8 million subscribed to World of Warcraft

I never really understood WoW, don't get me wrong I usually love fantasy games but there's something missing in it, maybe it's the lack of story. Maybe it's that you can't play it casually, you're either there all the time or not there enough. I've got a few friends who play this and Guild Wars (Don't get me wrong Guild Wars doesn't look THAT bad) and they never play anything else these days. Another thing that bugs me is that they charge you a monthly fee whereas other MMOs don't these days.

Never understood WoW, or most MMOs.
I've played Matrix Online since Beta (October 2004) and I'm just quitting now, but I don't think I'd play another because I just don't *get* the fascination with the whole wizards and fairies and goblins thing (in a game, Lord of the Rings was pretty cool as a film :P)

I may try it at one point just to say I have but ... meh.

That's almost double the population of New Zealand!

I'm not one of those 8 million any more :D

absolute nuts to even pay that amount each month

The only MMO's I REALLY enjoyed were Planetside and SWG (when it came out) but then that was mostly due to the people I played along side. That and there wasn't an issue if there was a level gap.
Wow cannot be played anything but all the time, its a time/money/life sink.

I never really understood WoW, don't get me wrong I usually love fantasy games but there's something missing in it, maybe it's the lack of story.

OK, So which of you normal senses did you shut off? World of Warcraft has one of the most indepth story lines in any game I've ever played. On top of that there are thousands of Mini-Stories to be heard, and interact with, from NPCs & Quests everywhere.

Maybe it's that you can't play it casually, you're either there all the time or not there enough.

This is one of the only MMOs that I've found you can play Casually. Of course if you want to see the End Game Instances, 40 Man Raids etc, you need to put the time in. If not, you can just play if & when you chose.

Another thing that bugs me is that they charge you a monthly fee whereas other MMOs don't these days.

A rather large bone of contention, however, with out this monthly fee, I dare say the Customer Service would be non-existant. The fact that Blizzard do fix things, all be it, in their own sweet time, is one reason I'm happy to pay.
Besides, £8.99 a Month. As a member of a Raiding Guild, that gets me 3/4 Nights a week, chatting with upto 40 people I now consider friends, having a laugh & a joke.
£8.99 wouldn't get me & the missus into the cinema for a film (lasting 3hrs max), or even buy more than 3 pints in the pub. Hell, It's cheaper than 2 packs of Marlbrough, in fact, WoW helped me quit smoking, due to not wanting to leave the PC to smoke, and not being ale to do so in the house!

WoW can not be played anything but all the time, its a time/money/life sink.

Your point? It's not different to any other hobbie/pastime. WoW is a hell of a lot cheaper than PC Modding, you spend 3months building your dream PC, spending £1000's, only time find by the time you switch it on, it out of date.

To get back to the article
I've never understood if Blizzard used Units Sold, or Active Accounts to measure their Customer Base. Considering they have a habbit of Banning 1000's of Cheats & Gold Farmers every now and then (80,000 on the last report I read.)
But as for hitting 10million, shouldn't be that hard to do.

I bet they don't count the people that don't play anymore out of that little figure :p

I can't belive I was level 57 and just stopped playing...

Originally Posted by Jamie
That's almost double the population of New Zealand!

I'm not one of those 8 million any more :D

Hey!
Well I know a few people round ere that play, plus we are up there with the technology, we have had the equivalent of your chip and pin for just over 20 years. Take that w00t.
But seriously, I don't get what people like about it, but then again, different tastes I suppose. I can't see any value in art, but some can. Ah well, way to go blizzard, now can we have the next Diablo and Starcraft please.

Its funny....at a local gamestop there was a rack with wow on in and they had stickers on the box saying "5 million players online!" "6 million players online! "7 million players online!"

Sorry but I was considering trying it until 'Make Love, Not Warcraft'. After seeing that no way am I going to take even one hit of War-Crack. Funny, since Blizzard helped make the episode, presumably thinking it was good advertising. But hey, with eight million subscribers paying that monthly fee, they're probably not too worried about getting new customers.

I'm so sick of wow, even though i stopped playing about 5 months ago. Im still desperately waiting for something else to come along.

Currently my hope rests with Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.

It wouldn't surprise me though if that number increases more and more as ex-lvl60's come back to to level to 70.

to be honest its not a bad game and can be played casually. I just wish there was more in the world that changed when certain things were achieved.

lol I have most of next week booked off work so I can play the new expansion if the gameworld doesnt explode from sheer overload =)

Am i the only one who has added up the money blizzard makes a month off this game. THink about it people pay 15$ a month ok not THAT much. Then take in 8 million users paying said 15$. Your talking about 120 MILLION DOLLARS A MONTH. Now my guess is that measure units sold not users so ill cut that in half to say 4 million active users. Now with a bit of math im at wait for it STILL 60 MILLION DOLLARS A MONTH. I want to know where all that money trully goes like a spreadsheet of money spent by blizzard.

Anyways i played the game quit started again then quit again. I never truly enjoyed the game as its to much work trying to grind and do bull. I might out burning bossum over the summer but that will probally be it. I truly enjoy playing Warcraft 3 frozen throne more(the custom online games like tower wars are the shizzle).

I love wow.. only game I play nowerdays. As for the sub... it pays for the servers ingame support and additional content and bug fixing, and if you haven't used it the ingame support is very very good.

I think it might be units sold, but considering WoW has launch in nearly every major gaming location 8 million isn't too far fetched either. I just put down my reservation for Burning Crusade today. EBGames opens at midnight, and I plan to be leveling my new Alliance Shaman by 1am at the latest lol. My guilds just sorta cut back on raiding the 40 man content. With so much smaller scale content being offered by the expansion there is no point in pulling together 40 people just for Naxxramus anymore.

I played WoW for a bit, but later switched to EVE Online. I needed a MMO that challenged me more as WoW just got boring tbh.

i resisted playing wow for like 1.5 years as all my friends played and payed but I refused. Finally one day out of curiosity I started a warlock on my friends account, got to 27 before he found then I ran and bought a copy so I could get my own lock to 60.
I play pretty casually as in I'm not on 24/7 and it took me a quite a few months to get my one character to 60, I play it when there's nothing else to be played. still hop on CS and such, now that schools back up my time is again cut down, but no worries.

I had a chance to play in the beta, mucho fun running around in outlands

Originally Posted by infered101
Am i the only one who has added up the money blizzard makes a month off this game. THink about it people pay 15$ a month ok not THAT much. Then take in 8 million users paying said 15$. Your talking about 120 MILLION DOLLARS A MONTH. Now my guess is that measure units sold not users so ill cut that in half to say 4 million active users. Now with a bit of math im at wait for it STILL 60 MILLION DOLLARS A MONTH. I want to know where all that money trully goes like a spreadsheet of money spent by blizzard.

Anyways i played the game quit started again then quit again. I never truly enjoyed the game as its to much work trying to grind and do bull. I might out burning bossum over the summer but that will probally be it. I truly enjoy playing Warcraft 3 frozen throne more(the custom online games like tower wars are the shizzle).

Allot of the money goes into the server maintenance aswell as the support teams i would presume.

Also the game was in the R+D phase for a longtime and the costs that went into making it were pretty huge i hear, i would guess a chunk of the cash went into the money invested into making it as it did take a few years.

However with that said - They are now making a killing with the monthly income - its beyond imaginable what the shareholders must be getting....god i wish i invested in blizzard..

Man I didnt know so many gamers were so boring to play such a repetitive and pointless game.

Wait, China is in first? Are you sure it's not Korea? ;)

For a start, there are two Koreas. Secondly, assuming you mean South Korea - it has a population of 48 million. China has a population of around 1300 million ;)

Allot of the money goes into the server maintenance aswell as the support teams i would presume.

Also the game was in the R+D phase for a longtime and the costs that went into making it were pretty huge i hear, i would guess a chunk of the cash went into the money invested into making it as it did take a few years.

However with that said - They are now making a killing with the monthly income - its beyond imaginable what the shareholders must be getting....god i wish i invested in blizzard..

Dude, they gross 1.4Bn USD per annum at 8 million users. There is no way in hell employing 1600 people and a large number of servers takes up even half of that money.

Originally Posted by Solidus
Allot of the money goes into the server maintenance aswell as the support teams i would presume.

Also the game was in the R+D phase for a longtime and the costs that went into making it were pretty huge i hear, i would guess a chunk of the cash went into the money invested into making it as it did take a few years.

However with that said - They are now making a killing with the monthly income - its beyond imaginable what the shareholders must be getting....god i wish i invested in blizzard..

Taxes anyone?

And I don't believe they are traded publicly. Since they are owned by Vivendi, you might buy their stock, but I don't believe they are traded either.

i wasn't at all suprised that blizzard was able to crack open the MMO market. they have been the gold standard in pc gaming for years.

It can beat Australias population by next year ;)