WoW Draws in over 8 Million Subscribers

[Melissa Niedringhaus]

WoW Draws in over 8 Million Subscribers

Blizzard released today that World of Warcraft, Blizzard's extremely popular Massively Multiplayer Online Game, or MMOG, has over 8 million subscribers.

With the release of the new World of Warcraft expansion, The Burning Crusade next week, Blizzard expects that enormous number will grow even larger.

World of Warcraft is the most popular MMOG in the world. Since its release in 2004, it's been translated into seven languages and is available in as many countries.

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[TomBeraha]

So that's $119,600,000 a month in income. Is anyone at all surprised that everyone is trying to imitate it? Has anybody got a good idea how much Blizz spends on upkeep monthly? (Salary for employees * how many employees + bandwidth costs + development costs for expansions + so on)

 

[DrRosenRosen]

Here's what irks me about this "n Billion Burgers Served" kind of news about WoW subscribers: they must be including dormant accounts in that total. What I really would like to know is the number of *active* subscribers currently playing, not how many people have ever played.

 

[Goofonian]

Here's what irks me about this "n Billion Burgers Served" kind of news about WoW subscribers: they must be including dormant accounts in that total. What I really would like to know is the number of *active* subscribers currently playing, not how many people have ever played.

Gaming steve used to talk about this quite a bit. Turns out blizzard are very strict about what they count as a subscriber. For starters they have to be paying the monthly fee (which no sane person would do if they weren't playing) and then I think they also have to have logged in during the last fortnight or something like that. From all the reports I've heard, when blizzard say 8 million players they mean 8 million players.

Unlike second life............