The9, which is the company that runs Blizzard's
World of Warcraft in China, has announced today that
the game has hit a full million concurrent players (which means that they've had one million people playing the game all at the same time) following the
release of the Burning Crusade expansion there last year. Here in North America, concurrent users hasn't
really ever been as high (although that is of course
unofficial data, and we don't have information after the first month of this year). But MMOs are a different beast in China and other Asian countries -- not only do players pay-to-play (instead of a monthly fee, many players often pay hourly or daily, which means concurrent users equals paying users), and there are actually
three games that have hit a million concurrent users over there (while here,
WoW is far and above the largest MMO online).
Still, it's quite an achievement. It's interesting that it's coming so late in the product's life -- it seems that, just as over here, the expansion had a significant impact on player interest. Definitely a big milestone for Blizzard's game in China.
Tags: blizzard, burning-crusade, china, concurrent, milestone, mmo, north-america, the9, users, world-of-warcraft
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves, Odds and ends, Blizzard, The Burning Crusade
Apr 11th 2008 at 11:30AM 
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Theserene Apr 11th 2008 11:35AM
How many of those are gold farmers?
imxiaozhu Apr 11th 2008 11:46AM
As many as people needs
kenney Apr 11th 2008 12:46PM
I don't think gold farming accounts go through The9, since it typically occurs on US/EU servers.
Most likely this is just a lot of happy chinese gamers enjoying the game as much as we do.
M Apr 11th 2008 1:33PM
Way less than the American/European tools, such as yourself, playing on American/European servers.
Pzychotix Apr 11th 2008 11:47AM
None. Since you can't sell to the poor. Makes no sense for the Chinese to sell to themselves, since the average Chinese person makes AT LEAST ten times less than the average US/EU player. That means even if people in China did buy gold, they'd be buying it at rates far below the one's here.
It's really not worth it.
onyx.ceilican Apr 11th 2008 2:06PM
The REAL reason Wrath is coming out... so that all the new gold farmers can spread out more...
Just think of trying to fit 1 million gold farmers into the current world size... can't be done... they'd be piled on top of each other outside of banks yelling "Herro! buy my gold!"
dart Apr 11th 2008 7:13PM
Idiots, The Chinese version of WoW doesn't have any farmers. Why would they have have a million farmers, there is no market for that.
Gwwwfps Apr 11th 2008 7:41PM
Actually, the only payment model The9 uses is charge-by-minute. People buy prepaid cards with either 4000 or 2000 minutes on them. Not allowing a monthly subscription is one of the major complaints the players have.
As for gold farmers, they certainly exist in CWoW, but they are limited in number. They are also disliked by most, since many sellers derive their primary source of gold from account hacking.