World of Warcraft Reaches New Milestone, 11.5 Million Players are Now Playing

[malware]

Blizzard Entertainment today announced that World of Warcraft, its award-winning subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game, is now played by more than 11.5 million subscribers worldwide. This new high was reached following the November 13 release of the game's second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. Within its first 24 hours of availability, Wrath of the Lich King sold more than 2.8 million copies, making it the fastest-selling PC game of all time. In addition to winning a number of editor's choice awards from major gaming publications, the expansion has now gone on to sell more than 4 million copies in its first month, setting a new record for monthly PC-game sales. Both sales records were previously held by World of Warcraft's first expansion, The Burning Crusade.


"We're pleased to welcome the new and returning players who have helped World of Warcraft reach these new milestones, and we appreciate the enthusiasm and support that the game's global community has continued to show," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "We look forward to providing all of them with an excellent entertainment experience for a long time to come."

"Not only is Wrath of the Lich King still doing well, the base World of Warcraft game and the World of Warcraft Battle Chest are performing better than last year," said Bob McKenzie, senior vice president of merchandising at GameStop. "That type of traction is very impressive for a game that is going into its fifth holiday season and speaks to the enthusiastic player base Blizzard Entertainment products have."

To keep pace with the continued growth of World of Warcraft as well as development on other Blizzard Entertainment games, the company is currently hiring for numerous open positions. More information on available career opportunities can be found at www.blizzard.com/jobs. More information about the latest World of Warcraft expansion is available at the official Wrath of the Lich King website: www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath.

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[ShadowFold]

They need a way to get all these people on one or two servers. Imagine going into Orgrimmar and seeing a couple million people..

 

[El Fiendo]

Could you imagine trade chat with that many people on only 1 or 2 servers? I turn it off as it is and I'm on a low population server.

 

[Melvis]

DAM!! that's alot of money

 

[3870x2]

They need a way to get all these people on one or two servers. Imagine going into Orgrimmar and seeing a couple million people..

only that recommended system specs would then include a GTX285 minimum, and 2xGTX295 recommended.

 

[hat]

11.5 million? half of which are bots I'm sure

 

[human_error]

Great now with those extra subs maybe they can get around to fixing the game freezing and locking up peoples' computers issue (not been able to play properly for 2 weeks, and had intermittent issues with it since 3.0.2).

It is affecting both my gaiming rigs which are on very different setups minus the fact i have a 3870x2 in each of them and they both run vista ultimate 64...

 

[CrAsHnBuRnXp]

11.5 million? half of which are bots I'm sure

They are really cracking down right now on getting rid of the Gold sellers and the spam bots. As of right now on the server that im on (Dentarg), it has decreased dramatically.

 

[farlex85]

They need a way to get all these people on one or two servers. Imagine going into Orgrimmar and seeing a couple million people..

That's what I'm talking about, I can't wait for a MMORPG that can actually support this kind of population, instead of breaking it up everywhere. Technology needs to advance a bit more, maybe WOWII.

 

[ShadowFold]

That's what I'm talking about, I can't wait for a MMORPG that can actually support this kind of population, instead of breaking it up everywhere. Technology needs to advance a bit more, maybe WOWII.

yup I am not buying another MMO or paying for one until its actually MASSIVELY MULTILAYER. 1000 people just isn't massive enough for me.. I feel like I've played all MMO games after I played Everquest.

 

[3870x2]

That's what I'm talking about, I can't wait for a MMORPG that can actually support this kind of population, instead of breaking it up everywhere. Technology needs to advance a bit more, maybe WOWII.

also, its not the amount of "servers", rather, it is splitting up realms. There are hundreds of servers per realm.
You have to remember, the bandwidth required for that kind of thing would be retardedly enormous. Maybe when we get 90MB + connections, that would be possible.
I also look forward to it.

 

[mrw1986]

Shadow its 5000 people per server which is a good amount. Congratulations to Blizzard for this stellar achievement.

 

[DonInKansas]

23 million dollars / month in income for fees.

Jeebus.

 

[exodusprime1337]

actually its 172.5 million in fees /month 11.5mill x15 or so.

 

[Gam'ster]

Just let me re-place my bank details with blizzards for 1 month and ill be a happy man...well 2 weeks even and id still be happy. But well done to blizzard 11.5 million people is an amazing feat.

 

[Melvis]

Just let me re-place my bank details with blizzards for 1 month and ill be a happy man...well 2 weeks even and id still be happy. But well done to blizzard 11.5 million people is an amazing feat.

One day would do me fine gezzz lol

 

[CrAsHnBuRnXp]

If you literally only used two servers the amount of lag would be astounding.

 

[spearman914]

I need my dam money back. Bought 3 Wow Disks when i was 7.

 

[Gam'ster]

One day would do me fine gezzz lol

If your going to be greedy then do it properly lol , But saying that i would rather have 1 day than a swift kick in the bollocks....which as is goes is all i have now

 

[Triprift]

All those ppl having there lives taken away by the grindfest of wow. :shadedshu

 

[Melvis]

If your going to be greedy then do it properly lol , But saying that i would rather have 1 day than a swift kick in the bollocks....which as is goes is all i have now

LOL yea im greedy hehe, compared to the $235 i make a week now lol. Im sure 1 day would still make me rich enough to retire on

 

[reckon]

Are they counting the 6 million of chineses playing in pirate servers?

 

[CDdude55]

They must gots a lot of cash coming it.

I only played the WOW trial and i fell asleep. I like getting right into the action from the beginning.

 

[mdm-adph]

That's what I'm talking about, I can't wait for a MMORPG that can actually support this kind of population, instead of breaking it up everywhere. Technology needs to advance a bit more, maybe WOWII.

Ever heard of Eve-Online? One continuous world with hundreds of thousands of people -- no "realms" or anything like that. It's the MMORPG for people who are considered crazy about MMO's by people who are considered crazy about MMO's by normal people.

Shadow its 5000 people per server which is a good amount. Congratulations to Blizzard for this stellar achievement.

To be honest -- this guy used to rake WoW's public profile pages (the "Armory" pages) to gather information on the population of WoW's servers (information they don't let out). The best info he could gather (and this was highly impartial) was that quite a few of the servers had well over 15,000 people active at any given time.

 

[exodusprime1337]

11.5 million? half of which are bots I'm sure

lol even bot's pay they're monthly subscription fees lol