage, EQ, and FFXI were big-time by being at or over 500,000 people. Now with titles like WoW, Gaia Online, MapleStory, and even Habbo Hotel demolishing the old concept of a Massive world, it's ... more than a little bit exciting.
I also think it's time that people just stop comparing WoW to other US-developed MMOs. People keep talking about a "WoW Killer", but ... 10 MILLION people, people. World of Warcraft isn't a game, it's a city. It makes as much sense to compare WoW to Dungeons and Dragons Online as it does to compare Scrabble with Chicago. That's just my opinion ... what do you think? Will there be a "WoW Killer" someday?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Bill G said on 7:41PM 1-23-2008
There has been little growth in WoW numbers in the US [2.5m] and Europe [2m] in a while, my guess is that all net growth was from Asia in the last year or so.
I think WoW can keep growing overall by adding new countries/languages for quite some time, but that it has peaked in the US barring some really unusual event.
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Max said on 10:43PM 1-23-2008
MMOs are no different than any other industry. No one pwns forever. Just ask Ford.
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MassivelyFTW said on 12:46PM 1-25-2008
When the Russian servers are created, could easily pass 15million.
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M1tt3ns said on 10:10PM 1-25-2008
I do hope there will be a WoW-killer someday and I hope it comes sooner rather than later. For a game that offensive to actual fans of the setting I'm amazed it even got off the ground.
A pity that game exists and condemns other, much better, much more original games to death by the sheer apathy of it's players towards trying anything new.
In short, WoW sucks.
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Green Armadillo said on 1:38PM 1-22-2008
You never know when someone will generate a new form of Scrabble that kills Chicago. ;)
But seriously, WoW isn't going to die a sudden and abrupt death with those kinds of numbers. I just hope that they do eventually make a WoW 2, cause it would be nice to see the game's plot actually advance someday, and not have to figure out what to do with 120 talent points.
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Ghen said on 3:01PM 1-22-2008
I'd like to see the number of accounts from Asia that play on US servers.
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Coherent said on 3:20PM 1-22-2008
Sure there will be a WoW killer someday. It just takes lots and lots of money, total focus and dedication and an experienced creative culture that knows how to build fun stuff.
That said, Blizzard is the only proven hitmaker here, so a challenger will have a pretty high bar to hurdle. But it can be done, and sooner or later, it will be done (because of the profit potential of marketing synergy, which so far Blizzard has mostly neglected).
Big media companies know how to make money off of any tentpole event - they've been doing it for years off of movies. Blizzard is a newbie at the game, and they're learning fast. But there are any number of older companies (Disney, etc) who are old pros at this and could potentially beat them easily in the dollars department.
So with that kind of dollar upside, you know that sooner or later someone will ante up the kind of money and creative freedom that it will take to put Blizzard on notice.
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Joshua said on 4:20PM 1-22-2008
I don't believe there is going to be a WoW killer exactly, but hopefully more games in the future that draw in that kind of crowd, and are played by so many different types of people. It's not that WoW is the most amazing game ever (though to some people it may be), it's that the game is so user accessible to the gaming aliens in our society, it brings in those who may otherwise never play a game other than Pong.
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Nathan said on 4:47PM 1-22-2008
The only thing that is going to kill WoW is World War 3 when every country gets turned into sheets of glass.
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Ghen said on 10:06PM 1-22-2008
There won't be a WoW killer... Nothing's killed Everquest yet. The original one is still going strong.
It just gets more people playing MMOs in general.
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Durinthal said on 12:05AM 1-23-2008
Sure, there's a lot of people playing the same game.. but they're not in the same *world*. How many different servers are there, anyway, and what's the peak population for one?
One of the things that I love about EVE is that it's one single shard, distributed though it may be. If someone badmouths you on the forum, you can try to hunt them down in-game, no matter who or where they are.
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Bekah said on 2:35AM 1-23-2008
2.5 million players in N. America = the population of Nevada.
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/32000.html
I think it's safe to say that if something can "kill" WoW- it'll have to be groundbreaking.
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quatre said on 5:43AM 1-23-2008
WoW is an addiction that never goes away.
I've quit and started up again like 20 times now.
I currently am paying 2 subscriptions for my 2 accounts and I play WoW like 3 hours a week.
By the end of those 3 hours I get sick of the game and dont wanna play anymore... but 6 days later it's like a craving for a cigarette...
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