Blizzard Entertainment announced today that a new threshold, 11 million subscribers, has been reached for its flagship World of Warcraft MMORPG roughly four years after its launch in 2004.  This is a record number of subscribers for an online game with paid subscriptions, and outpaces the next tier of games in the category by roughly a factor of ten. 

World of Warcraft drives a lot of real-world product sales, including Upper Deck’s World of Warcraft TCG and soon-to-be-released World of Warcraft Miniatures, Fantasy Flight’s World of Warcraft Board Game, Tokyopop’s Warcraft manga, DC’s American World of Warcraft comics, and more. 

The second expansion for World of Warcraft, Wrath of the Lich King, will street November 13th.  The last World of Warcraft expansion (see “World of Warcraft Expansion”) sold 3.5 million units in its first month, a record at the time.  It will have to go a long way to exceed the launch of the new Grand Theft Auto earlier this year, which was not only a record for a videogame, but also a record for an entertainment launch in any category (see “Biggest Launch in Entertainment History”).