Blizzard: 9 million subscribers play World of Warcraft

Today Blizzard announced the number of World of Warcraft active subscriptions has reached 9 million.

According to the press release, this subscription number includes active accounts, prepaid card accounts, and accounts that are still within their first month of play but have not necessarily subscribed. It does not include expired subscriptions or promotional accounts.

Just last January, subscribers totaled 8 million—2 million on North America realms—and the Burning Crusade expansion pack sold more than 2.4 million copies in the first 24 hours of its release.

While Blizzard has not released its game sale numbers, both World of Warcraft and Burning Crusade are at the top of most PC game sale charts, according to the Gamasutra’s Saling the World column.

“Since it is a subscription based game, the number of active subscribers is the more relevant statistic,” commented Bob Colayco, associate public relations manager for Blizzard, via email. “I can tell you though that both World of Warcraft and World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade have been almost permanent fixtures in the weekly PC Games top sales charts in the US and elsewhere in the world.”

--L. Waymire