WoW breaks 10-million subscribers.
Blizzard also explicitly defined who it counted as subscribers, clarifying that the 10 million number (2.5 in the U.S and Europe each, 5 million in Asia; currently available in 7 languages and coming soon to Russian) refers to those who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access.
The count does not include free promotional subscriptions, expired or canceled subscriptions or prepaid cards.
For the purposes of comparison, CoH has about 120 to 150 thousand active subscribers at any given time. LotRO has, at last report, 300k and rising.
People need to stop comparing WoW to other US-developed MMOs in terms of subscribers or size or ‘who wil be the WoW-killer’. 10 MILLION people isn’t a game, it’s a city. Comparing WoW to something like DnD Online is like comparing CoH’s playerbase to the population of Chicago.