WOW nabs millionth European customer

MMORPG continues to chalk up impressive number of global subscribers; worldwide tally now at more than 5.5 million.

Earth is quickly becoming, quite literally, a world of Warcraft. Blizzard's popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game, 2004's World of Warcraft, is still racking up impressive numbers. The Irvine, California-based developer today announced that its European subscription base has surpassed 1 million, bringing the total number of global players to more than 5.5 million.

The effort required to bring WoW to European audiences is greater than in other regions, such as North America. WoW is published in Europe in three different languages--French, German, and English. As such, Blizzard's European headquarters have grown greatly, becoming the second largest Blizzard office on the map.

World of Warcraft was debuted in North America on November 23, 2004. The game's first expansion, The Burning Crusade, is due in stores sometime this year.

46 Comments

  • BelmontMaster

    Posted Mar 1, 2006 1:45 pm PT

    Anyone who seriously want to pay money to play a game each month has no life. Im sticking with the best out there and thats Guild Wars, and to all those previous to me, its better than WoW, yeah thats right better. Plus Warcraft took a year to hit 1 million while GW took 5 months, eat that Blizzard!

  • deleteuser

    Posted Jan 30, 2006 12:05 pm PT

    The topic should read: "WOW nabs millionth European without a life". (Just an opinion, nobody be ofended.)

  • jetsetyoyo

    Posted Jan 25, 2006 6:10 pm PT

    thats $990,000,000/year!!!

  • Eggchan

    Posted Jan 23, 2006 10:51 am PT

    Woo go Blizzard

  • doosuldorf

    Posted Jan 21, 2006 10:08 am PT

    WoW ruins lives, it killed my marriage and my kid.
    Be Cool stay in school.

  • deadone1000

    Posted Jan 21, 2006 7:06 am PT

    LOL, WOW isa great game.... Although i have to say that if you get addicted to that game then its your own damn fault and you obviously hav no innner strength to say no to anything..... I bought that game n played the first free month constantly
    i then bought another 30 days in which i moderated how much i played it
    its a really really good game.... but playing it for like 2 3 hours a day will let you acive bout just as muchaas playing it for i donoo 5 or 6
    i mean u get double experince n that does help you level up quiecker... alot!!!
    all in all i have to say that the players are the only ones responsible for playing it 24/7

  • jaefrmbk2k

    Posted Jan 20, 2006 1:50 pm PT

    piracy=good for everybody?

  • chrisdojo

    Posted Jan 20, 2006 10:49 am PT

    dang.....bliz has the $$$ rolling in

  • aintraba

    Posted Jan 20, 2006 10:12 am PT

    To all you people trying to say guild wars is better than wow. Ummm Look at the numbers. 5.5 million users cant be wrong. I think guild war has maybe 200k users tops

  • Dahok

    Posted Jan 20, 2006 8:58 am PT

    This is Vorce im a Tauren all fellow Tauren's or fellow warriors feel free to shout to me if you on Eredar I

  • ufopuller

    Posted Jan 20, 2006 8:00 am PT

    WOW - opening more doors

  • Darthexodus

    Posted Jan 20, 2006 7:59 am PT

    Terminus i didnt think that wow actually let you run your own private server unless its hacked otherwise you wouldnt have to pay blizz for using wow. Not to mention wow is about $10 ontop of your $50 odd dollers that you pay for you internet. Both games are great in differant ways WoW demands more of your time though to get the most out of it.

  • razzy1

    Posted Jan 20, 2006 2:57 am PT

    Damn thats a lot of people in their parents basements!

  • onimushaiw

    Posted Jan 20, 2006 1:42 am PT

    I just got since 3 weeks and i can't stop playin , before that I tried Guild Wars and it's boring, the graphics much better but you can't get into the water to swim and climb up to almost everything that's a joke

  • terminus

    Posted Jan 20, 2006 12:58 am PT

    Everyone keeps saying Guildwars is free, for me, I have to spend $50.00 for cable, 44.00 for broadband, which comes to 99.00...to play guild wars. It's not free.....I was on the guild war wagon a couple years before its release, and praised it's game play. I didn't give wow a chance, till I played with my own private server, once I started seeing the game for what it is, I then realized what an amazing game wow is. Getting a chance to see the size and complexity of it, I went back to the retail game....I don't play it all the time....but that's me, I'm still stuck on JO....lol

  • dslyderink

    Posted Jan 19, 2006 9:29 pm PT

    Hehe Floering - that's why your still playing Guild Wars - because if you picked up WoW you'd switch straight away.

  • forever_blank

    Posted Jan 19, 2006 9:09 pm PT

    This is obviously a very good game

  • GOLIATHtheGREAT

    Posted Jan 19, 2006 8:22 pm PT

    well ummmmmmmm i play FFXI and WOW

  • OmegaBob

    Posted Jan 19, 2006 7:00 pm PT

    GW is NOT a MMO. Basically, Its Diablo 2 with an animated chat room and PvP thrown into the mix. It should not be compared to WoW.

    That being said, I own both GW and WoW and like them both.

  • secily

    Posted Jan 19, 2006 6:45 pm PT

    now use that money to put some good employees to good use.

  • Alter_Echo

    Posted Jan 19, 2006 5:44 pm PT

    As im typing this blizzard is making approx 80 million per month off of active paying accounts. Thats almost 1 BILLION dollars per year. Someone explain to me why with 1billion dollars i am still waiting 2+ hrs every day when i get home from work to log in only to be lagged with 10 second instant cast delay and constant disconnects. What are they spending it on? cheeseburgers and coca cola? Explain that to me with completely unbiased un-fanboyish responses and you all get a cookie. At some point someone needed to say, " Hey ummm our servers are crapping out on a daily basis and like even when we make new servers they are full, lagged and in queue within a day or 2 of coming online" "maybe we should like ....uhhh i dunno...STOP F*ING SELLING MORE COPIES OF THE GAME"

    Just get erked to no end when i see news stories and acclaimed postings about how successfull the game is when everyone forgets to mention that the massive amount of uncontrolled finacial success means the game is all screwed up

  • LightSoulBlue

    Posted Jan 19, 2006 5:37 pm PT

    I played the trial and didn't see all the hype, I still like Final Fantasy beter. Guild Wars, haven't played it.

  • mrimkeit

    Posted Jan 19, 2006 5:34 pm PT

    "Resistance is Futile!"

  • PossibleGamer

    Posted Jan 19, 2006 5:34 pm PT

    Guild Wars is a great game that is easy to get into and you can play whenever you have time, either for short or long periods. And it's free!

  • jakeboudville

    Posted Jan 19, 2006 5:15 pm PT

    so many players on wow

  • Oni

    Posted Jan 19, 2006 4:28 pm PT

    No wonder WoW appeals to so many people, it's refined the MMO experience so that even vidiots and nintardo fan dorks can pick it up and grind. My brother (who averages an F + in school) is awesome at WoW. lol

  • MWRHC

    Posted Jan 19, 2006 4:16 pm PT

    If your bored with gaming get wow.

  • john_cusack

    Posted Jan 19, 2006 4:01 pm PT

    ive lost over 1000+ hours of my life to wow.iI had to stop playing it as i found out i had no real life left outside of the game lol.

  • ChaosHavok

    Posted Jan 19, 2006 3:34 pm PT

    WoW was great for a few months. It is far and away the best current-gen MMORPG out there. However, Guild Wars is more revolutionary, and I think, hopefully will model the path MMORPGs are to take in the future.

  • NeoJedi

    Posted Jan 19, 2006 3:32 pm PT

    Man, that's alot of people... gonna have to rename Earth Azeroth soon...

  • fans100_2000

    Posted Jan 19, 2006 3:03 pm PT

    wow and guildwars each r gr8 games in a league of their own, but i would still prefer wow over guildwars

  • mrimkeit

    Posted Jan 19, 2006 2:43 pm PT

    The WoW monster swallows a million more minds. Will it ever end? Will everyone in the world play WoW eventually? 'We are Blizzard, resistance is futile. Your mind will be assimilated into the WoW collective and your personality added to our own. Resistence is futile."

  • Kahones

    Posted Jan 19, 2006 2:35 pm PT

    Guild Wars > WoW

  • sigma8

    Posted Jan 19, 2006 2:15 pm PT

    Death, if there is one game I would be playing if it wasn't WoW right now, it would be guild wars. It doesn't really have a MMO feel...it's more like phantasy star online-ish, where you meet people in lobbies and do party stuff. But its combat is great, graphics are amazing, and given how great it looks, the game performs incredibly. I picked it up at xmas, and while I don't play it a ton due to WoW, I do not regret it.

  • Maximus43

    Posted Jan 19, 2006 2:14 pm PT

    Yeah, I used to play Guild Wars too. I bought it the day it came out. But after a while, I got bored and decided to see what all the fuss was about with WoW. I've been playing non-stop ever since. In my opinion, nothing compares to WoW at all, it's totally in a league of it's own. If you can make the payments, which aren't that bad, you should definitely start playing WoW. It's amazingly addictive.

  • sigma8

    Posted Jan 19, 2006 2:13 pm PT

    WoW actually gets to its best after a few months, if you can get into a good guild that is doing the end-game raids. Actually, the early- and mid- game is just as good. I should say it "gets fresh again".

  • death919

    Posted Jan 19, 2006 2:09 pm PT

    floering, Guild Wars probibly is a good game, but in all honesty, it probibly doesn't even come close to World Of Warcraft. WoW is worth the monthly fee! Runescape doesn't require a monthly fee, and I thought Runescape was great when I use to play it, but then I switched to WoW and saw what the word AWESUM really means!

  • floering

    Posted Jan 19, 2006 1:52 pm PT

    I don't know about you, but I really enjoy playing Guild Wars, and there is no monthly fee! I have never played WoW, nor do I intend to.

  • Limp144

    Posted Jan 19, 2006 1:49 pm PT

    lol my friend got wow like two days ago...maybe he was the 1000000th member...anyway good on them...im just looking forward to RF online...should be awesome!

  • Hybrid094

    Posted Jan 19, 2006 1:44 pm PT

    They deserve it with the amount of time they speant developing that damn game.

  • decebal

    Posted Jan 19, 2006 1:38 pm PT

    What i meant is... that there aren't any good MMORPGs out there.

  • decebal

    Posted Jan 19, 2006 1:37 pm PT

    Well the truth is... there isn't much of a competition.

  • tomservo51

    Posted Jan 19, 2006 1:34 pm PT

    WoW! Thats what? 5.5 million X $15 a month for Blizzard?! So that is over 82 million dollars a month for them? Nice

  • Sturm08

    Posted Jan 19, 2006 1:31 pm PT

    WoW's a great game, but I can't imagine playing it for more than a few months. If people enjoy it still, awesome for them.

  • spinoff

    Posted Jan 19, 2006 1:22 pm PT

    PC gaming isn't dying, we're all just too busy playing WoW to buy anything new. :'(

  • nuck44

    Posted Jan 19, 2006 1:13 pm PT

    Pretty good sales!

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