Blizzard Entertainment president Mike Morhaime was listed number four on PC World’s most influential 50 Internet personalities this week right behind Sergey Brin/Larry Page, Steve Jobs, and Bit Torrent’s Braum Cohen. His name was above many other recognizable intenet figures: Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Chad Hurley and Steve Chen (YouTube), Craig Newmark (Craigslist), Matt Mullenweg (WordPress), and Jeff Bezos (Amazon) to name a few.
“In the world of online gaming, there is World of Warcraft and there is everything else. With 8 million players worldwide, Blizzard earns about $1.5 billion a year on WoW… As with Second Life (#17), entire real-world businesses are based around the game.”
Sure, a list is a list; but it’s no coincidence where Morhaime has been placed. Let’s say it again: $1.5 billion a year on World of Warcraft subscription fees. In addition, the company just increased its subscriber base by a total of 500,000 to 8.5 million in just under two months with the release of their newest expansion pack, The Burning Crusade. The expansion has sold over 3.5 million copies in just one month, faster than most successful stand alone PC titles. (!) And it sold more copies (2.4 million) in the first 24 hours than any other PC game has sold in its first month ever. (!!) Cyworld’s Henry Chon and Linden Lab’s Philip Rosedale took the 13th and 17th spots respectively.
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