Taken from your beloved Wowhead!

Wowhead wrote:

You know, just when you think WoW has FINALLY plateaued, they hit another milestone.

I caught an article on CNET this morning referencing a press release from Activision-Blizzard, announcing that they have reached a monumental 12 million subscribers. That's active subscribers, too—the press release defines subscribers as "...individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access."

The CNET article goes on to make some somewhat laughable claims about what this means for the future of WoW (for instance, that if we use Everquest as a guide, we can predict that WoW will release 480 expansions over its lifespan), but the core number is astounding. Even now, when everyone is kind of waiting for Cataclysm to start everything back up again, WoW's subscribers are still increasing.

Here's the cool part:

Somebody I don't know who wrote:

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™.

well I wonder how many have more than 1 account

Lol 12 millions "active scrubscribers", it's so fun to see the guys from the marketing "masturbate?" on their reports. Pretty certain each accounts created in China are counted as subscribers, as long as there's some credit on it.
I'm 3 "active scrubscribers" of their 12 millions.