The computer game that's also a social phenomenon - more people pay to play World of Warcraft online than live in most cities

The best way to get a handle on the sheer size of World of Warcraft, the massively successful massively multiplayer online role-playing game, is to take some of the mind-boggling numbers in context.

With 11 million subscribers, there are more people actively playing World of Warcraft than there are in all but four of the world's largest cities, and more people than there are in either Austria, Switzerland, Israel or Portugal.

All of these players pay a monthly subscription fee, which means that in 2007 Blizzard, the company behind the game, made $1.2bn (£800m) - roughly equivalent to the gross domestic product of Belize.

Last night, several thousand people queued around the block on Oxford Street in London to be there for the official UK launch of the second 'expansion pack' for the game.

Wrath of the Lich King is a paid-for extension to the existing game world which gives players new realms to explore, new in-game activities to perform and allows for characters to become even more powerful than before with new equipment to be found and made, and more powerful abilities for characters to learn.

The dedication of fans tells you a lot about the way people see the game, and the sheer breadth of people I saw in attendance tells you even more. The wonder of internet shopping and 24-hour supermarkets mean that precisely none of the people queuing round the block for the launch event had to be there to get hold of the game yesterday - had they ordered it online from one of several retailers, they could have been playing it several hours before the launch even kicked off.

The desire simply to be there was huge, with people of all ages heading down in large and small groups simply to be there, as well as to get their hands on a copy of the game. Queuing up were grandparents who play with their grandchildren, groups of teenage girls, and significant groups of people who play the game together regularly but many of whom had never actually met in person before.

It is the social side of the game that is often overlooked when terms such as 'addiction' are bandied about.

The sort of teamwork required by some of the game's tougher challenges is something that the vast majority of people don't experience anywhere else, and the collective feeling of achievement from defeating some of these - which can now take up to 25 people working in perfect harmony - should not be underestimated.

While there are those who play for many, many hours at a time in a fundamentally lonely experience, these people are actually very few and far between.

However, this feeling of accomplishment, and the feeling of being a valued member of a successful team is something that can cause problems in the world outside the game if not managed properly, especially among adolescents.

After all, if you feel as if you're not accomplishing anything in the real world, and feel that your contribution to society isn't valued, the allure of simply retreating into the virtual world grows significantly.

World of Warcraft has now grown into a social phenomenon unlike any other. It allows people across continents to work together towards common goals and collectively feel the success of others. It teaches the value of teamwork, of responsibility, and lets people experience first-hand quite how much pleasure can be gained through collective effort, and that's all too rare a thing in these egocentric times.

Alex Sassoon Coby writes for GameSpot UK, the UK's largest videogames website