World of Warcraft hits 10 million subscribers
Well it didn't happen within 2007 as quite a few people predicted, but World of Warcraft has done it-- Blizzard has announced that their massively multiplayer game has hit ten million subscribers worldwide. Asia is the biggest market at the moment, with more than 5.5 million players, as compared to North America's 2.5 million and 2 million subscribers in Europe. Blizzard also says the past holiday season was a big one for them-- they picked up "thousands of new and returning players" in the past few months.
Here's a world population chart for comparison-- for perspective, Blizzard's game currently has a (paying) population about half the size of Australia. While 10 million is impressive to say the least (this game has already cemented itself a place in history as one of the most popular games ever made), just how far can they go from here? Will Wrath of the Lich King be able to bring more players out of the woodwork, or is Blizzard reaching critical mass in terms of how much attention they can attract? Will we be posting in another year that they've broken 11 million, or more?
