8 Oct, 2010
Blizzard have announced their MMO has surpassed the 12 million subscribers mark.
Getting over this massive number has been driven by the release of Wrath of the Lich King release in China at the end of August. Wrath of the Lich King was released on November 13, 2008, selling 2.8 million copies within the first 24 hours of availability. This made it the fastest selling computer game at the time.
The hugely successful Lich King expansion was received with excellent reviews hitting 91 on metacritic.
To get the expansion into China a number of changes where needed to get past the censors, you can check them out at chinagame but it mostly involves toning down the imagery for example turning blood from red to green.
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is currently in closed Beta and due to release in the Christmas run-up on 7th December. This expansion will include new races, updated zones, new quests.
Blizzard Entertainment CEO Mike Morhaime had this to say about this milestone:
“The support and enthusiasm that gamers across the world continue to show for World of Warcraft reaffirms our belief that it offers one of the best entertainment values available today,”
“We are as committed as ever to taking the game to new heights, and we look forward to demonstrating that with Cataclysm in December.”
World of Warcraft is available for Mac and PC.
Once they got into Asia, where MMOs are a much bigger deal with a huge market, they exploded. I’m surprised it’s only 12 million honestly. I think they could break that with Cataclysm; I’ve been playing the beta and the changes are going to make the game much more engaging for new players.