Only seven months after Vivendi, Blizzard's parent company, announced that WoW has reached 8 million subscribers to leading MMO World of WarCraft, the next million of regular players has been reached. Blizzard's definition for the term "subscriber" comprises all gamers who are in the first "free" month included with purchasing the boxed version, players using the regular subscription, people using an active prepaid card and also internet cafe players (mostly in Asia) who have logged in at least once within the last 30 days -- but not, for example, players using a 1 or 2 week freeplay offer. As usual, Blizzard/Vivendi do not disclose how many of that 9 million players come from which countries or continents. the publisher anticipates another sharp increase in numbers when the addon Burning Crusade will be released in China.