Online Game "World of Warcraft" Passes 8 Million Subscribers Worldwide

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on January 11, 2007 - 9:46am.

Irvine, Calif. - Vivendi's video game publishing unit Blizzard Entertainment announced on Thursday that its "World of Warcraft" massively multiplayer online roleplaying game -- the most popular title of its type ever created -- has now surpassed 8 million paying subscribers worldwide.

The game now claims more than 2 million players in North America, over 3.5 million in China, and more than 1.5 million players in Europe.

"We're ecstatic that the World of Warcraft community has continued to grow steadily since we launched the game," said Blizzard president and co-founder Mike Morhaime.

Since launching in November 2004, the game has been made available in seven different languages and is now played in North America, Europe, mainland China, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.

Blizzard plans to launch the first expansion pack for the game, "World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade," next week in North America, Europe, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Thailand, with versions for mainland China and surrounding locales coming at a later unspecified date. Midnight release events for the expansion have been scheduled in the U.S., U.K., France, Germany and Sweden.

Published in DMW Daily, January 11, 2007

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Comments

And this will not stop here!

Submitted by DvJ (not verified) on January 11, 2007 - 12:13pm.

And this will not stop here! More and more MMORPG on the market, but WoW remains no1.... A solid base of players, all completely crazy playing!

Coming soon

Submitted by anonymous (not verified) on January 12, 2007 - 4:59am.

WOWPA - WoW Players Anonymous. Counseling and therapy for those who suffer from WoW addiction. (grin)

I know of a few broken homes "caused" by too much time in Azeroth. Certainly, there must have been a pre-existing, underlying problem and WoW only served as a catalyst. But I have caught myself playing "too much" at the expense of other things I "should" be doing.