WORLD OF WARCRAFT? SUBSCRIBER BASE REACHES 12 MILLION WORLDWIDE PARIS, France – October 7, 2010 – Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. announced today that the subscriber base for World of Warcraft?, its award-winning massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), now exceeds 12 million players worldwide. This milestone was reached in the wake of the mainland Chinese launch of World of Warcraft’s second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King?, and also as global anticipation continues to mount for the December 7 release of the game's third expansion, Cataclysm™. source:Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.
^^ This They state in one of the blue posts, that they count anyone who has logged game time in an internet cafe'. Now that WotLK is released in China, they are probably making a killing.