wow @ 5+ million officially

[Lenardo]

http://www.blizzard.com/press/051219.shtml

IRVINE, California - December 19, 2005 - Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that World of Warcraft®, its massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), has surpassed five million customers worldwide. The subscription-based MMORPG launched approximately one year ago in North America, Australia, and New Zealand and has since released in multiple countries throughout Europe and Asia. This latest milestone comes on the heels of Blizzard Entertainment®'s recent announcement of a World of Warcraft expansion, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade™, which will push the boundaries of the game and offer even more content and features for players.

"World of Warcraft's growth continues to exceed all our expectations," said Mike Morhaime, president and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "We want to reiterate our thanks to the millions of players worldwide and to all the retailers who have enthusiastically supported the game over the past year. Our commitment to continue growing World of Warcraft is stronger than ever, with development on future content patches and on our 2006 expansion, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, well underway. We look forward to offering even more content for current customers in the months ahead and welcoming new players into the world this holiday season."

With a strong presence across Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America, World of Warcraft has quickly become the world's most popular MMORPG. Most recently, the game was launched in the regions of Taiwan, Macau, and Hong Kong on November 8, 2005.

As World of Warcraft's population grows, Blizzard continues to support the game with additional content through regular patches and a planned expansion pack, set to release in 2006. World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade will add new lands, quests, monsters, magic items, spells and abilities, two new player races, a new player profession, 10 new levels of power for players to achieve, and much more. Additional information on the expansion and the game's regular content updates can be found at the official World of Warcraft website.

World of Warcraft's Customer Definition
World of Warcraft customers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or purchased a prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the installation box bundled with one free month access. Internet Game Room players that have accessed the game over the last seven days are also counted as customers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired pre-paid cards. Customers in licensees' territories are defined along the same rules.

[Cad]

Queue sinter1 telling us how it's all Blizzard smoke & mirrors in 5...4...3...

[Sancus]

World of Warcraft's Customer Definition
World of Warcraft customers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or purchased a prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the installation box bundled with one free month access. Internet Game Room players that have accessed the game over the last seven days are also counted as customers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired pre-paid cards. Customers in licensees' territories are defined along the same rules.

Lol. Yeah, ok, that's nice, but this doesn't tell you anything whatsoever about the current number of active subscribers.

[Lyrical]

Originally Posted by Lenardo

http://www.blizzard.com/press/051219.shtml

IRVINE, California - December 19, 2005 - Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that World of Warcraft®, its massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), has surpassed five million customers worldwide. The subscription-based MMORPG launched approximately one year ago in North America, Australia, and New Zealand and has since released in multiple countries throughout Europe and Asia. This latest milestone comes on the heels of Blizzard Entertainment®'s recent announcement of a World of Warcraft expansion, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade™, which will push the boundaries of the game and offer even more content and features for players.

"World of Warcraft's growth continues to exceed all our expectations," said Mike Morhaime, president and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "We want to reiterate our thanks to the millions of players worldwide and to all the retailers who have enthusiastically supported the game over the past year. Our commitment to continue growing World of Warcraft is stronger than ever, with development on future content patches and on our 2006 expansion, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, well underway. We look forward to offering even more content for current customers in the months ahead and welcoming new players into the world this holiday season."

With a strong presence across Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America, World of Warcraft has quickly become the world's most popular MMORPG. Most recently, the game was launched in the regions of Taiwan, Macau, and Hong Kong on November 8, 2005.

As World of Warcraft's population grows, Blizzard continues to support the game with additional content through regular patches and a planned expansion pack, set to release in 2006. World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade will add new lands, quests, monsters, magic items, spells and abilities, two new player races, a new player profession, 10 new levels of power for players to achieve, and much more. Additional information on the expansion and the game's regular content updates can be found at the official World of Warcraft website.

World of Warcraft's Customer Definition
World of Warcraft customers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or purchased a prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the installation box bundled with one free month access. Internet Game Room players that have accessed the game over the last seven days are also counted as customers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired pre-paid cards. Customers in licensees' territories are defined along the same rules.

That is just freaky. I can't think of another industry where a latecomer grew to a size larger than the rest of the industry. Maybe someone else can - but I sure as heck can't.

[Sancus]

Originally Posted by Lyrical

That is just freaky. I can't think of another industry where a latecomer grew to a size larger than the rest of the industry. Maybe someone else can - but I sure as heck can't.

Er it sure is pretty large, but it isn't larger than the rest of the industry. The Koreans have an absolutely disgusting number of people playing Lineage 1/2 and other games.

[Kaxmax]

Originally Posted by Sancus

Lol. Yeah, ok, that's nice, but this doesn't tell you anything whatsoever about the current number of active subscribers.

My emphasis in bold, maybe I'm just reading this wrong but it seems that 5 million is the number of active subscriptions.

World of Warcraft's Customer Definition
World of Warcraft customers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or purchased a prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the installation box bundled with one free month access. Internet Game Room players that have accessed the game over the last seven days are also counted as customers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired pre-paid cards. Customers in licensees' territories are defined along the same rules.

[Soygen]

That is just freaky. I can't think of another industry where a latecomer grew to a size larger than the rest of the industry. Maybe someone else can - but I sure as heck can't.

I'm guessing you meant genre and not industry, because Blizzard is hardly a latecomer to the video game industry. That alone is one of the biggest determining factors in WoW's success.

PS: Len, do you have family at Blizzard?

[Cryptin]

and 3 million of the subscribers are gold farmers...

[Sancus]

My emphasis in bold, maybe I'm just reading this wrong but it seems that 5 million is the number of active subscriptions.

Well, it sort of does, except that it includes Chinese who played for an hour and paid(they pay hourly) practically nothing, as well as anyone who sat down in a game room in the past week to play WoW for any amount of time.

These numbers that include those very, very fuzzy statistics from Asian countries that use completely different models from our standard $15/mo subscriptions are not really very accurate imo. Nor are they comparable to subscriber numbers from a purely standard subscription model.

Calculating this way, for example, WoW's subscriber base surges in Korea every time there's a holiday and people play more often, and then drops just as quickly.

Granted, this also applies to the games I noted match/exceed WoW's playerbase to show that they are nowhere near bigger than the rest of the industry, but fair's fair, right?

[Lenardo]

no but i've met furor -once- and tigole- once-i think(eq fan faires) and know tigole and rob pardo from my eq server (they were on my server) as well as a couple of other employees of blizzard..

[Sylas]

orly? do we need to do this again?

to be counted as a subscriber in china you have to:
Buy a Account key (they have accounts just like us)
prepay for timecards (hourly instead of monthly like ours)
login within the last week

the "login within the last week" thing covers the people who has 35 cents left or whatever on their prepaid account so they are "active" but do not actually play the game.

[Kolle]

A shitload of people play WoW.

You can't argue against that because it's true. Can't we just leave it at that?

[Griffon]

Who cares about the breakdown, ultimately, unless you own Vivendi stock or you're just bored and want to nitpick.

Regardless of what you think of Vivendi or even Blizzard, congrats to them for making such a successful and still growing MMO game.

[Mkopec1]

Yeah, even my grandma bought a fucking box! she rolled a pally!

[kyo]

They released "world wide" + Blizzard was very popular and looked up to by many people who have never played a MMORPG in their life + Many MMORPG vets were looking for something new at the time WoW released = Megaton of customers.