World of Warcraft hits 9.3 million subscribers

by Alexander Sliwinski { Nov 15th 2007 at 1:14PM }

Like a burning crusade marching across the planet, World of Warcraft continues to expand with a population of 9.3 million subscribers. In late July, Blizzard announced that WoW reached the 9 million subscriber mark. All this player retention is fantastic for the game, but World of Warcraft is still an anomaly in the commercial MMORPG genre. If Lord of the Rings Online is in the number two spot like Turbine claims, they have yet to announce even hitting one million subscribers (they cover it smoothly by saying they have four million characters). Although, in all fairness, LotRO hasn't expanded into Asia yet -- that's where the real MMO money is.

Blizzard's parent company Vivendi continues to reap the financial rewards of WoW's success as their sales continue to rise. With such massive retention rates on an MMO, we can only imagine what happens when Wrath of the Lich King, the next expansion for WoW, releases sometime next year.

[Via Massively]

Tags: arthas, burningcrusade, millions, sales, worldofwarcraft, wow, wrathofthelichking

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

ColossalHat @ Nov 15th 2007 1:23PM

Man, I'm glad I didn't get sucked into that game, lots of people I know did and I never see them anymore. Such is the evil of WoW I suppose.

gonk @ Nov 15th 2007 1:24PM

if you have self-control then it's fine. i played it for 5 months, then decided I'd had enough and quit and deleted it. the first 15 levels are the most fun anyway :(

NATO_Duke @ Nov 15th 2007 1:55PM

WoW = the Devil!

I was turned off to it after seeing a lot of folks get sucked in. Many people I used to play fps titles with vanished into the WoW world. It was a shame to see. :(

Gangsta Smurf @ Nov 15th 2007 3:35PM

One of my friends is currently sucked into that game. Stupid fuck even purchased an Alienware SOLELY to play WOW.

Wait, I lied about that; he's not my friend anymore.

kyle @ Dec 28th 2007 7:19PM

its jsut too bad that dont say how many of them are in america, and how many of them are jsut gold farmers that get their accounts banned monthly, last i heard only 1.5 million were american, and about 3 million were farmer or gold holding accounts

gonk @ Nov 15th 2007 1:23PM

i wonder if that's active or cumulative

and yeah, asians are crazy for elf and dwarf mmos

Vidikron (FU) @ Nov 15th 2007 1:25PM

Sound like active to me. I think they are saying they have over 9 million current subscribers. That's a lot of monthly revenue.

JerJerBinks @ Nov 15th 2007 5:31PM

The are generally referring to total accounts, not active players. I had 2 accounts, and I am sure they are still using those to pad their numbers. I would guess that active accounts are probably 1/2 of that number. Still, thats a whole lot of people.

MikeJett @ Nov 15th 2007 1:27PM

hello ... my name is michael .... and I'm a Wowaholic .... its been .... 6 hours since my last quest .....

Silent Xenocide @ Nov 15th 2007 1:30PM

Thats like a small nation there. I have WoW and am a subscriver..but I don't play it.

Donald @ Nov 15th 2007 1:42PM

They could nominate a presidential candidate with those kind of numbers.

"Vote Gul'dar in 2008 and there will be two epic mounts in every garage!"

Brymo @ Nov 15th 2007 1:33PM

9.3million people x 15 dollar monthly sub == a lot of money each month.

But then again, I have no idea how their monthly payments work.

Marty @ Nov 15th 2007 1:37PM

Assuming everyone paid $15 a month (I think the hardcore players probably don't do month-to-month, which brings their cost down to around $12 a month, but still...), that's $139,000,000 a month to Blizzard.

$1.67 billion a year.

Just thinking about how much money they make is making me feel ill.

KrazyIan @ Nov 15th 2007 1:39PM

You guys need to come up with a WoW-printing-money image to accompany posts like this, much like you did with the Iwata/Miyamoto Nintendo DS "It Prints Money" one.

9.3 million subscribers X $15/month = an assload of money.

Kevin D @ Nov 15th 2007 1:39PM

Just cancelled my account 2 weeks ago.... Played for the last 8 months, hit 70, played Battle grounds and ran some dungeons.. got boring quickly.....

The questing up to 70 was the most fun.... I sold all my gear/loot and gave 1500 gold to some low level nub (opens trade window, trades money).. nub says thanks...
I say I'm quitting.. never looked back.. meh....

Fun game, running instances over and over is lame.. BG is ok, but after a while gets boring....

Oh well, got alot of other games to finish..:)

sees ya

Evil Closet Monkey @ Nov 15th 2007 1:46PM

9.3 - 1 ... my subscription ends in 2 days. I'M FREE! GLORIOUS, GLORIOUS FREEDOM!

Chris @ Nov 15th 2007 1:47PM

I'm one of those 9.3 million!

WiNG @ Nov 15th 2007 1:57PM

I know it doesn't have subscribers but Guild Wars has more than 4 million sold so... eat it, LOTR.

Vathris @ Nov 15th 2007 2:12PM

Guys, guys... that 15$ per month is gross profit not net.

They have to pay for dev teams, story writers add campaigns, bandwidth, servers IT's, GM's, marketing, shipping, etc.... Let's not forget that the money received is also being used to produce newer games (Starcraft 2 etc).

Now they are still netting serious money but it is not the inflated numbers we see thrown around here.

The more your know,

-Vathris

SimonBob @ Nov 15th 2007 2:25PM

Three hundred thousand new users in four months? At this rate, it's only 430 years until the entire population of North America will be playing WoW.

Sean Newton @ Nov 15th 2007 3:14PM

Excellent. My evil plans to achieve world domination by taking over once people stop care about the physical world, are taking effect even as we speak!

Now I must see about accelerating matters by sneaking WoW into childrens' required curriculum in elementary schools...

Shockgamer @ Nov 15th 2007 3:06PM

They should just declare Azeroth a soverign country and instal U.N. embassy.

You silly fools thought that the Matrix would come from some crazy robot-human world? Pfft! People are going to choosingly jack in to WoW...so they can really -feel- each piece of gold they farm.

Shawn @ Nov 15th 2007 3:10PM

it's a shame pc gaming is dying though right? lol
It's got the best fall lineup on top of absolute juggernauts like WoW. From what I hear, Tabula Rasa is kicking ass too.

Myself? Can't wait for Warhammer Online. Right now, I don't have enough time in the day for an MMO and all the great titles that have come out and are coming out. Between COD4, Crysis, The Witcher, and Hellgate,Gears, and UT3(among many others), and it's probably the best time to invest in a rig.

puffin @ Nov 15th 2007 3:38PM

I've always been pretty suspicious of the numbers Blizzard throws around concerning Subscriptions. I'm pretty sure those sub numbers are accounts created up to this point in time and the number people who are actually paying for a sub currently is different.

Also it should be noted that the current trend in WoW has been a decline in playing population over the last 3 months. The reason for the rise to 9.3 mil is the recent release of The Burning Crusade expansion in China. The same expansion brought about a spike in numbers to western world a year ago before falling off a few months later.

ackmondual @ Nov 15th 2007 4:32PM

so glad I never got into WoW. Granted I waste my time in plenty of other ways, but still have no interest in WoW. There's just waaay too much saturation in the market for knights, elves, dwarves, trolls, orcs, talking pig people.... and while we're at it, let's throw in industrial race of beavers and kity spies for good measure. Someone needs to make more RPGs and MMORPGs with Asian themes. Ninjas, monks, and the like are due for a revival. You have PLENTY of white folks dating asian girls. Time for their video gaming habits to reflect that as well :)

Some friends on the other hand... a bit CRAZY. Friend's sister got the WoW board game as a wedding present. For their reception, instead of the tradition (and much more expensive) flower centerpieces that they normally put on tables, his brother just printed out full color screenshots of the game of each city, complete with captions. So instead of aesthetically pleasing floral designs, u have each table with something diff like - "this port is a center of trade for goods, weapons, gold, items, culture, and ". Anotehr table with a ss of Aezeroth, another with wherever the hell those dwarves are from, another for the bad guys... Morder for all I care.

They should just bomb the WoW in South Park like they already did to some other place

GamrGirl87 @ Nov 15th 2007 5:05PM

Dam! It must be nice! That kind of money would be amazing! The game is just so dam addicting. it keeps your kids out of trouble & its keep your spending cost low as well... but you get fat.. haha just gotta remember to get up every once in awhile to exercise!