WOW: Two million subs

By GamesIndustry International Published 14 June, 2005

Major milestone reached.

Blizzard's massively multiplayer game World of Warcraft has reached another major milestone in its success, with the company today revealing that the service now has two million paying subscribers worldwide.

The figures place World of Warcraft comfortably among the largest subscription-based online games in the world, sitting just behind Korean firm NCSoft's vastly popular Lineage title in the record books.

The two million mark has been reached from subscribers in North America, Europe and South Korea, and Blizzard is expecting another major boost to its numbers following the commercial launch of the game in China earlier this month.

Figures from the public beta of the game in China showed up to 500,000 players using the servers concurrently, with six-figure queues to enter the game - numbers which come close to rivalling the peak concurrency in all three other territories combined.

Launches are also planned in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau later this year, all of which are major markets for online games - with Taiwan being the second most lucrative market in the far east for MMORPG titles after South Korea.

Speaking to our sister site GamesIndustry.biz recently, Blizzard's VP of business operations Paul Sams admitted that the huge demand for World of Warcraft had put an unexpected strain on the company's customer service and support plans.

"We want to do better than we have," he commented. "We have plans and aspirations and goals to be much better than we already are... Blizzard has the desire to be the best in class in the service that we provide and the overall experience. I think we've created a great game, but from a service perspective we have more work to do and I think that we'll get there."

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Comments (14) Latest comment 7 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • onyxbox #1 7 years ago

    It's my birthday tomorrow!

  • mattigan #2 7 years ago

    Happy birthday if I don't see you!

  • onyxbox #3 7 years ago

    cheers!

    :-D

  • quantumsheep #4 7 years ago

    How much do people pay to play this a month?

    £10?

    x2million

    equals...


    /faints

  • captain-future #5 7 years ago

    they sell GTA:SA every 3 months... nice for them.
    for me it's too expensive.

  • DarkTimes #6 7 years ago

    Roughly £10, bit less if you buy three-month or six-months subscription. To be honest it is not that expensive, equates to around £2.50 a week, which in Glasgow town centre would just about buy you a pint in most pubs. I've been playing since the beta, just about to buy another six-months subscription. Brilliant!

  • Gurgeh #7 7 years ago

    Shame most of the money's going straight to keeping Vivendi afloat and not to developing the game...

  • Tweakmonkey #8 7 years ago

    I just can't seem to get over the mental block that is a subscription based game.

    /checks wallet
    /moth flies out of wallet

  • #9 7 years ago

    /grats to WoW & Blizard. Damn fine game... Got some bugs still and the honour system sucks, but damn fine :)

    /GJ!

  • linksdad #10 7 years ago

    They certainly need to be a WHOLE lot better than they have been. Their billing systems is totally fubarred. Several people in my guild are currently locked out, and I have been told twice now that my account should work fine and it is still rejecting switch, master and visa cards.
    Allthough now at least they answer the phones, but cant do anything, except tell you things will be sorted in a week (a week ffs this is the internet age!). Must be a call centre staffed by monkeys, who pass little banana messages to overworked humans busily working their way through a mountain of banana messages! (or something)

  • Macross #11 7 years ago

    The honour system kicks ass you crazy foo'

  • #12 7 years ago

    Maccross... If they PUNISHED (Ie took away honorable kills) for ganking low levelers unless attacked first it would be better. Punished corpse campers too (multiple kills reduced your honour points).

    Ganking is a pain in the ass... Everyone knows it.
    Edited by at 15/06/05 @ 14:32

  • Burton2000 #13 7 years ago

    nsoft are the people behind guild wars a great company they are

  • Bertie Verified Senior Staff Writer, Eurogamer.net #14 7 years ago

    I think Lineage got something like 3.5 million at one point, so they're sitting quite far back still: but they might just get there.

    mmogchart for those interested.
    Edited by Bertie at 15/06/05 @ 17:36