Cataclysm sells 3.3 Million!

[Truhan]

Yah, Lich King wasn't meant to last as long as it did and Cataclysm will end up stagnant too if it lasts for two years; so I'd say Cataclysm will be at least one year.

In the interview from MMO Report, Chilton indicated they wanted to push expansions every year and a half, but they had to push the release of Cataclysm back several times to finish zones they never intended to change very much. Let's look at the track record (not counting Vanilla, since its themes for raids were all over the place):
Burning Crusade - 2.4 patch made solely as a filler patch because of development slag in WotLK (and because the "big boss" of the expansion was rushed)
Wrath - 3.3 added in December 09. 3.3.5a added another raid in June to tide people over until their then-internal target release of September (by June/July they knew they would have to push the date back into Black Friday, and later December)
My prediction:
Deathwing in a January/February patch. They will be targeting for an August/September release that will probably be pushed into early November. Filler patch? Hopefully, those will happen BEFORE the big end-expansion boss rather than AFTER, but history shows that will not be the case.

[MildCorma]

Even though it has 12 million subscribers does not mean it 12 million play it.I think blizzard just has counted how may has had subscribed.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6285314...topstory;title
http://blog.games.yahoo.com/blog/258...on-in-24-hours

They count how many subscriptions there are that:

- Are paid subscriptions, not trials
- have been active within the last month
- Are paid and up-to-date

That's the only way they can get records, not by handing out free trials and going "look 12 million lol".