World of Warcraft Hits 9.3 Million Players

Gamasutra is reporting that, along with Vivendi's ever-increasing earnings, recent information has been released updating the current player stats for World of Warcraft. Despite suspicions of falling numbers due to the long wait between now and Rise of the Lich King, Blizzard's Massive title is larger than ever, with some 9.3 million players. "Vivendi has chalked up the increase not only to its WoW subscriber base, but the release of its The Burning Crusade expansion, which saw release in China in the latter part of the third quarter ... The company also noted that its subscriber base has continued to grow from the 9 million mark it celebrated in July to more than 9.3 million, which it says is up more than one million subscribers since December 31 of last year."

Re:9.3 what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thankfully they did explain it. Blizzard press release about surpassing 9 million subscribes [blizzard.com].

It's the number of active accounts.

Direct from the site:

World of Warcraft's Subscriber Definition
World of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees' territories are defined along the same rules.

Keep that in mind the next time you see people talking about people "leaving WoW in droves" or talk about how some MMORPG with 100,000 subscribers is so much better than WoW. WoW is, by and far, the most popular MMORPG ever created. Now popular doesn't necessarily mean best, but if they weren't on to something you'd expect that number to be falling.

But it won't stop people from trying to dump on the leader. What's really pathetic are the people talking about how their fantasy MMORPG is sooo much better than WoW, despite the numbers clearly proving it isn't.

Re:OT: L:inux

[miller701]

The mac client is in Open GL, which isn't everything.

As the owner of several Macs over the past 8 years, I truly appreciate their in-house mac dev team.

Re:9.3 what?

[filth grinder]

Did you stop reading after the first sentence?

Did you not see this at the end?

"The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees' territories are defined along the same rules."

So if your account expired or was cancelled, it is not counted.