Here's a poke in the eye for all 11.5 million hardcore World of Warcraft gamers: a FaceBook App has just nearly matched the user base of the world's most popular massively-multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) with a little social agricultural ditty called FarmVille. The game hit the 11 million daily active user mark in not a few Azeroth years, but a few CrackBook weeks.

According to the game's developer, Zynga, that makes it the biggest online game in North America, and further asserts that FarmVille is quickly becoming the biggest online game in the world.

With the countless Facebook Apps available, the success of FarmVille is a categorical surprise. Its success is all the more remarkable considering the game has only been available for 9 weeks.

Then again, Zynga is far and away Facebook's most popular developer, with a whopping 72 million active users monthly, according to indie Facebook resource AllFacebook.com. The developer has several popular Apps, in fact, including Farm Town, Texas Hold'em Poker, and Dragon Wars, but it is FarmVille that has stolen the spotlight as of late.

"FarmVille demonstrates the huge market potential of social gaming," understated Zynga CEO Mark Pincus. "No other application has achieved what this game has in such a short amount of time.

In the game, players are tasked with creating and maintaining their own virtual farm by way of tending to crops and farm animals. Players then use farm profits to expand their rural domain. The game launched on June 19, 2009. By comparison, the subscription-based online PC game, World of Warcraft, which now boasts nearly 12 million active users, debuted on November 23, 2004.

Then again, FarmVille is free, so the comparison is apples to oranges... or corn to Warglaives of Azzinoth.