What?!
 
I can't believe that the number of people playing this game is still increasing.
 
that's just insane.

Technically many people have mutiple subs, so its not 12 million players - but still amazing!  I am one of them (hangs head in shame).

...That all?

Their last anounced subscription milestone was in Decemeber 2008.  And it was 11.5 million people.  And Wrath just came out in China, which surely was the last push that moved them over 12.  Between all the previously anounced milestones, they gained no less than 4000 subscriptions a day.  Since the last one, they have added 765 per day.  They might as well have said "Our numbers are nearly static, in fact they've been going down for a awhile, we just had to wait till a couple million people in China re-upped so we had some news we could admit to".   
 
That said, Cataclysm is pretty much designed for new players, so I'll be surprised if there isn't some big push to the people who never thought to try it.  Personally, I'm seeing a big Facebook ad campaign coupled with a free downloadable trial.   I've spent more than my fair share of time in Azeroth, I'll be sad when it's finally official that the end is coming. 

And that is with Cataclysm not even out yet...

12 millions subscribers paying 10 dollars each per month thats hundred million bucks

For anyone interested, if all of those are paid subscriptions, that's $180 million this month.

"For anyone interested, if all of those are paid subscriptions, that's $180 million this month. "

Hail to the king, baby.

12 million after 6 years blows my mind. Bring on Cataclysm!

I'd say this doesn't surprise me but on the larger scale it's still amazing to contemplate what WoW has done in the world of MMOs. I wonder what the player figures are going to be like post-Cataclysm.

It's insane it's still that popular after 6 years god dayum :). Well i'm coming back again for cata soon after a 2 year break ca. can't wait for new challenges

As one of those people who still has an account open (even though I haven't played in months), I have to wonder how many are people like myself, or dupe accounts, or goldsellers/hackers.  That being said, even if those all made up a quarter of the accounts, that's still a crapload. 
 

Perspective

Man thats over 6 times the population of my country...

Double the population of my country ! pretty insane 

just 12 ? it was 11 like 4 years ago.. i thought it might've hit 15 mil by now 
 
i am disappoint, WoW.

" just 12 ? it was 11 like 4 years ago.. i thought it might've hit 15 mil by now  i am disappoint, WoW. "

Plus the amount of people playing private servers is bound to add at least another 100,000

" @Ahmad_Metallic said:

" just 12 ? it was 11 like 4 years ago.. i thought it might've hit 15 mil by now  i am disappoint, WoW. "

Not really, no. The amount of subscribers back in 2006 wasn't 11 mil. "

sad

I'm one of them. We could overthrow the government, but I've got a raid scheduled after work.

12 million digital crackheads.

That's like 2.5 billion dollars a year... crazy.

I seriously fail to see why this game is so popular, I have a strict policy to never pay monthly for games, but even then a while back I decided to try WoW out just to see what the fuzz was all about, got a free month or something like that, played for about 2 hours and got extremely bored, didn't touched it again.

great, thats 12 mil ppl who arent in the competition for girls.