Just last year, Blizzard Entertainment crowed that it’s massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft had topped one million subscribers. Now, according to the New York Times, World of Warcraft has reached another milestone: some 7 million players worldwide, putting the company on track to pull in more than $1 billion in 2006 alone. Most WoW subscribers pay about $14 a month to participate in the game.
Perhaps a more interesting aspect of the WoW phenomena, though: the game is becoming a global hit on a scale not seen since games like Pac-Man and Tetris. No matter how popular they mightbe in a particular market, most video games don’t translate well across cultures. Stylized games from Japan rarely take off in the United States, and hit games Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and plenty of other games ruffle feathers in their "home" cultures without getting into the complications of international distribution. World of Warcraft, however, boasts more players in China (3 million) than in the United States (2 million). More than a million WoW players are in Europe, and game-eager South Korea is catching the bug. WoW also seems to translate across some demographics better than other games: World of Warcraft players are almost as likely to be middle-aged attorneys and busy professionals as teenagers or hard-core gamers. But they’re likely to be male, regardless of culture.
Not surprisingly, Blizzard has expanded tremendously with its success, growing from about 400 employees to over 1,800, most of whom have been added in customer support roles to take care of billing and technical glitches players may experience.
