World of Warcraft Hits 9 Million Users

Blizzard's hit MMORPG now hosts more people than America's biggest city, and the numbers keep on growing.

The pool of World of Warcraft diehards just keeps getting bigger. Although the game is going on three years old, it has only become more popular with time: Blizzard reported Tuesday that the game now has 9 million subscribers worldwide.

To lend some perspective, that’s greater than the population of all five boroughs of New York City (8.2 million as of 2006), and right about equal with the population of Sweden (9 million as of 2004). World of Warcraft fans, banded together, could overfill a metropolis or populate their own country.

"We’re thrilled that gamers around the world have continued to embrace World of Warcraft so enthusiastically," said Mike Morhaime, president and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment,in a statement. "We’ve worked hard to provide a compelling experience for our players, and we plan to continue updating the game with exciting new content for them to enjoy for many years to come."

According to Blizzard, World of Warcraft is the most popular massive online role-playing game (MMORPG) in the world. It was a best selling PC game for 2005 and 2006, and the Burning Crusade expansion pack broke industry records by selling 2.4 million copies in 24 hours.