One needs only play the game to understand the scope of the community. First of all, I don't know why people would care, other than the fact WoW is probably putting a significant hurt on a lot of other MMORPGs, and is causing a lot of them to have to step up big time to remain viable against it.
I don't know if 6 million is right or not, but it amazes me, for instance, that out of Joseph's 4th grade class, in little old Evans, GA, there are 4 families I know of that are subscribers. Europe has almost as many subs as the US, if you can believe their server populations, etc. Also, if you read the official forums, you see messages pushed off the front pages in 1-2 minutes by new posts during peak times, which IMO as a former forum operator, means massive numbers of people reading/posting all at once, and you HAVE to be a sub to post. Now, since only a small percentage of subs use the forums, and those that do probably spend 90% of their time playing, not posting, the population remaining to post must be a small percentage of active players. And that is just the US forums... Europe and Asia have their own.
I guess circumstantial evidence alone would signal to me there are million(s) of subs for sure... how many is anyone's guess.
WoW may not have 6 million people, but it certainly has more than even a million people.
You can't find a single city in the US that have at least one person who plays this game. The 6 million player odds are really not that crazy. Even for the US, that would be 2% of the population. Im by no means saying 1 on 50 people play, but in my head i know id have trouble thinking of 50 people who havent ever tried the game.
Its extremely popular.
You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
There probably isn't any meaning in life. Perhaps you can find something interesting to do while you are alive. Like how you found that flower. Like how I found you.
Just thought I'd point out that that article is over 7 months old. Burning Crusade sold 2.4 million copies in the first 24-hours. Whether they inflated the numbers or not it is the most popular MMO ever. I don't play WoW and don't really see the appeal personally. I think EQ2 has 300k to 500k which before the WoW monster would have been considered a huge success. I think what it boils down to is your individual server population. I play on the most populace EQ2 server and I feel like I am playing the greatest game in the world. However, I am sure there are some people who play WoW on low population servers and think the game is pretty bleak even if there are 6 million people playing worldwide. It's just a matter of perspective.