Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Role Playing (Games)

World of Warcraft Hits 9 Million Users 298

Wowzer writes "Blizzard today announced that their MMORPG World of Warcraft is now played by more than 9 million gamers around the world. From the article: 'That's half a million more than the number of monthly players WoW had back in March five months ago. — It's interesting to note that if the World of Warcraft were a nation, CIA's World Factbook says that out of 236 listed countries it would be the 90th most populated country on Earth above Haiti, but behind Sweden.' Also revealed this week was that DC Comics are creating World of Warcraft Comic Books based on the MMORPG, with the first issue appearing on November 14th. The ongoing monthly series will be written by industry veteran Walter Simonson (Thor, Orion) and feature art by Ludo Lullabi and inker Sandra Hope."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

World of Warcraft Hits 9 Million Users

Comments Filter:
  • Yes... (Score:5, Funny)

    by feepness ( 543479 ) on Tuesday July 24, 2007 @03:06PM (#19973673)
    ...but what did it hit them with.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by mdm-adph ( 1030332 )
      A potentially relationship-ending addiction?
      • Re:Yes... (Score:5, Informative)

        by thc69 ( 98798 ) on Tuesday July 24, 2007 @03:48PM (#19974297) Homepage Journal
      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by sqrt(2) ( 786011 )
        Luckily, I dodge that bullet by not <i>having</i> a relationship in the first place.
    • Re:Yes... (Score:5, Funny)

      by shoptroll ( 544006 ) on Tuesday July 24, 2007 @03:09PM (#19973721)
      Knowing blizzard:

      Either a nerf bat or a ban hammer.
      • Re:Yes... (Score:5, Funny)

        by Himring ( 646324 ) on Tuesday July 24, 2007 @04:31PM (#19974931) Homepage Journal
        WoW just follows the rules of mmogs. These rules are:

        You always try out-level, and never play with, your friends (no matter what the voiced intentions)

        As soon as you finish that quest for that really cool item, a new one comes making it totally worthless

        In pvp, if you're in an area where there's a remote possibility you'll get ganked, you will be

        In pvp, if you're in an area where there's no way you'll get ganked, you will be

        The smallest possible race will always be rolled as a tank, and be better at it than the biggest possible race

        1 out of 3, no 2 out of 3 ... no, 3 out of 3 quests will, at some point, make no sense

        You will always respec wrong

        You will hate the game

        You will not stop playing the game

        You will wonder why you cannot stop playing the game

        You will cancel your account

        You will re-open your account

        You will cancel your account

        [ad infinitum]

        The maker will always nerf your class

        The maker will always buff your friend's class

        You will sell your account for $x amount of money and feel you actually are a good business man (when, truth is, you invested 100x that much)

        You will create a new account and character

        You will tell yourself that it isn't so bad this time because you're so good at it

        You will cancel your account

        You will play another mmog and tell yourself and your friends how much better/different it is than the last

        You will create a character on a role-playing server and never role-play (nor will anyone else; people who do rarely role-play are made fun of)

        K, I'm done, someone take over....

    • > ...but what did it hit them with.

      ZERG RUSH KEKEKEKEKE
  • Damn (Score:3, Funny)

    by fliptw ( 560225 ) on Tuesday July 24, 2007 @03:07PM (#19973693) Journal
    WOW is fast to hit that many people. I hope the injuries aren't serious.
  • by ArcadeX ( 866171 ) on Tuesday July 24, 2007 @03:11PM (#19973765)
    How many individuals? 9 million accounts, 6 million people?
    • by Avatar8 ( 748465 )
      The 9 million might actually be a very accurate number. While there are many individuals with multiple accounts as you suggest, there are likely just as many accounts with multiple individuals. My wife and I own one account each, but our daughters play on each of our accounts, so we're two accounts but four users. We know of several online friends who are siblings or spouses that share an account. I don't personally know of anyone who has multiple accounts.
      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Alex777 ( 1113887 )
        I would say that the effect you describe is actually much greater than users with multiple accounts. Since your character allotment is vitually limitless, the primary reason someone would want several accounts is for multiboxing. That is, playing two (or more!) characters at once. The only other reason I could think of is if you wanted cross-faction characters on a PvP server.
      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by pthor1231 ( 885423 )
        The situation in which you describe is the ONLY way, according to the ToS, that an account can be shared by more than one person. Technically, within the wording of the ToS, your wife is not able to play your account. While I doubt you are entirely unique, I don't think the number of people sharing their account with someone who they are legally responsible for comes close to matching up with people with multiple accounts.
    • by Adriax ( 746043 )
      9 million accounts. 3 million belong to players, 6 million belong to farmers.
    • by 0racle ( 667029 )
      How many are accounts that are players that were banned on other accounts?
  • by vigmeister ( 1112659 ) on Tuesday July 24, 2007 @03:14PM (#19973801)
    80% of them are farming gold for the upper 20% :) Gold farmers shouldn't count...

    Cheers!
  • MMORPG popularity (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Longtime_Lurker_Aces ( 1008565 ) on Tuesday July 24, 2007 @03:14PM (#19973809)
    I find it fascinating that all the later, more popular mmorpg's seem to be far inferior to the "original": Ultima Online.

    You could own a house, put vendors there to sell stuff, you had trade skills that were fully independent of fighting, you had an economy of "rare" artifacts with no use at all people just wanted them to have them, you could kill other players and take their gear.

    And it was so much friendlier to the casual player: you could teleport to where your real-life friends were, you could play with your friends even if they played 40 hours a week and you played 2, you could macro when you were away to keep up with your friends or do things like craft armor to support a guild.

    PvP made you actually have REAL friends and REAL enemies, instead of "You're an orc and he's an elf so you hate each other". It also made guilds have value, as you needed protection and could benefit from a guildmate making your armor while you made him potions.

    Basically, I just can't stand that WoW is worse than UO in almost every way but has about 8.8 million more subscribers. UO was ahead of its time.
    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Meridian 59 and The Realm preceded UO. Not to mention The Shadow of Yserbius and, of course, MUDs.

      Anyway, if you like UO so much, then stop referring to it in the past tense and go play it - it's still around, and the client was just overhauled.
      • Anyway, if you like UO so much, then stop referring to it in the past tense and go play it - it's still around, and the client was just overhauled.
        Ultima Online was destroyed by the developers many years ago. Unsurprisingly, UO today bears little resemblance to the UO of 7-10 years ago.
        • by Sparr0 ( 451780 )
          I recall third party UO servers 3-4 years ago. Not sure if they go back 7+ though. Find one of them, play UO as you remember it.
      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by cHiphead ( 17854 )
        Let us not forget the most kickass-ist of ALL, the original Neverwinter Nights, exclusively available to AOL customers. I spend many a dollars of my parents going past that $9.95/10 hour limit on AOL cuz I was cracked on NWN.

        Sure, LoTR and U-something-that-had-whores-and-was-cooler (Usurper?) on dialup BBSes were hellafun, but NwN actually integrated graphics and made it all sexy. for the time.

        Ever since I spent a month on UO and Everquest (I'm sorry, but if you were addicted to EQ you should be face stabb
        • Indeed. When AOL went unlimited access I couldn't wait to just play NWN 24/7. I think it took all of two weeks before they started charging extra for games at that point.
    • It exists (Score:4, Informative)

      by everphilski ( 877346 ) on Tuesday July 24, 2007 @03:29PM (#19974045) Journal
      You could own a house, put vendors there to sell stuff, you had trade skills that were fully independent of fighting, you had an economy of "rare" artifacts with no use at all people just wanted them to have them, you could kill other players and take their gear.

      EQ2 has everything but 'taking their gear'. EQ PVP servers have everything but 'owning a house'. Non-PVP EQ didn't have the gear stealing.
      And it was so much friendlier to the casual player: you could teleport to where your real-life friends were, you could play with your friends even if they played 40 hours a week and you played 2, you could macro when you were away to keep up with your friends or do things like craft armor to support a guild. EQ has a cool system called shrouding, where a high-level player can 'shroud' into a different form and descend to a lower level; and change classes even. Its nice to play with friends leveling alts or, as you say, friends that aren't as hardcore.

      Never played UO, I got sucked into EQ, just wanted to agree with you that WoW really is a dumbing down of the oldschool MMO's but that EQ offers basically everything UO offered, and is still alive and kicking (new expansion in a few months, baby! I think its #14 now ...)
      • EvE sorta has what he is describing, though I would say its a bit more ruthless.
    • by seebs ( 15766 )
      I would never play UO, because I do not have any interest in a game where other people can kill me and take my stuff.

      That's the thing; WoW has allowed me to play the game I want to play. No one else had it on offer, least of all had it on offer for Mac too so I could play with my spouse.
      • I would never play UO, because I do not have any interest in a game where other people can kill me and take my stuff.

        The thing about UO was that there wasn't any awesome uber-gear that you had to invest massive amounts of time to get. Even dying with a full set of plate armor and a large bag of reagents wouldn't set you back more than a few thousand gold, which was trivial to get. I've heard that UO has changed since then to something more Diablo-like, but the truth is that in UO's heyday, death was rarely

        • by Avatar8 ( 748465 )
          Wrong on two counts:

          - losing a full suit of armor could set you back quite a bit if you had a full set of valorite armor or any of the other colored, skill specific armors. Not to mention if you had rare, magical weapons that were found in dungeons.
          - A few thousand gold trivial? Hardly. Only those who exploited, sold numerous rares or had been there since the server first powered up considered that trivial. To any player of a few months, that was equivalent to several days of killing and gathering.

        • by seebs ( 15766 )
          I understand. The point is, I don't want it to "matter" in that way. I do not want a real sense of danger.

          There was a triple murder a block from my house a month or three back. I am not in any way lacking for "real sense of danger", and I am not going to pay someone to provide me with one.
      • by Avatar8 ( 748465 ) on Tuesday July 24, 2007 @04:43PM (#19975117)
        I totally agree. PKers almost drove me away from UO completely when it first began. I tried to get my wife interested, but she hated how vulnerable we were and how pointless PvP was in general. (you call friends, they call friends, everybody dies and loses gear and it just wastes your time instead of allowing you to play the game)

        I showed her WoW during beta and she was curious. When I purchased it, she started a character and was hooked within a few hours. She went on a trip and came back home to find her own account waiting for her. We still play side by side to this day and show no signs of slowing.

        Key point to WoW's popularity: it appeals to EVERY play style in some form or fashion.

    • by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Tuesday July 24, 2007 @03:53PM (#19974375)
      I get amused by the people that claim WoW is "inferior" because of its friendly environment and no-penalty PvP. Well it's not, that is actually what makes it superior to most people, and is the reason they have 9 million players. Most people aren't hardcore, they don't want a game that punishes them for failure, they don't want to have to deal with keeping up with those who make a game in to a life and so on.

      If you want games like that, they are available. I'm made to understand EVE is such a game. Extremely hardcore, real loss, etc, etc. That's great if that's what you like, but don't pretend like it is "superior". One of the reasons WoW is so great is it treats things more like a single player game. When I die in a SP game I don't lose anything but time, I am set back to whatever my last save point was and must replay from there. The nearest MMORPG experience, since you can't reload, is to just have you have to wait a bit as you head back to your body. No loss of anything but time.

      That's what has kept me interested in WoW. It is the 5th MMORPG I've tried (EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot, EVE, Starwars Galaxies) and the only one that has lasted more than 6-9 months or so. All the rest got boring fast for various reasons. For example in EQ the problem was it felt like they hated you. The game was setup to punish you severely for failure, and to be very unhelpful.

      WoW gets it right for me, and for many others because it is extremely easy to get in to (I've never seen a more friendly start than WoW's newbie quests), doesn't punish you, and has lots to do for whatever it is you like doing. I realise that's not for everyone, but you need to realise that if a more hardcore experience is your preference that is a different preference, not a superior one. There is nothing wrong with wanting an easier, more friendly experience. After all, the whole point of games is to be entertaining. They are not for proving or accomplishing something, they are there to make you happy and let you have fun. Whatever it is that does that, that's what you should play. For 9 million of us (and counting) WoW is that kind of game.
      • by theantipop ( 803016 ) on Tuesday July 24, 2007 @04:07PM (#19974605)
        These are very good points. Along with this, I will point out one area where WoW really has been revolutionary: the UI. If WoW got one thing gloriously right, it was their very moddable and customizable user interface via a LUA scripting system. I hope this catches on in future game's of a variety of genres, not just MMO's, because it really allows you remove the largest barrier in enjoying button-heavy and information spamming games.
      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        > I get amused by the people that claim WoW is "inferior" because of its friendly environment and no-penalty PvP.

        Wow is inferior because it has:
        * designers remaining completely _clueless_ about dead-time
        * static story (where are all the GM events??)
        * no guild banks, homes, or towns
        * limited world interaction (blacksmith can't repair his armor, boats on "rails", almost nothing to interact with in the world -- everything is "locked" down.)
        * limited crafting (no lumberjacking, you can't make furniture and
        • One thing you said really stood out to me:

          It is almost impossible to run into "griefers" (aside from occasionaly miners ninja-looting the ore nodes)

          I will take issue with that statement. My only true pet peeve in this game is that same-faction griefing is completely ignored by Blizzard. If you are Alliance and a Horde steals a kill or a resource node, you can either settle it with PvP or just go your own way, and I am perfectly okay with that. It is balanced and it is more than fair; you are, after all, e

          • I will take issue with that statement. My only true pet peeve in this game is that same-faction griefing is completely ignored by Blizzard. If you are Alliance and a Horde steals a kill or a resource node, you can either settle it with PvP or just go your own way, and I am perfectly okay with that. It is balanced and it is more than fair; you are, after all, enemies. However, if you are Alliance and another Alliance follows you around, kill-stealing, trying to take nodes from you, ninja-skinning you, there
            • How can you steal kills?

              You are a mage, you start casting pyroblast. It takes 6 secs to cast, at the 5th second, some rogue or hunter puts in a single stab or arrow, he tags it, it's now his kill, your pyroblast then hits and you get all the aggro because you did more damage. If your pyroblast does in the order of 4k damage like mine, you can one-shot a monster. Hence, he stole your kill. Also applies to other dots like Shadow Word:Pain. It doesn't tag a monster as soon as it's put on, so if you cast it on

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        Excellent points, and I agree with everything you wrote. My two cents is that, while WoW is very friendly especially to the casual player (which is why I still play), it can also reach the level of "serious and complicated" that its predecessors attained. It all depends on how much time and effort you are willing to throw at it. For example, my jobless girlfriend, who incidentally got me into the game, plays around 4-8 hours per day, every day. She rattles off end-game instance names, factions, armor sets e
    • Summary:

      UO is better because -I- like it! And it makes me real mad that so many stupid people disagree with me!! WAAAAAAAAHH!!

      Seriously, what happened to different people having different tastes? And how does this childish rant get modded up?
    • Except in its interface, which always sucked...

      And its crafting system, which required a ton of grinding out the same crap over and over again for a .1 skill gain (I GMed blacksmithing, bowcrafting and tailoring on several characters over there.) And you still couldn't create an item that was as good as various world drops you could find.

      And the constant griefing, from the flock of pickpockets at the bank before the Trammel split to the flock of PKers who kept a stranglehold on the dungeons on the PvP s

    • by Avatar8 ( 748465 ) on Tuesday July 24, 2007 @04:29PM (#19974911)
      Being a 7.5 year UO vet, I think I can address this.

      Many aspects of UO were ahead of its time. It could have been a fantastic MMORPG that would have reached millions of players, but too many factors prevented that from occurring.

      - Garriott's vision of a dynamic online world never reached fruition. The ecology system never really worked (animals preying upon other animals to keep the spawn rate down). It does work in WoW, and it's fascinating to watch monsters fight each other.
      - Garriott (and Raph's) vision was too dependent upon players "playing nice" and wanting to be a moral, socially upright group. What they didn't count on was how some people feel they have the right to be complete and total a-holes because they're hidden behind the anonymity of a game character.
      - The economy was ruined... by players. Greed, immorality and the desire to simply ruin the experience for others drove exploiters to imbalance the money system. Granted WoW has its share of gold exploits and problems with people selling their gold farming "services," but it's not nearly as skewed as UO was after the first two years.
      - The PvP system was ruined... by players. Instead of a fair playing field where everyone has an equal chance, it turned into a predator/prey system where crafters gathered resources and fighters took it away. I despise PvP, but WoW is so well balanced and has such few penalties I'm considering participating. If it's attractive to a pacifist like myself, I imagine it's remarkable to those that enjoy PvP. If someone kills another player for gear, they're playing and killing for the wrong reason, IMO.
      - The classless system was unique and allowed some flexibility, but still you ended up in a niche of "warrior, caster or crafter." I knew of numerous players who started out going one direction only to discover they had wasted their time and needed to go a different direction. I lost count of how many times I "respecced" my main character. Having grown up playing D&D, I prefer the class style.
      - EA prevented UO from reaching it's potential numerous times. 1)Pushed Garriott out. When you get rid of the person with the vision, how do you know where you're going? 2)Lost the "Ultima" in "Ultima Online." I'm sure you probably played the series, too. Didn't you want to see more correlation with the series stories? There were two major attempts to bring that content to UO, but EA killed them. Then they brought in Todd McFarlane to add his touch. Another major mistake there. 3)There were also multiple attempts to overhaul the game entirely, but EA wouldn't hear it because it might endanger their constant cash flow if some players decided to jump ship if they had to start over. I would have stayed because there was nothing better than UO for several years (tried DAoC, AC, AO. EQ sucked from the outset, so I never needed to try it.)

      To your points:
      - Crafting skills in WoW are just as separated from fighting as they were in UO. In order to gather resources, you must be able to face the wilds and at least fight enough to defend yourself from roving monsters. Otherwise a crafter can stay in town safe from harm.
      - WoW also has a few rares, but they are not exchangeable which I prefer. My pets from my Collector's Editions make my account fairly valuable. Since I cannot foresee my future of not playing WoW, I have no intention of cashing in.
      - I do hope WoW implements housing, but I hope they do it correctly. I despised how UO just allowed players to ruin the landscape and affect the monster and resource spawns. I had even sent the designers several suggestions of having housing servers with teleporters to keep the land pristine. If WoW does add housing, I'm sure it will be a separate server that would not affect the current world.
      - I liked having my vendors sell my wares while I was away, but I did not like having to keep them stocked and paid whether they sold anything or not. I much prefer the Auction House in WoW.
      - WoW has a very similar, and I think more robust, soc

      • by Jaeph ( 710098 )
        "If someone kills another player for gear, they're playing and killing for the wrong reason, IMO."

        Then your opinion is wrong! :-)

        Seriously now, why do different groups of geeks engage in poking fun at other geeks like this? It's silly! Carebear! Ganker! Waaaaaaahhhhhhh!

        WoW is a fantastic game. It may not be everyone's cup of tea (I'm not playing anymore), but that doesn't make it bad. But that doesn't make other games bad either. Different strokes for different folks, and all that.

        -Jeff
    • by brkello ( 642429 )
      Yes, losing all your stuff is much more friendly to casuals. Huh? I think you are looking UO through rose colored lenses. Back in the day...everything was better!
    • All of these features have been implemented and implemented better in other games (Dark Age of Camelot and Everquest come to mind). The one thing that was nice about the *original* Ultima Online was the PvP system where anyone could kill anyone at any time and for any reason whatsoever. However, even UO was forced to nix that "feature" because of whiners who didn't understand the benefits of text chat spammer and loot farmer control. Among the things that UO did worse than just about everyone else was *hous
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Jeian ( 409916 )
      You're substituting "far inferior" for "has gameplay I don't like".

      I, personally, *like* not having to worry about losing something I spent hours in Karazhan to get, because I got ganked by a another player while I was at 25% health.

      I, personally, would rather have Blizzard spending time on interesting content than on giving me a house to play interior decorator in.

      Don't you think it's rather telling that all these "inferior" MMORPGs are more popular than UO? Maybe they aren't so "bad" after all.
    • by geekoid ( 135745 )
      "...more popular mmorpg's seem to be far inferior to the "original": Ultima Online."

      hahasnorthehe"You could own a house"
      and have it robbed immediately, or need to get someone to maintain it when you went on vacation.

      "ou could kill other players and take their gear."

      Thats considered a down side by most current mmorpg users

      "you could teleport to where your real-life friends were"
      you can in WOW.

      "you could play with your friends even if they played 40 hours a week and you played 2, "

      Pfft. Thats not true at all.
  • I haven't given Blizzard a dime in several months now. I'd imagine they're still counting the folks who used to play, but no longer do.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by alexgieg ( 948359 )
      Nope. Non-paying accounts, such as inactive accounts (in countries where it's charged per month), accounts not played in the last 30 days (in countries where it's charged per hour), and trial accounts, aren't included in the total. This 9,000,000 number is really for active, paying accounts only.
  • by Rob T Firefly ( 844560 ) on Tuesday July 24, 2007 @03:35PM (#19974107) Homepage Journal
    Each issue of the WoW comic's gripping storyline will be interrupted by the characters running around shouting misspelled racist and homophobic epithets at the reader for two solid pages.
    • More likely, it will feature numerous Chuck Norris jokes intermixed with linking [Foror's Compendium of Dragonslaying].
    • I wonder how they'le deal with the poignant issues surrounding sexuality in WoW, for example naked elf dancing contests in Ironforge ...
    • And every time the comic has a major, world-changing event, the world resets after a few minutes, the evil overlords respawn and things return to normal.

      "Oh look! There's the evil monster xxxx! Kill it!"

      (a short time passes)

      "Oh look again! There's the evil monster xxxx again! Kill it again!"

      (repeat until subscription ends)
    • by Macgrrl ( 762836 )

      or the "/t has Aids" meme that was running rampart on Proudmoore 18 months ago...

  • by rhartness ( 993048 ) on Tuesday July 24, 2007 @03:47PM (#19974271)
    I knew WoW was a HUGE MMORPG and that's about it but if my calculations are correct 9M Active Accounts * $10/monthly subscription fees(that's my guess, I don't know the actual figure) * 12 Months = $1.08 Billion a year! Holy Cow, that's insane!
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by theantipop ( 803016 )
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_warcraft#Pri cing [wikipedia.org] As you can see the pricing structure, especially in Asia, is very fluid. They're pulling in a lot of cash, but not nearly as much as you calculated.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by everphilski ( 877346 )
      $15.00ish a month for US subscribers, not sure about EU. But the chinese, etc. do not pay nearly that much... they pay about $0.04 an hour. And the Chinese account for an excess of 5M subscribers. source [gigaom.com]
      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by vux984 ( 928602 )
        I WISH we had hourly pricing options here. I'd play WoW and other MMORPGs under that system. As it is everytime I look at another mmorpg... its a proposition of either either cancelling the game I'm already playing and enjoying, or splitting my time between two games -- but paying full rate for both... meaning my effective value/hour is halved... and I end up resenting it. If I could pay-as-you-go I'd happily play 2-4 games on a regular basis.

        Altenratively, these guys (especially the smaller ones) should te
  • How did they measure this number? Is this number of accounts created or number of current active accounts? I'm guessing its the former, where someone like myself (who hasn't played in months) would be included.
  • by SQLz ( 564901 ) on Tuesday July 24, 2007 @03:59PM (#19974473) Homepage Journal
    There are only 9 million players but 11 million night elf hunters. Go figure.
  • by zussal ( 1058116 ) on Tuesday July 24, 2007 @04:16PM (#19974735)
    Am I out of touch, what is this World of Warcraft thing?
    • "Butters go buy World of Warcraft, install it on your computer, and join the online sensation before we all murder you."
    • The best way to explain it is if you took every Everquest joke ever made, and they weren't jokes, and you doubled them, you would have World of Warcraft.
  • Highly Inflated (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Zanthor ( 12084 ) on Tuesday July 24, 2007 @04:53PM (#19975275) Homepage
    I would wager that this number is highly inflated...

    Personally, I own and maintain 3 accounts and my girlfriend has her own as well, so 2 players, 4 accounts... If you take a look at my guild of 50+ active members you will find an impressive roster of well over 200 characters many of which are on seperate accounts. I know I have at least 15 players with more than one account, and our biggest account holder is sitting around 8.

    Take a look at Dual Boxing [dual-boxing.com] and evaluate how many multi-account users there are out there... Many claim (and have video proof) of 5 [dual-boxing.com], 10 [dual-boxing.com], and even 50 [gameslah.com] boxes running at a time... with one of the contributors to the community boasting over 200 wow accounts [dual-boxing.com] on one server...

    I figure that without even counting farmers, we have made a significant notch in the 9 million number...
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      I expect there are also single accounts shared by multiple people.
    • by Zed2K ( 313037 )
      How is this inflated? A paying account is a paying account no matter if it is owned by the same person or not. I don't think they mean the number of people playing but instead the number of subscribers.
  • yeah but... (Score:5, Funny)

    by to_kallon ( 778547 ) on Tuesday July 24, 2007 @04:55PM (#19975299)
    It's interesting to note that if the World of Warcraft were a nation, CIA's World Factbook says that out of 236 listed countries it would be the 90th most populated country on Earth above Haiti, but behind Sweden. i pasted this to a friend who pointed out that while the taxes are much lower the death rate is significantly higher...
  • The Department of Education reports 9M new drop-outs.
  • Åh nej! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Sobieski ( 1032500 ) on Tuesday July 24, 2007 @06:13PM (#19976253)
    De är ikapp oss! Börja kopulera för guds skull!
  • Bedpans have been selling in record numbers, despite orders from hospitals and hospices declining over recent years.

    *Mom! Bathroom, bathroom!*
  • by TheRistoman ( 1062158 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2007 @12:47AM (#19979647)
    I gave into it two Summers ago, since most of my gaming friends were wayyy into it already and gave me a free trial account. I have to say that until then I resisted the urge and was mostly uninterested with the game altogether. Then I started playing quite intensely. After 20 8-hour sessions or so, questing hardcore and reaching level 30 with a Rogue and 25 with a Fire Mage, I realized that the amount of time needed to level shot up exponentially, and also realized that I had a real life and classes to worry about (having a girlfriend also helped... and no, not a cyber girlfriend, thank you very much). Soon after that I was turning down my friends' request to log in because I knew I'd be giving up the rest of my day(s). A few months later one of my friends did decide he was addicted and had to erase all of his characters (not an easy task if you knew the kind of gear he had), cancel his subscription, uninstall the game and give away the CDs. I understand that now he has found a healthier balance of WoW and real life. Many props to him.

    I also tried getting back to it, putting in a few hours a week. Unfortunately once you get past a certain point, a few hours a week won't get you anywhere and I think that's the biggest fallacy in WoW. Games shouldn't turn into full time jobs just to keep up, and if you're a fresh player you're gonna have to put in that kind of time. On the other hand, CounterStrike is a game that you can play 30 minutes a day and get your fix. Heck, I'd recommend Diablo II any day of the year over WoW. It only gets time consuming on Act 5 the third time around...

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by brkello ( 642429 )
      Obviously you have not played many MMORPGs. Leveling in WoW is extremely fast...even at higher levels. Are you going to keep up with friends that have no lives? Of course not, but a few hours a week will get you somewhere fine if you know what you are doing. The problem is that a lot of people don't understand that the fun is in the journey, not in maxing out your character. If you don't view it as a race (and you shouldn't, you won't win it) and just a game...it is a lot of fun.
  • Woo hoo! (Score:3, Funny)

    by geminidomino ( 614729 ) * on Wednesday July 25, 2007 @02:32AM (#19980085) Journal
    And the remaining 5.991 Billion people *still* don't give a fuck.

    Ahh, perspective...

Only through hard work and perseverance can one truly suffer.

Working...