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He's definitely right: in terms of shear numbers, Gaia Online does have more "subscribers" than WoW.
No, he's wrong. Gaia Online claims 2.5 million active users a month. That's 1/4 the amount of active users (since every WoW subscription number given ONLY includes active accounts) that WoW has. So, being a free MMO/whatever has done nothing to help Gaia Online get more users than WoW.
And to the people claiming that WoW is so popular because it's so highly advertised, learn a little history before saying ignorant crap like that. Within it's first six months of launch, with limited advertisement and zero television commercials, WoW exceeded 2.5 million users, which put it ahead of Lineage, the long-time king in the market. The reason WoW was able to do television commercials using Office Space and cult-favorite celebrities is because it was such a success.
WoW is king because Blizzard is one of few companies in the industry (Valve and Bioware being two others) that takes the time they need to polish their product, unlike most which rush to market with incomplete games.