Perhaps the biggest gaming juggernaut of the past decade has just reached its pinnacle of 11 million subscribers. Yes folks, there are 11 million subscriptions to World of Warcraft right now, making Blizzard’s MMO a force to be reckoned with. World of Warcraft is easily the biggest thing to happen to online gaming in a long time, and shows no signs of stopping.

<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--> World of Warcraft is currently playable in North America, Europe, Russia, Latin America, China, Korea, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Chile, Argentina, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. It’s available in eight different languages, and continues to grow each day. WoW it’s self was the best selling PC game of both 2005 and 2006, only being beat out in 2007 by its expansion, The Burning Crusade (The Burning Crusade sold about 2.4 million copies worldwide in it’s first 24 hours of release.)

Even in the current economic crisis The United States is facing, Blizzard is still hiring. Well, this really shouldn’t come as a surprise if 11 million people are paying approximately $15.00 USD a month to play (racking up a total of 165 million dollars US a month for Blizzard). Combine this with the highly anticipated expansion, The Wrath of the Lich King, due out November 13^th, and Blizzard is making quite the jackpot from their MMO franchise. Lich King will raise the level cap to 80, present the players with a new heroic class, and give then a ton of new areas and content to explore. I know I will be out there November 13^th at midnight buying my copy of Lich King (I’ve had it on reserve for months). Who else is for sure getting it? Lich King is priced at $39.99 US, so if it sells even half of what “Burning Crusade” sold in the first day, that will be $48 million US in Blizzard’s pocket. Add again the expected sales of the highly anticipated sequel to Starcraft on top of the World of Warcraft earnings, and Blizzard is easily one of the highest earners in the business.

<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]-->You’ve really got to hand it to Blizzard; they have created a real moneymaker. Why do you think WoW has become such a huge franchise? Are you one of the 11 million subscribers? How long are you going to stay loyal and keep subscribing?