Patch 5.3 interview with Ghostcrawler
Mystery of the Unborn Val'kyr
The latest patch 5.3 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsWorld of Warcraft reaches 12 million players
by Adam Holisky 
Oct 7th 2010 at 10:33AM
That's a lot of Deadmines runs.
VanerasToday we announced that World of Warcraft has passed another major milestone and now hosts more than 12 million current subscribers around the globe. Check out the press release for the full announcement, and thank you to all of our players for making this possible -- we're grateful for all of the support and enthusiasm you've shown over the years, and look forward to continuing to provide you with great entertainment experiences for a long time to come.
For those wondering exactly what constitutes a subscriber, check after the break. Otherwise, know that Blizzard has pretty strict accounting practices, and this number isn't blown up by some cheap trick.
Blizzard PRWorld of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees' territories are defined along the same rules.
Filed under: News items
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 7)
francis2557 Oct 7th 2010 10:42AM
I thought they'd stalled for a while at 11 mil. Really, this is remarkable considering so many people have suspended waiting for Cataclysm.
jtrain Oct 7th 2010 11:01AM
Yeah, I thought that too. If anything, I thought the subscription numbers would have been down given where we are in the xpac cycle.
snowleopard233 Oct 7th 2010 11:16AM
China was a big hiccup too. Part of why they had so much explosive growth back in TBC was due to the game’s introduction on the mainland. However, due a lot of legal issues and problems with the Chinese government, WoW was actually shut down in mainland China for close to a year. A lot of people moved to the Taiwanese servers to play but I doubt everyone did and a bunch probably stopped playing.
A month ago the game went back online in mainland China and wrath was finally released. So, the China’s enormous gaming population could be tapping into WoW once more.
Kragragh Oct 7th 2010 11:55AM
I'd love to see the x million announcements graphed by date. I doubt you could find enough information to graph the subscriber increase smoothly from day to day (though obviously they can) but couldn't someone go through Blizzard's press releases, match the dates and make a line graph?
You know, like Homer Simpson running for garbage commissioner - "Can't Somebody Else Do It?"
jfofla Oct 7th 2010 12:30PM
Guess not so many have.
I know I won't!
prenden2 Oct 7th 2010 10:42AM
Thank you, China.
snowleopard233 Oct 7th 2010 11:19AM
Bu ke qi
Untflanked Oct 7th 2010 10:43AM
12 million... Because blizzard just has to let us know how much they make of us;D
Doanld Oct 7th 2010 10:52AM
180,000,000 US dollars a month at $15.00
Drakkenfyre Oct 7th 2010 11:42AM
Not every pays $15 a month. People in other countries pay less. People in China pay per hour (where it equals out about as much per month) and in most places if you pay for 6 months in advanced, you get a discount.
Stop saying they get $15xsubscriptions per month. This is used everywhere, and is not true.
Some places are $2 cheaper, some places are $2 more expensive.
Culhag Oct 7th 2010 11:37AM
Not everyone pays in US Dollars, or even pays a subscription.
Muse Oct 7th 2010 12:27PM
EU, not counting Russia, pays more.
Hanak Oct 8th 2010 1:45AM
Swedes who buy the 2-month game time cards pay somewhere around* 37$ / 2 months. It's more expensive if you pay per single month on a running sub and somewhat less if you buy 6 months at once.
*Currency exchange rates taken from Google
Leah Oct 7th 2010 10:51AM
Wow, that is a ridiculous amount of money.
$180,000,000 is just subscriber fees... a month. /flabbergasted.
Archipelagos Oct 7th 2010 11:24AM
Development costs are pretty phenomenal too, I'm guessing.
Pyromelter Oct 7th 2010 11:39AM
My guess is that it costs more to pay the electricity bill on their server farms than maintenance. (Servers use a ton of power.)
Golis Oct 7th 2010 12:00PM
Pyro... you are right about the costs of server farms, electricity, DB licensing, operating systems, Colocation licensing, Bandwith, Cooling, development, operations, customer support, logistics, marketing and, of course, the cost of hiring the effervescent Mr T., as being a lot more than we mere mortals can wrap our brains around.
$180M/month sounds like a fortune for any one of us. Shoot, I would settle for one day's worth of that revenue stream. But the real profit to Actiblizzard is only a fraction of that number once the profit/loss spreadsheet is complete.
I help design Cloud based software myself and we are not even close to the scale they must be dealing with. I can tell you the hidden costs can add up quick.
Pyromelter Oct 7th 2010 12:02PM
erg, i need coffee or something... what I meant to say is that server maintenance and power bills are likely more of a cost than the salary and benefits of the development team. In other words the infrastructure of how the game is hosted, that is likely blizzard's biggest expense in running World of Warcraft.
Chairman Kaga Oct 7th 2010 12:05PM
Or bandwidth bills. Try pricing out a few OC-192 fiber lines sometime. On the cheap end, those suckers are at least $250,000 a month -- each.
JR Oct 7th 2010 12:12PM
This has been debunked to death. You can't just multiply 15 dollars by 12 million and claim that's what Blizzard makes, because:
1) not everyone pays in US dollars (in fact those who do are probably a minority).
2) not everyone pays a monthly subscription (some people pay per hour played).
3) people who buy subscriptions longer than 1 month get discounts (for instance, at the US Blizzard Store you can get a 11-dollar discount if you buy a 6-month game time)