Blizzard Entertainment launched its World of Warcraft online game a little over a year ago, and it seems like just yesterday the company was touting the game had four million players around the world. Well, no more: the company now says more than 5 million people worldwide are customers of the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG).
Although the population of the continuously-running game varies constantly, Blizzard considers a “customer” anyone who’s paid a subscription fee, purchased a pre-paid play card for World of Warcraft, those who have purchases a retail box version of World of Warcraft with one month access included, and folks who have played via the Internet Game Room within the last seven days.
World of Warcraft’s population makes it the world’s largest MMORPG, and the company continues to expand and enhance the game with new scenarios and expansions, with a significant expansion, The Burning Crusade, planned for 2006. However, play has not been without some quirks, such as the Corrupted Blood “plague” which erupted in the game in September 2005 and spread so quickly it ground some of the game servers to a halt, forcing Blizzard to jump through hoops to patch the game and keep play active.
