Wilki: Might wanna climb back on your chair, because Blizzard counts anyone who has bought a box, paid for 1 month of gameplay or bought a gametime card as a subscriber.

While I'm sure their active sub count is in the millions, 6.5 is a running total.

Going by that counting method, did you know that UO has well over a million subscribers?

Wilki: Yeah, maybe I'll send SirBruce and email and let him know we're changing the way we report sub numbers to the public :-P

That'd be a nice jump on the graph, eh?

And for those of you thinking you're being clever pointing out that UO has been around much longer than WoW, well yeah, duh. As if everyone reading this thread isn't already aware of that fact. WoW was still in beta when UO was celebrating it's 7th birthday.

So, while we on this topic... UO isn't WoW, won't ever be WoW, and we have no intention of trying to be WoW. Not that there is anything wrong with WoW, because it's a great game that I've played myself (along with lots of other MMO's), but it's a totally different game that aims for a different audience than UO does.

The total MMO marketplace is big enough for a lot of different designs and business models, and sure, it'd be nice if there was a World of Ultima that was as slick and made the kind of revenue that WoW does, but as of right now, that simply doesn't exist. UO is UO and WoW is WoW, and trying to compare the two is really comparing apples and oranges... there really isn't any point to be made that isn't already completely obvious to anyone with even the slightest bit of understanding of the MMO industry.