Online game operator for World of Warcraft in China, The9 Ltd., will announce their quarterly earnings on Wednesday, February 14. Analysts expect The9 to earn about US$ 34.1 million in revenues, a definite increase from US$29.5 million last quarter.

Having tracked utilization levels of their WoW servers, The9's Daniel Vlad estimates a 35% increase on average concurrent user count from 280,000 last quarter to 380,000 this quarter. The peak concurrent user count is expected to increase by about a slight 15% from 595,000 to 686,000.

They have reason to believe that the increase is mainly due to the opening of a new server area and the launching of the cross-server battlegrounds upgrade last October. Because of the upgrade, inactive gamers were invited to come back and existing gamers found reason to stay online longer.

Minimal unscheduled server downtime and longer average playing times assured The9 that their operations have seen significant improvement. With the World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade China launching around the corner, they hope the next quarters will be just as favorable.