Blizzard Wizard in the Middle Kingdom

Whether we like it or not, this is something of a milestone:

Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. announced today that World of Warcraft, its subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), is now played by more than 8 million gamers around the world. World of Warcraft has also achieved new regional subscriber milestones, with more than 2 million players in North America, more than 1.5 million players in Europe, and more than 3.5 million players in China.

Eight million is impressive enough, but for me the real eye-opener is the last one: nearly half of these inhabitants of the World of Warcraft are Chinese. This says a lot about the way the world is going - to say nothing of the virtual world....