WoW! Ten Million
Posted by Stropp on January 23, 2008Okay. So it’s not exactly a breaking news item, but the figures are in. World of Warcraft has broken the ten million subscriber count. That’s nearly half the population of Australia.
This number only includes current paying subscribers. It hasn’t been padded out with players who left the game months ago, or players in the free trials, or unused prepay cards
The paid subscribers can be broken down as follows.
- North America – 2.5 million.
- Europe – 2 million.
- Asia – 5.5 million.
It goes to show that World of Warcraft is, simply put, a great game.
I know that I’ve been somewhat critical of WoW in the past and, since I’m downright opinionated and sometimes curmudgeonly, I’ll be critical in the future. Even now I think that there are things that Blizzard could be doing better with this game.
But, as the saying goes, the proof is in the pudding. Blizzard sat down, mixed up a batch of MMO pudding tastiness, baked it up, stuck their thumb in it and pulled out a huge plumb of gaming success. The fact that there are ten million subscribers means that World of Warcraft is what they want.
Nothing all the nay-sayers say can change that.
It also means that many of the predictions of the demise of Azeroth are wrong.
This doesn’t mean that WoW will be king of the hill forever. Things change, and often when it’s least expected. World of Warcraft, despite its development budget, in some ways came out of nowhere.
Everquest at the time was the king with something like 400,000 subscribers. At that time I remember reading statements in the gaming press saying that 400,000 was likely the limit. MMO gaming was too niche they said. I even recall the goals for Star Wars Galaxies being set somewhere around the 450,000 mark.
In the same way it’s premature to say that no-one will ever beat World of Warcraft. That time simply hasn’t yet arrived. I believe that one day there will be a WoW beater, and it will arrive on the trail made by Blizzard.
Think about it. The whole MMO Gaming phenomenon is extremely young, not much older than ten years. MUDs have been around a lot longer of course, but games like Meridian 59, Ultima Online, Everquest, and Asheron’s Call defined the genre we now enjoy. I’m not sure when M59 was released, but it was before UO which hit shelves in 1998.
The MMO genre has barely started and we are seeing huge audiences. We have barely scratched the surface of what can be done, or what can work in this type of gaming. What it will be like ten, twenty, or fifty years from now is anybodies guess.
Isn’t it exciting?
In the meantime, World of Warcraft is going from strength to strength. Now the real question becomes, will they reach fifteen million subscribers?
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M59 was about in 1995/6..loved it at the time…looting your pvp kill is something sorely missed in todays MMOs.
Thanks for the dates. Turns out UO was late 97, but released in Oz in 98.
Both allowed players to loot their PvP kills, and this was also the case with Asherons Call. It’s an interesting idea, but ended up not working the way the game was intended because of griefing and ganking.
You hear a lot about PvPs glory days in UO and how it was ruined by the Devs, but there is a good reason that the PvP server was abandoned in droves in favor of the PvE server.
Well I miss it…I prefer PvP to be that way. In my time in M59 it brought players together to hunt down the pker. PvP now is too safe and it nullifies the consequences of attacking another player.
I hear that Mythos has a option that you can play the game so that if your character is killed then that’s him gone…you don’t respawn & have to start over. I’d like to look at that…
Yep. It has a hardcore mode, much in the same vein as Battlenet Diablo 2. Exactly the same in fact. I haven’t tried that option out yet, I’m learning the ropes first.
OK have added you as friend in game…fingers crossed our paths cross! My character is Liber.
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