10 million WOWed

Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft reaches deca-million milestone; 2.5M NA, 2M Europe, 5.5M Asia users.

Ever since being launched by Blizzard Entertainment at the tail end of 2004, the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft has proven monumentally popular. Its original installment set global sales records upon launch, selling 240,000 units in its first 24 hours. That number was reproduced tenfold with its first expansion, The Burning Crusade, which sold 2.4 million copies in its first day on the market.

With Vivendi reporting 9.3 million global subscribers as of mid-November, and the recent launch of The Burning Crusade in China, it comes as no great shock that World of Warcraft has reached the 10 million subscriber milestone. Breaking down its subscriber base today, Blizzard claims to have acquired more than 2.5 million North American and 2 million European players, with another 5.5 million Azerothians plugging in from Asia. WOW's second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, is expected to arrive later this year for the PC and Mac.

WOW is currently available in North America, Europe, China, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau, with a Russian version expected to launch later this year. Blizzard noted that the term subscriber encompasses those who have paid a subscription fee, have an active prepaid WOW card, are within their first free month of game access after purchasing the game, or have logged into the game from an Internet cafe within the last 30 days. The tally does not include expired or canceled subscriptions, or those playing under free promotional accounts.

174 Comments

  • DivineChampion

    Posted Oct 28, 2008 6:54 pm PT

    @Shadow-909

    So says the guy with the Lich King Avatar pic.

    Anycase, Counter Strike > GW > WOW

  • Shadow-909

    Posted Feb 26, 2008 11:35 pm PT

    Guild Wars is better .... Much* better

  • wonderer

    Posted Jan 31, 2008 12:46 am PT

    Well, if their subscription statistic doesn't take into account expired or cancelled accounts than that number is not reliable at all lol!

  • parsa_v

    Posted Jan 27, 2008 6:11 am PT

    Currently,WoW is the best game.
    no doubt!

  • Sassal

    Posted Jan 25, 2008 5:30 am PT

    @stillereize

    Not to defend WoW or anything but it has actually improved since burning crusade. You no longer have to be in a guild to get good gear. You can do pvp and arena which reward more than raiding does and u dont have to listen to anyone. With arena teams you can do a 2v2, 3v3 or 5v5 and just play with friends. I do 2v2 with my friend and thats all i do 10 matches per week gets me good points to spend on armor and weapons for my character. But i do agree that most guilds are lame. The guild masters DO control your life (whats left of it) and they also make you stay on for a ridiculous amount of time just waiting for other players to get on so you can raid. Its a waste of time and really pathetic if you ask me. I remember once i stayed up 8hours from 10PM-6AM waiting for a raid, the raid lasted 1hour till everyone left. I was totally pissed off that night and after that i quit wow. I have recently come back to it, though its still life consuming, the added pvp and arena gear to the game does make for casual wow. The other things in wow do take a while to do, but if you like to play and you actually have a life then wow is the thing for you. I now play it casually but i must admit its getting really really old and fast. Anyone thinking of buying this game please note that it WILL take your life unless you limit ur time urself or put on parental controls on the world of warcraft website. Well thats my view on things, Gratz Blizz on 10 Mil, too bad most of them are gold farmers!

  • rpgfreak15

    Posted Jan 24, 2008 7:25 pm PT

    Thank god i quit this game...too many objectives to complete everyday and the dedication you have to put in this game is just incredible...i mean i was literally playing everyday 3-4 hours just raiding, and if i were to farm/do other quests and crap, i could play up to 6-8 hours no problem...without even thinking about it! Please...stop playing WoW now everyone!

  • shadow9669

    Posted Jan 24, 2008 3:14 pm PT

    ill never stop playing this game its just so amazing and i cant wait to get that deathnight

  • stillereize

    Posted Jan 24, 2008 1:48 pm PT

    I called into a radio station this morning because they were saying, "Wow a lot of people are playing Wow. Must be a good game, not just for geeks." Having had 3 accounts previously I called in to inform them what they weren't reading. Half of those subscriptions are in Asia. Why? Because of the abundance of websites that offer gold and in portions of 5,000+ for each and every server, people don't understand that there are literal sweat shops where kids are made to farm for gold. If you played wow and realize how hard it can be to make gold, how can every website offer 5,000+ gold for each and every server out there? Simple: Mass amounts of accounts used for farming gold. So the numbers are inflated I told them and yes, the game is fun, but when you factor in the time you have to spend kissing guild butt and how guilds run your lives so you can raid (god forbid you have a life and miss a raid) then it no longer becomes a game but a job. I'm sorry I already have a job. I don't need another job which I have to pay for. My third account I had a lvl 70 holy priest, pretty high tier gear, and then one day, 800-900g and said, "I'm done." And I will never play again. Ever. So I deleted her. From head to toe in front of all my guildies and said, "Goodbye." My friends offered me $100 for my account. I hated WoW so much I said sorry and threw the software away in the trash, and then celebrated. I went back to living my life. This news serves only to buffer the truth. All my friends have canceled their accounts. Game reviewers have been complaining about the low population on certain once thriving servers. If Wow just got it through their heads to decapitate guild heads (teeny HOA's if you ask me), make the game playable with single-player but with rented in game help, such as earn gold and hire your party, then everything would be great, because as it stands now, everything in WoW depends on one thing: Your guild. And every guild out there sucks. Why? Abuse of power, spamming, stabbing each other in the back over virtual items, and just plain stupid inane and incessant chatter amounting to crap. Chuck Norris? Need I say more. What was fun once is now infuriatingly frustrating to say the least. Why put such a great game in the hands of guild masters who are nothing less than geeks with no life. Sure, there are good guilds. But these guilds are far and few between and consist of friends who can look out there windows of their homes and see the need to not take the game so seriously that you become Hugo Chavez. Good luck to all you Wow fanboys that have seriously creeped me out by acting as if my character was part of their daily lives. Scary.

  • matty_sen

    Posted Jan 24, 2008 9:44 am PT

    i wonder if i sign up as an amrican i could pay £5 or $10a week instead of the scam uk price of £9 or $18, that wouldnt set me back so much
    now can you transfer chacters from user to user

  • Snaptrap

    Posted Jan 24, 2008 8:23 am PT

    I guess the demand for a more evolved online RPG has kept the NA and EU sales down. This is about the slowest and most boring online game I've ever played. No doubt Blizzard is going by total players online rather than those who actually bought the game.

  • earlthecannibal

    Posted Jan 24, 2008 7:19 am PT

    Ok all that money and they still have not updated the graphics engine?
    and if you think about how many armor and weapon variations they have its really a big joke...Im going to Blizzcon dressed as a giant cardboard cutout this year..maybe someone will see how bad the graphics really are then.

  • rockutd

    Posted Jan 24, 2008 6:59 am PT

    Omg 10 million subcribers.Very soon all the games are gonna be MMORPG and thats means we have to play every month on top of purchasing the game.

  • Snowjo

    Posted Jan 24, 2008 3:42 am PT

    theclaw135:
    "10,000,000 players x $9.99 monthly would be $99,900,000 per month.

    I don't even want to know the real amount of profit they might be getting here..." the only thing is that's very rough in the UK its £8.99 a month or $17.98 roughly and i assume that's similar all over Europe. but I cant speak for Asia's fee it could be alot higher :O.

  • IguanaBob

    Posted Jan 24, 2008 12:17 am PT

    Just quit WoW, waiting for Aion online.

  • aaron123

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 9:45 pm PT

    Played for 2 short monthly sessions. Quit both. Boring game compared to City of Heroes/Villains, but that got old after about 3 years, too.

  • DaSlyOne

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 8:32 pm PT

    Wow SDSkarface, glad to hear that you feel playing Lineage 2 is so much better because it makes people want to really hurt or kill other people. What a great marketing strategy you've stumbled upon! Jack Thompson will probably be giving you a call soon to help him out.

  • hatefull posted Jan 23, 2008 3:48 pm PT (does not meet display criteria. sign in to show)

    hatefull

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 3:48 pm PT (hide)

    entering a mmorpg with millions subscribers and seeing how 90% of them are completely jerks/freaks/ignorants/kids just makes me wonder wtf is with this world
    yey 10 millions uneducated pricks i dont want to meet ! hurray

  • ByeBye4545

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 3:32 pm PT

    blizzard=activision
    i think rappelz is a better MMORPG than WoW, maybe it's because its free or maybe because it's just better haha

  • Dryker

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 3:13 pm PT

    I've said it before... Blizzard makes ridiculous amounts of money. Unfortunately, I've never played, just somehing about playing games on a keyboard feels wrong... may be weird, but true.

  • reininop

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 1:59 pm PT

    SDSkarface

    i like lineage 2 over WoW because in lineage 2 when you die or are killed by another player you lose hours and hours of your life due to lost exp (as much as 4% of your exp bar) and its open pvp meaning anyone can be attacked by anyone else at anytime. makes playing the game very dangerous and everyones on edge because NO one wants to die. in WoW on the other hand you get killed and simply respawn and go back to where you body was..no one gets pissed off no one messages you with real life death threats, in fact you cant even understand your "enemy" in WoW because they speak another language,theres no risk theres no fear of dying.no penalty's for losing and no reason to gloat if you just killed someone in pvp its lame. killing someone in lineage 2 however evokes a completely different kind of reaction, just ask that Russian kid that beat another player to death in real life,lineage 2 is just an all around better game. WoW's endgame is all about lame ass raids and getting better gear thats good and all if you love Pve,but its not the same satisfaction you get when you kill another player on l2 you KNOW hes at the other end screaming at his monitor or completely frustrated because he now has to spend a few more hours regaining that lost exp.


    AT first I thought this was a parody, then I realized he is serious. I agree that the danger adds a heightened level of tension and excitement to games that have stiffer death penalties, but it's people like this that seem to enjoy nothing better than ganking someone so they feel frustrated and lose hours of their life. It's one thing to kill in a game to achieve something, but killing just so others hurt is reprehensible. People like this ruined most games attempts at decent open PVP.

  • Erebus

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 1:55 pm PT

    I find it amusing how most first-time MMO players make it exceedingly obvious without even realizing it. There is no denying WoW is a great game (with even greater marketing). However, I have played much better, and I will again in the future.

  • TrueIori

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 1:43 pm PT

    for the nimrods that say people who play WOW have no live , i play WOW, go to work, and go to school SO Shut up

  • TrueIori

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 1:31 pm PT

    I just sold my Soul to Wow and love every minute of it

  • matte989

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 1:28 pm PT

    That's exactly how I want a game to be SDSkarface.. I absolutely LOVE spending hours of my time to have a little 13 year old flush it down the toilet. Man, now that is fun! /sarcasm

  • Killingspree303

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 1:24 pm PT

    Wow, nice. All of Blizzards games are "Editors Choice" and "Game of the Year/month". Good job Blizzard, and keep up the good work!

  • SDSkarface

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 12:58 pm PT

    i like lineage 2 over WoW because in lineage 2 when you die or are killed by another player you lose hours and hours of your life due to lost exp (as much as 4% of your exp bar) and its open pvp meaning anyone can be attacked by anyone else at anytime. makes playing the game very dangerous and everyones on edge because NO one wants to die. in WoW on the other hand you get killed and simply respawn and go back to where you body was..no one gets pissed off no one messages you with real life death threats, in fact you cant even understand your "enemy" in WoW because they speak another language,theres no risk theres no fear of dying.no penalty's for losing and no reason to gloat if you just killed someone in pvp its lame. killing someone in lineage 2 however evokes a completely different kind of reaction, just ask that Russian kid that beat another player to death in real life,lineage 2 is just an all around better game. WoW's endgame is all about lame ass raids and getting better gear thats good and all if you love Pve,but its not the same satisfaction you get when you kill another player on l2 you KNOW hes at the other end screaming at his monitor or completely frustrated because he now has to spend a few more hours regaining that lost exp.

  • morpheusnj

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 12:14 pm PT

    HURRAY. GLORY TO WOW
    haha

  • Yao-kun

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 12:07 pm PT

    World of Starcraft... NAO!

  • Bozanimal

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 11:45 am PT

    How is it bad that a game is "too addictive." Isn't that just a sign that it is fun to play?

  • jwmakoto

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 11:05 am PT

    SnuffDaddyNZ
    But what they're not bragging about his how the latency goes up by 50ms for every 1 million new subscribers they get. It's pretty sad when a ping of 550ms is considered normal now, when 280 used to be considered high back when the game first came out (I'm connecting from NZ where typical NZ-US pings are around 250ms).

    Ow? That sucks, I'm usually sitting aroud 81ms. I am in the US, and on a US server though...

  • Red-I-Jedi

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 10:45 am PT

    @THE_PREZIDENT

    "They should see that south park episode. Blizzard helped Matt and Trey develop that episode.

  • shaddix55

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 10:23 am PT

    The only game I really enjoyed playing before WOW was Dark Age of Camelot back in its glory days

  • roryk666

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 10:11 am PT

    well done blizzard

  • Kenji_Masamune

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 10:10 am PT

    you think that with blizzard taking in at least a billion dollars a month that they' crank out more content quicker. Yes I know that running servers is expensive, however I doubt that blizzard isn't taking in at least 30% of the sub fees as pure profit. Great game though I'd admit and while I miss playing it with my friends, I also missed all of 2007.

  • mikewalsh69

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 10:03 am PT

    nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

  • jocool1

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 8:56 am PT

    I know they are just counting total accounts, but the true number of PLAYERS in Asia is around 500k, the other 5 million are bots and gold sellers!

  • jmartinez1983

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 8:28 am PT

    Surprising that "only" 2.5 million of the players are in North America. Other than that... meh. Great game, no denying, but also very easy to get too caught up in. Even when there is nothing to do, there is something to do so you could easily find something to eat up an entire day. I would still be playing it if I could manage to just mess around with Pvp, but even just playing with the PVP will lead to excessive game time. Oh well.

  • SnuffDaddyNZ

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 7:59 am PT

    But what they're not bragging about his how the latency goes up by 50ms for every 1 million new subscribers they get. It's pretty sad when a ping of 550ms is considered normal now, when 280 used to be considered high back when the game first came out (I'm connecting from NZ where typical NZ-US pings are around 250ms).

  • brianpoetzel

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 7:55 am PT

    K_M82: For this example piracy in asia doesn't have much to do with this game. I can download if for free from blizz. The subscription is where they make their money and you can't pirate that.

  • Megatuga

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 7:50 am PT

    So many people complaining about this game, it consumes your life, it will get you addicted, bla bla bla...

    There are 2 facts:

    1) This IS a great game, it deserves the praise it gets, and I know what I'm talking about. They just made a game, and no more than a game. That's why Blizzard was created for. So shut up.

    2) If you get addicted, that just means 2 things. 1st, that you don't have enough self-control and willpower, and second that it is a great game, as I have already mentioned.

    If they are in the game industry and they made such a awnsome game, and then everyone complains, then I guess they will have to try again to do a 1.5/10 game. But again, everyone will complaint because it is only 1.5/10. Human mind is just illogical...

  • Jarskaaja

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 7:02 am PT

    (Posted by Yuck_Too) "WoW is a great game for the casual / social players..."

    No, it isn't. The endgame raids (at max level) make you play a LOT.

  • Witchsight

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 6:37 am PT

    I hate WOW, but thats awesome

  • Targzissian

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 6:20 am PT

    From the way subscriber is defined above it sounds like they are just talking about current users. I wonder how many total users there have been.

    I've never played the game as I don't like the cartoony art style, or the (now) dated graphics engine, but I wish them continued success. There will have to be a sequel eventually.

    WoW, that's a big asian fan base. I guess you don't have to be one of those overly stylized Korean MMOs to do well over there. An overly stylized American MMO can also succeed in Asia.

  • MortorVos

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 6:12 am PT

    Great news... now with the funds please make DIablo 3 !! lol

  • Yuck_Too

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 5:57 am PT

    WoW is a great game for the casual / social players...

    I played for years since the 2nd push in Beta but honestly there are a lot of other great games out there and when you're paying $20 / month and several hours a day...

    ...well I was happy when I walked away. So much more to do in the world.

  • erik1116

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 5:54 am PT

    Word WoW is an awsome game.
    i just refuse to play due to the addictiveness lol.
    Basically if you play this game you wont play any other game

    a good reason not to play. i love the games i have

  • NandoSupes

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 5:24 am PT

    WoW is a a great game,I'm one of those 10 million players lol!!,Blizzard showed an example that when a game is develop ,and is develop with the attention to quality that they have,it becomes what WoW has,oh the game has to be fun and this game is,thats what games are all about.

  • TheCyberKnight

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 5:21 am PT

    No wonder they're buying up other gaming companies. They want to get as much as they can before the WoW bubble bursts and they have to rely on something else to sustain them.

  • tsb247

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 5:19 am PT

    @K_M82

    Yessir... That's where the major gold selling and farming comes from. At least, that's the word on the street.

  • Ztoky

    Posted Jan 23, 2008 5:11 am PT

    Goooo Blizzard, to only think that I'm one of 10 million that plays the game is cool ^^

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