Money hat in every Blizzard employee's stocking.

[Shockeye]

WORLD OF WARCRAFT® SURPASSES FIVE MILLION CUSTOMERS WORLDWIDE

Customer base reaches new heights as Blizzard Entertainment®'s MMORPG continues its growth in North America, Europe, and Asia

IRVINE, California - December 19, 2005 - Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that World of Warcraft®, its massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), has surpassed five million customers worldwide. The subscription-based MMORPG launched approximately one year ago in North America, Australia, and New Zealand and has since released in multiple countries throughout Europe and Asia. This latest milestone comes on the heels of Blizzard Entertainment®'s recent announcement of a World of Warcraft expansion, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade™, which will push the boundaries of the game and offer even more content and features for players.

"World of Warcraft's growth continues to exceed all our expectations," said Mike Morhaime, president and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "We want to reiterate our thanks to the millions of players worldwide and to all the retailers who have enthusiastically supported the game over the past year. Our commitment to continue growing World of Warcraft is stronger than ever, with development on future content patches and on our 2006 expansion, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, well underway. We look forward to offering even more content for current customers in the months ahead and welcoming new players into the world this holiday season."

With a strong presence across Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America, World of Warcraft has quickly become the world's most popular MMORPG. Most recently, the game was launched in the regions of Taiwan, Macau, and Hong Kong on November 8, 2005.

As World of Warcraft's population grows, Blizzard continues to support the game with additional content through regular patches and a planned expansion pack, set to release in 2006. World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade will add new lands, quests, monsters, magic items, spells and abilities, two new player races, a new player profession, 10 new levels of power for players to achieve, and much more. Additional information on the expansion and the game's regular content updates can be found at the official World of Warcraft website.

World of Warcraft's Customer Definition
World of Warcraft customers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or purchased a prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the installation box bundled with one free month access. Internet Game Room players that have accessed the game over the last seven days are also counted as customers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired pre-paid cards. Customers in licensees' territories are defined along the same rules.

About Blizzard Entertainment®, Inc.
Best known for blockbuster hits including the Warcraft®, StarCraft®, and Diablo® series, Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. (www.blizzard.com), a division of Vivendi Universal Games, is a premier developer and publisher of entertainment software renowned for creating many of the industry's most critically acclaimed games. Blizzard's track record includes nine #1-selling games and multiple Game of the Year awards. The company's free Internet gaming service, Battle.net®, reigns as the largest in the world, with millions of active users.

Someone said that any game over 100,000 subscribers is no longer niche, but I'd have to disagree. I think anything under 1 million can be considered niche when you have a beast like WoW hulking around out there.

[Alkiera]

WORLD OF WARCRAFT® SURPASSES FIVE MILLION CUSTOMERS WORLDWIDE

World of Warcraft's Customer Definition
World of Warcraft customers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or purchased a prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the installation box bundled with one free month access. Internet Game Room players that have accessed the game over the last seven days are also counted as customers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired pre-paid cards. Customers in licensees' territories are defined along the same rules.

Someone's been reading our forums. 

Alkiera

[tazelbain]

Yep, they are badasses, but still not going to play it.

[cevik]

Someone's been reading our forums. 

Alkiera

Yeah, that section might have well as started with "Dear Diaspora of Lum."

[Merusk]

I dunno.. I'd rather interpret it as, "Hey Sony, here's exactly what we're counting. We know how you're fudging numbers. Fuck you."

[HaemishM]

Bravo to Blizzard for not only kicking the ass of everyone else out there, but also "Affleck-ing"* any of these idiotic furry fuckheads by stating exactly what counts as sub so they can put it in their chart and suck it.

*Affleck-ing: To surreptitiously place one's testicles, junk or genitalia on or near someone's face, usually on the shoulder of your director while he's otherwise engaged.

[HRose]

It doesn't tell much anymore since we have no clue about how the subscription numbers are divided between the zones.

[Lt.Dan]

World of Warcraft's Customer Definition
... The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired pre-paid cards. Customers in licensees' territories are defined along the same rules.

Doesn't shed any light on the size of any (if any) flood of cancelled accounts though.  And it has the neat-o property of never going down.

[Yegolev]

It would be cool if Smed was drinking a tall glass of water when he read this.

[Lum]

No offense to you guys (or myself) but I can personally attest that most Blizzard developers have no idea who I am, or any "Diaspora of Lum". They generally keep to their own forums, and don't usually attend trade shows (when they do, it's very much in packs, surrounded by frenzied prospective employees brandishing resumes). Blizzard is very much the "rock stars" of the gaming community, for good or ill.

I suspect that PR was aimed at industry analysts who continue to quibble over what a "customer" is defined as, especially in Asia. FF11's reports have much the same verbiage.

[Hoax]

Aren't you like an indy rock star or something though?  Your like O'Reiley + Facts or you were before you sold out.   

[Shockeye]

Aren't you like an indy rock star or something though?  Your like O'Reiley + Facts or you were before you sold out.   

When I met Lum in Austin he did have a pack of groupies around him with one singing his theme song and another carrying the dry ice smoke machine.

[Lum]

It's great. All I have to do is hold out my hand and WHAM, instant Diet Coke, nicely chilled to my specifications.

[HaemishM]

No offense to you guys (or myself) but I can personally attest that most Blizzard developers have no idea who I am, or any "Diaspora of Lum". They generally keep to their own forums, and don't usually attend trade shows (when they do, it's very much in packs, surrounded by frenzied prospective employees brandishing resumes).

You forgot the mobile throne carried on the naked, sweaty backs of Blizzard fanbois and the trailing line of zealots whipping themselves furiously with their frayed copies of the WoW art book.

[schild]

Bravo to Blizzard for not only kicking the ass of everyone else out there, but also "Affleck-ing"* any of these idiotic furry fuckheads by stating exactly what counts as sub so they can put it in their chart and suck it.

*Affleck-ing: To surreptitiously place one's testicles, junk or genitalia on or near someone's face, usually on the shoulder of your director while he's otherwise engaged.

You mean the fruit-basket.

[Merusk]

No offense to you guys (or myself) but I can personally attest that most Blizzard developers have no idea who I am, or any "Diaspora of Lum". They generally keep to their own forums, and don't usually attend trade shows (when they do, it's very much in packs, surrounded by frenzied prospective employees brandishing resumes). Blizzard is very much the "rock stars" of the gaming community, for good or ill.

I suspect that PR was aimed at industry analysts who continue to quibble over what a "customer" is defined as, especially in Asia. FF11's reports have much the same verbiage.

Geez, Scott, why do you always have to go inserting reality into people's fantastic visions.  I'm beginning to think there WASN'T a bagel. 

[Mesozoic]

World of Warcraft's Customer Definition
... The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired pre-paid cards. Customers in licensees' territories are defined along the same rules.

Doesn't shed any light on the size of any (if any) flood of cancelled accounts though.  And it has the neat-o property of never going down.

I'm not following.  Since their definition explicitly excludes cancelled subs, then the sub # certainly could go down, if more people cancelled than came in over a given time period. 

And if there is a lot of cancelled subs, then where did they go?  Are there (say) a million players out there who just disappeared, choosing not to play any other MMO at all?

[Nija]

Maybe. In my gaming group only 5/40 people have active accounts to any mmogs.

[El Gallo]

And if there is a lot of cancelled subs, then where did they go?  Are there (say) a million players out there who just disappeared, choosing not to play any other MMO at all?

I'd like to think that there will be, sometime in my future, at least one day where I am not subscribed to a MMO. 

Yes, I know I'm lying to myself.

[Arthur_Parker]

I dunno.. I'd rather interpret it as, "Hey Sony, here's exactly what we're counting. We know how you're fudging numbers. Fuck you."

They could at the very least have made the first letter from every sentence read "Hey Sony Fuck you".  CIDB TTWW OWW AWAW WTCABBT doesn't mean anything to me, maybe it's coded.

[Lt.Dan]

World of Warcraft's Customer Definition
... The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired pre-paid cards. Customers in licensees' territories are defined along the same rules.

Doesn't shed any light on the size of any (if any) flood of cancelled accounts though.  And it has the neat-o property of never going down.

Ah you're correct.  Reading comprehension not my strong point obviously.
I'm not following.  Since their definition explicitly excludes cancelled subs, then the sub # certainly could go down, if more people cancelled than came in over a given time period. 

And if there is a lot of cancelled subs, then where did they go?  Are there (say) a million players out there who just disappeared, choosing not to play any other MMO at all?

edit: quotes are hard

[Jeff Kelly]

WORLD OF WARCRAFT® SURPASSES FIVE MILLION CUSTOMERS WORLDWIDE

World of Warcraft's Customer Definition
World of Warcraft customers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or purchased a prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the installation box bundled with one free month access. Internet Game Room players that have accessed the game over the last seven days are also counted as customers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired pre-paid cards. Customers in licensees' territories are defined along the same rules.

In my interpretation this means nothing other than that expired accounts or pre-paid cards are not counted as customers. So those 5.000.000 are the people actually playing and not the ones who have been subscribed to the game at some time in the past.

[Venkman]

It doesn't tell much anymore since we have no clue about how the subscription numbers are divided between the zones.

We can, of course, extrapolate though, have, and will :)

A few months back China had 1.5mil and the U.S. was pushing 1mil. There were numbers for Europe, Taiwan, Korea, and a number of other countries and regions too. It's all academic sophestry though, so not worth the few minutes it'd take to dig them up.

It just doesn't matter. They have 20% more players than they did when they reported 4mil. Regardless of where those numbers actually are, a percentage of them is X * the monthly fee. This could theoretically put VUG in the black, somewhat unknown territory of them for late. It's a measure of how bad things got, and how big VUG is, that the 4mil subscribers weren't going to do that for them.

[HRose]

Well, they announced in November they had 4.5 millions and it was before the launch somewhere else. In fact what everyone is forgetting is that WoW still hasn't stopped to *launch*.

So the rise from 4.5 to 5 million could still be just the consequence of the latest launched. Imho WoW is still growing in NA. The box is still in the top ten sales. But I believe that this growth is slowly decreasing.

The was a post I cannot find now. Maybe on TerraNova, maybe on Raph's blog or somewhere else, explaning how WoW's income is heavily dependent on the box sales and other various considerations/insight.

I hate when I cannot find stuff.

[Sunbury]

Its the first MMOG in my experience where one still sees many many true newbies in the starting areas, one year after release.

(At least I hope those are true newbies, since I can't imagine someone with L60's on other servers asking those questions, or playing the way they do).

I jumped into some servers, and the flyover intro (which is live data btw) on char creation convinced me to try a different server!

Also old (NA) servers continue to fill, so its not just new servers people are jumping too.

[Venkman]

Really depends on the server I think. Icecrown doesn't have anywhere near the population in newbie areas as some of the newest servers have. This is due to some players being directed away from the launch servers, and everyone else being 60 :)

[bhodi]

Really depends on the server I think. Icecrown doesn't have anywhere near the population in newbie areas as some of the newest servers have. This is due to some players being directed away from the launch servers, and everyone else being 60 :)

Last time I ran census, 55% of alliance icecrown was 60. half of those were night elves. fucking elves.

[Mesozoic]

Really depends on the server I think. Icecrown doesn't have anywhere near the population in newbie areas as some of the newest servers have. This is due to some players being directed away from the launch servers, and everyone else being 60 :)

Last time I ran census, 55% of alliance icecrown was 60. half of those were night elves. fucking elves.

Wait till the expansion.  Your gain will be our woe.  I fully plan to spam "XX Hunter LFG, no elves" across Org, etc.

[eldaec]

So the rise from 4.5 to 5 million could still be just the consequence of the latest launched. Imho WoW is still growing in NA. The box is still in the top ten sales.

Strange thing is, all of a sudden all MMOGs seem to be growing.

As well as WoW, EQ2 and CoV are both getting permium shelf space in the UK, and depending on which store you look in, all 3 are often in the top seller section.

Naturally this is only premium PC space. And of course that is largely crowded into the back somewhere behind racks and racks of inane console bollocks, but nonetheless it's a big shift from how little attention year old MMOGs would have been getting prior to WoW taking off.

[HRose]

Strange thing is, all of a sudden all MMOGs seem to be growing.

Where? I see no evidence of this. SOE stopped to release numbers, the same for NCSoft (which used to release *exact* numbers every 6 months).

There's an overall growth, and it is supposed that this overall growth is good for everyone. But I still have to see a concrete proof that this isn't just a myth.

[schild]

HRose, you're too fucking hardcore for your own good. Go play some frisbee.

[Venkman]

Strange thing is, all of a sudden all MMOGs seem to be growing.

I don't know that this is strange really.

Considering that most MMOGs continue to grow in subscriptions for some time after launch (with CoH being the most glaring exception), it's not surprising that their prominence doesn't diminish. Yea, them being PC games means they're the red-headed stepchild of retail locations. But the games sold in those places are sold half on planned-purchase and half on impulse buy.

MMOGs meanwhile are still mostly planned-purchase, as in, someone hears about it goes to the store (or Amazon, or eBay, or wherever) to buy it. The genre itself is still hardcore enough by requiring a credit card just to start and a dedicated internet connection to play. This is long been my reason for not linking MMOGs to holiday sales. All the growth that successful games have enjoyed over the years has been through incremental account establishment over that year. There's occasional spikes, specifically at launch, but (and again, unlike CoH), MMOGs are games people purposely go get.

Impulse buys are console and handheld fair because of their low barrier of entry, whereas MMOGs have a higher barrier.

But I still have to see a concrete proof that this isn't just a myth.

You'd have to assume that every player that went to WoW and GW, even just in the U.S. alone, abandoned their existing game entirely to assume the genre hasn't enjoyed growth in 2005. And prior to that, we had just enough ok information to know it was trending up. We don't need seventh-decimal-place accurate numbers to know there's been an overall increase in the number of people playing MMORPGs in NA, and more so worldwide. When the mass media starts picking up inane stories similar to those we've all been sharing for years, you know things are really picking up.

[Mesozoic]

I dread the day that MMOGs tip the balance and actually come to the collective attention of American society, GTA-style.  One day you'll turn on the TV and there will be a talking head on FOX News.  You'll be flipping channels as you catch:

"..these "Warlocks" summon demons, John.  Demons that kill other players.  Kids in China are dying right now."

Then we're in a world of shit.

[HaemishM]

I AM... in a world... of shit.

[Mesozoic]

I AM... in a world... of shit.

Save that talk for the EQ2 forum.