World of Warcraft reaches 10 million

On the 22'nd of January 2008, Blizzard announced that the number of (active) subscribers to their World of Warcraft reached ten million.

The critically-acclaimed video game, launched on the 23'rd of November 2004, is host to more than 2 million players from Europe, 2,5 million from North America and more than 5,5 million from Asia.

The game has also spawned an expansion pack, "The Burning Crusade" (TBH), which is the best-selling PC game of 2007 in North America and Europe, holding the record for fastest selling video game of all time, with 2,4 million copies sold in its first 24 hours and more than 3,5 million in its first month. Another, second, expansion pack, named "The Wrath of the Lich King", has been announced and is slated for release in 2008.

It should be also noted that Blizzard has explicitly stated what they mean by "subscribers": "those 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.". So, those who have free promotional subscriptions, expired or canceled subscriptions or prepaid cards were not counted.

I am myself a proud WoW player -warlocks ftw!-, if only new on the official servers (one month). However, I have been playing it for some two years now on private servers, so don't call me a "n0ob"...I 4m t3h pwnz0rx!!11!oneone!!

- source: Gamasutra -