How many people are playing World of Warcraft?

According to a Blizzard press release over 5 million people worldwide play World of Warcraft. Further they also say:

"With a strong presence across Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America, World of Warcraft has quickly become the world's most popular MMORPG. "

What does that mean? Check out: ProjectMassive.com. I was floored when I compared the results of the wave one survey ("#3 - What game have you played most?") to the wave two survey (#4 - "What MMOG are you playing most?") to wave three (#4 - "What MMOG are you playing most?"). Talk about a holy cow moment!

Be part of the survey and complete the questions as part of wave 4. Then check out the in depth results on guilds, groups and online socialization at this white paper. (The research is based at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and is not commercially sponsored.)

They reviewed the free form answers to wave 1. I learned in the white paper that wave one they posted in online forums, etc. in certain games (they did not list WoW as one of them) to let people know about the survey. Perhaps that's why the first wave showed fewer people's playing WoW. We conducted fifteen one hour interviews with members of guilds in the game
Everquest.

I found the whole thing terribly interesting, but here are some excerpts:

• Committed players reported playing 18-24 hours per week while average players reported playing 12-18 hours per week. Uncommitted players reported playing 10-12 hours per week.
• Males comprised 90% of the sample, with 187 female respondents
  participating.