It's a fallacy to state that WoW has 5 million players. WoW has 5 million subscriptions - at least half of which are involved in the various facets of the secondary market. It's also important to note that Blizzard's last press release regarding subscription totals came shortly after a downloadable two-week trial was made available and it's likely that a significant number of trial accounts that never gave Blizzard a time were included in the total. I'd also guess that many of the users they picked up through regional releases in the same time frame no longer play either. I would guess their 6 months of silence on the subject at least suggest that their total active subscriptions have at least stalled and probably have begun to drop.
In short, 5 million is an incredibly inflated number. There is plenty of room for the industry to grow.
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It's a fallacy to state that WoW has 5 million players. WoW has 5 million subscriptions - at least half of which are involved in the various facets of the secondary market. It's also important to note that Blizzard's last press release regarding subscription totals came shortly after a downloadable two-week trial was made available and it's likely that a significant number of trial accounts that never gave Blizzard a time were included in the total. I'd also guess that many of the users they picked up through regional releases in the same time frame no longer play either. I would guess their 6 months of silence on the subject at least suggest that their total active subscriptions have at least stalled and probably have begun to drop. In short, 5 million is an incredibly inflated number. There is plenty of room for the industry to grow.