But without saying much that would be worth a discussion:

WORLD OF WARCRAFT® SURPASSES FIVE MILLION CUSTOMERS WORLDWIDE

Customer base reaches new heights as Blizzard Entertainment®’s MMORPG continues its growth in North America, Europe, and Asia

IRVINE, California – December 19, 2005 – Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that World of Warcraft®, its massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), has surpassed five million customers worldwide. The subscription-based MMORPG launched approximately one year ago in North America, Australia, and New Zealand and has since released in multiple countries throughout Europe and Asia. This latest milestone comes on the heels of Blizzard Entertainment®’s recent announcement of a World of Warcraft expansion, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade™, which will push the boundaries of the game and offer even more content and features for players.

It sounds more like a pitch for the expansion and a revindication of market leadership.

These reports don’t tell much anymore since we have no clue about how the subscription numbers are divided between the zones. So we cannot know what actually would matter:

Given the nature of the business, of course, no company will post any useful numbers… But I bet they’d be interesting to compare between games. Especially the meta-data such as churn rate, return sub rate, etc.

The last relevant news were released at the end of August. Considering the last press release it’s possible they reached the top.