World of Warcraft hits 11.5 million subscribers
by Alex Ziebart 
Dec 23rd 2008 at 6:00PM
It's been recently announced that the World of Warcraft has hit another milestone: a grand total of 11.5 million subscribers. This really comes as no surprise after the release of an expansion, especially one as widely hyped as Wrath of the Lich King which broke a few records of its own. I think it would be bigger news if they hadn't hit a couple of new milestones.Gamesindustry.biz has a quote from Senior VP of merchandising at GameStop Bob McKenzie, indicating that it's not just Wrath of the Lich King doing well. These numbers haven't spiked because of all of the returning customers, WoW is gaining plenty of new ones, too. The base WoW package and the World of Warcraft Battle Chest are still doing quite well. Better than last year, he specifies. So while those base package purchases are certainly fueled by the Wrath hype, it's bringing in new customers, not just the returning customers.
WoW may not be the kind of game for every gamer out there, and the game isn't without its flaws. Despite that, it has proven over and over that it's by far one of the best games out there, and definitely the best of its genre. I don't expect it will be going away anytime soon.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, News items, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Halfmetal Dec 23rd 2008 6:04PM
You just earned the "11.5 million achievement."
Grats WoW
Mcdreamy Dec 24th 2008 10:34AM
So they've grown 15% since they were at the 10million subscriber point.
On my server, at least, you can tell they did not hire 15% more GM's to handle complaints.
Mj Dec 23rd 2008 6:05PM
It's nice to see something doing well in today's economy.
spacehyena Dec 23rd 2008 6:10PM
One of us...one of us...gooble-gobble, gooble-gobble...
Shadowfire67 Dec 23rd 2008 6:14PM
WoW is no where NEAR the best game out there, but it is the one of the best in the Genre.
Juicy Dec 23rd 2008 6:31PM
Well, that's up to each player to decide, really. I can say for sure that it is the game that I've spent most hours in front of, kind of making it the "best" game in my opinion.
Zulicha Dec 23rd 2008 8:49PM
I have to agree with Juicy on that. I have all major consoles also and each collect a lot of dust because of WOW. Through all the ups and downs that come with playing no game keeps me coming back like WOW, and I would say that 11.5 million others may feel the same
Nemesis Dec 25th 2008 6:42PM
Same, I've never played a game longer than I've played WoW just because it doesn't get boring, and stay boring. (Played for just over 2 years.)
jason Dec 23rd 2008 6:42PM
What's surprising is the sheer number of new players. It's not like WoW has kept alot of the old players and added to it. A great deal of players have left and WoW has brought in so many new players.
I found myself in a very large guild on my server and very few people even had a single 70. Most people were still working on their mains. That really blew me away.
Cowy Dec 23rd 2008 6:55PM
Wow... And this is why a "I QUIT QQ" thread falls on deaf ears.
Its like the Thunderdome in reverse: One man leaves, two men enter.
Vorgaak Dec 24th 2008 12:48AM
haha - very clever!
darkdeath43 Dec 23rd 2008 7:41PM
now everyone needs to just get in the same place adn we can start a country of wow players
Jyotai Dec 23rd 2008 8:31PM
Wasn't it 11 million before the expansion? Only a gain of 500,000? That's high, very high for most MMOs, but not so much for WoW.
Wonder what it will look like after the holiday sales figures are in.
Lemons Dec 24th 2008 5:08AM
Well, WoW got of it's subscribers in vanilla, idk how many were picked up during the course of bc but if I had to guess I'd say around 2-3 mil, so 500k is actually not a bad start for wotlk.
I just wonder what'll happen when all those noobs reach level 80 and find out that the game is so incredibly broken, maybe blizz will fix it b4 they do.
Bimmicus Dec 24th 2008 1:00AM
I wonder how many of these "new subscribers" are actually the same old players adding second accounts?
Jyotai Dec 24th 2008 1:50AM
Well I did see a stack of newbies today. Admittedly I was in Darnassus... But I walked into a conversation between two lowbie warriors asking how they could get a pet like the hunter than ran by us had... :)
I don't think they bought into my argument that warrior is a better choice for other reasons (hard to convince someone that being a tank will be more fun than being boring DPS when they don't even know what a tank is yet). Oh well. But yeah, I've been seeing a lot of newbies like that lately.
Anton Dec 24th 2008 3:12AM
Next news: WoW gained 11,6 million subs!
Thou its understandable that game is so popular, its one of the easiest MMO game out there, If you compare it to AoC,WAR or TCoS fighting systems. And kids dont like to play games which are hard :P
Lemons Dec 24th 2008 5:09AM
No, I'm an adult who doesn't like getting out my astrolabe every time I fight some1.
Anton Dec 24th 2008 8:20AM
I didn't knew that using your brain is called "Getting out astrolabe" O.o
Damon Dec 24th 2008 9:08AM
There's a difference between using your brain in a fight, which WoW does encourage, and being a master mathematician just so you can min/max every stat and get a perfect rotation of abilities going to reach the max combat value possible just so you can enter a lowbie dungeon.
"Easy to get into" doesn't mean "Bad" or even necessarily "Simple", it just means it's easy to get into.
Personally i think city of heroes has the best combat of any MMO. If there was more to the game than just that, i might actually subscribe to that one. But there isn't.