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World of Warcraft surpasses 10 million players worldwide

As a true testament of the potential of the PC gaming mass market, Blizzard today announced another amazing milestone in the continuing popularity of the company’s insanely popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game. World of Warcraft now has more than 10 million subscribers worldwide – more than 2 million subscribers in Europe, more than 2.5 million in North America, and approximately 5.5 million in Asia.

"It's very gratifying to see gamers around the world continuing to show such enthusiasm and support for World of Warcraft," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "We're always pleased to welcome new players to the game, and we're looking forward to sharing the next major content update with the entire community in the months ahead."

Aside from World of Warcraft’s apparent competence at delivering the MMO experience, part of its success stems from its worldwide availability. World of Warcraft is currently supported in North America, Europe, China, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. Furthermore, the game is currently available in seven languages, with a Russian version in development and scheduled for release later this year.

Even though World of Warcraft has been on the market since 2004, it shows little signs of slowing down. Blizzard is currently working on the game’s second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King.

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At what point
By GhandiInstinct on 1/22/2008 7:27:07 PM , Rating: 2
Will Blizzard make this game free and just do in-game ads?

10 million fricken users, largest base in the world.

This game is no where near the $15/month.

Everything is unbalanced and the graphics look like dog carp.




RE: At what point
By Warren21 on 1/22/2008 7:29:16 PM , Rating: 5
I think it's more along the lines of catfish.


RE: At what point
By Fenixgoon on 1/22/2008 7:31:09 PM , Rating: 5
trout! =D

that said, WoW may not have godly graphics, but its art direction is superb.


RE: At what point
By Schadenfroh on 1/22/2008 7:32:38 PM , Rating: 5
They apparently do not have much of a problem keeping their existing user base paying the industry standard (for MMOs) $15 a month. I doubt they will make it free to play anytime soon.


RE: At what point
By headbox on 1/23/08, Rating: 0
RE: At what point
By Nik00117 on 1/23/2008 4:21:56 PM , Rating: 2
I agree, I mean if you think about each one of those users paid for the game and ad additonal 15 a month. Right now they are racking in 150,000,000 a month. They'd be morons to make it for free, a 5 dollar price drop would do nothing either.

I think this is because the gaming industry is getting older, I mean i'm to the point where I no longer have to ask my folks for money to fund my hobby, and I think the industry is seeing alot of poeple willing to shell out more nowadays since more of them are postions to where they can.


RE: At what point
By DontAskMe on 1/22/2008 7:35:22 PM , Rating: 5
WoW! All those people with no lives!!
like me


RE: At what point
By EODetroit on 1/23/2008 9:22:13 AM , Rating: 2
I have two accounts, you have twice the life I do! WTB more stamina!


RE: At what point
By GhandiInstinct on 1/22/2008 7:35:40 PM , Rating: 3
I meant to say "worth $15/month"

DAILYTECH YOU CAN AFFORD TO IMPLEMENT AN EDIT BUTTON I KNOW YOU CAN!


RE: At what point
By daftrok on 1/22/2008 9:57:36 PM , Rating: 2
I agree to an extent. Yes there should be an edit feature but it should be limited. If you make an error, you should be able to edit it within 10 minutes of posting. If you got a -1 rating for saying something dumb and you see that an hour later you should not have any right to edit it because at that point you are just trying to undo what you wrote entirely. That's why its important to read before you post.


RE: At what point
By WileCoyote on 1/23/2008 12:46:50 AM , Rating: 3
There is an edit button except it's called "Preview"

If they changed the name of it to EDIT then people would stop complaining.


RE: At what point
By BladeVenom on 1/23/2008 4:27:57 AM , Rating: 5
Then people would complain that there's no preview button.


RE: At what point
By aharris on 1/23/2008 10:22:07 AM , Rating: 2
I actually had a double post on this page. Submitted once, showed up twice.

WTB Edit Button.


RE: At what point
By OblivionMage on 1/22/2008 8:23:49 PM , Rating: 5
The graphics are purposely not as high quality as, say, Crysis for example, but the whole point is for the game to be very scalable and playable on slightly older machines. Not all people buy new, top-end systems every 2-3 years, and WoW came out in 2004, and considering they cannot really say "Oh, sorry, you computer can't play our game anymore after our latest graphics patch", they can't upgrade the graphics very much. TBC included some new shaders and updates textures, and the Wrath of the Lich King will add another array of new graphical enhancements.

If you think that it does not look pretty enough, then simply don't play it. The game is not designed to be eyecandy, it is designed to be an MMORPG that focuses around multiplayer systems more then graphics.

I will admit that the Role-Playing servers are very spammed full of idiots and that the storyline has ground to an unrealistic halt, but the games quality is not really diminished that much by such as thing.

As for inbalance, I agree that Blizzard changes around alot of things as per the frequent patches, but if you look at tournement/high-end play, all classes have their advantages. I would gladly pay 15$ a month for the very good servers, call support, in-game support, and forums.

Saying that, I don't even like the game all that much, I just think that you have to back up your claims a little bit, and don't throw in "Bad graphics zomg!", when the game is four years old.


RE: At what point
By EODetroit on 1/23/2008 9:26:13 AM , Rating: 2
Except hunters and shamans have no role in high end arenas.

But yeah, Everquest could have had these kind of numbers too, there was no serious competition to EQ pre-WoW. But unfortunately, EQ sucked far too much and failed to get a tenth of what WoW now has despite being the only game worth a damn in town.


RE: At what point
By LeftSide on 1/22/2008 8:37:23 PM , Rating: 2
10 mil x $15 = 150 million dollars a month. $150,000,000 X 12 months = $1,800,000,000 a year!

I need to invest in blizzard.


RE: At what point
By OblivionMage on 1/22/2008 8:47:16 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
I need to invest in blizzard.

You mean Vivendi, right? And their profit is a great deal lower then that, I highly doubt that internet cafe's in China charge 15$ per account, and they have very large server maintenance costs and tech support costs. Saying that, they still do pull in a TON of money.


RE: At what point
By StevoLincolnite on 1/23/2008 7:39:36 AM , Rating: 2
Don't forget the sale of the Discs also, but I'm pretty sure they are still making a killing compared to what they did with StarCraft and Diablo 2 though, they still have those servers up and running - which is an added cost. (Plus they still make updates for said games)

Rock on Blizzard! At least we can rely on patches and multi-player support for 10+ years after the game is released!


RE: At what point
By kinnoch on 1/22/2008 9:14:31 PM , Rating: 2
Half of the customers are in Asia and those countries don't get charged $15/mo. I don't know the actual fee, but blizzard had mentioned that its lower (correct me if i'm wrong).

But yah they are bringing in bank. Why do you think its Blizzard Activision and not Vivindi Activision? :P


RE: At what point
By themadmilkman on 1/22/2008 11:18:20 PM , Rating: 2
They pay by the hour.


RE: At what point
By epsilonparadox on 1/22/2008 11:25:52 PM , Rating: 3
Its actually activision blizzard.


RE: At what point
By jonmcc33 on 1/23/2008 2:21:57 AM , Rating: 2
And most MMO freaks (I mean fans) will say that's all for "server maintenance".