World of Warcraft: Shadowlands Becomes Fastest-Selling PC Game of All Time

[Sluvs]

This is purely anecdotal so take it with a grain of salt, but I finally convinced my friends to play classic with me and now we're all playing Shadowlands. Wouldn't be surprised if others had similar stories.

We still play classic, but we're all liking SL so far.

This happenned to one of my friends too, and a couple more came back after sitting out of the game since WotLK. But, as you said, highly anecdotal.

I'm just happy to be able to play with my friends again.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

No it literally doesn't mean that. It means they were able to meet and increase the number of people who were subbed on monthly and longer subscription plans during the post-expansion content drought than the last highest number of players subbed on recurring plans. They're boasting about the six month offers working not more players being subbed than usual in general. Yes they're had highest Day One sales due to pre-orders but they have decidedly little to boast about players actually playing the game unlike previous expansions.



Engagement isn't tied to player numbers or even actual participation. It's their way of saying "people are interested and talking about the game". Just because they sell a larger number of copies upfront doesn't mean they are not declining in other aspects. Especially when they're addressing the good news for this expansion lacking one of the major things they boast about following releases which is players actually playing the game.

I feel like I have to ask if your illiterate as to not pick in you.

Because the post not only mentions launch and post launch subs making the drought meaningless but also mentions time in game.

In the months leading up to the expansion’s release and the time since launch, the game reached and has sustained its highest number of players on monthly or longer-term subscriptions compared to the same period ahead of and following any WoW expansion in the past decade, in both the West and the East.

Players have spent more time in Azeroth year to date than in the same period of any of the last 10 years.
In addition, total player time in game this year to date has nearly doubled compared to the same period last year.

[Queen of Hamsters]

A good portion of which are probably Classic players.

Lol, doubt.

[Darknessvamp]

I feel like I have to ask if your illiterate as to not pick in you.

Because the post not only mentions launch and post launch subs making the drought meaningless but also mentions time in game.

No I'm quite literate but it's alright to ask.

In the months leading up to the expansion’s release and the time since launch, the game reached and has sustained its highest number of players on monthly or longer-term subscriptions compared to the same period ahead of and following any WoW expansion in the past decade, in both the West and the East.

As I already mentioned they're talking about recurring plans here, as in literally they have more people subbed via recurring plans not more active subs overall.
Essentially they are boasting that their Six month plans are working and that they kept as well as encouraged more people onto recurring plans than they lost since the post-expansion content drought. Again this tells us nothing about actual player numbers.

Players have spent more time in Azeroth year to date than in the same period of any of the last 10 years.
In addition, total player time in game this year to date has nearly doubled compared to the same period last year.

This also literally tells us nothing. "More people spent time in Azeroth" does that mean less of the days of their sub lapsed without them playing or did they sub more? Play time is separate from actual time subbed. I mean you could literally play 24 hours of your 30 day sub or 29 days worth and your "play time" would differ. If anything it just says more people spent time playing due to Covid and not more people subbed due to it.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Is pre-order included in the "1st day" sales?

It always is.. so that's 1 year's worth of preorders.

[ryanmahaffe]

I absolutely love how people try to spin this negatively. "Not even that much" Like okay lmao, you people are exactly why AAA publisher have such insane sales expectations.

[chrisnumbers]

"Not even that much" Like okay lmao,

Well it's not. Remember GTA V?

[Kolvarg]

You are trying to paint a record breaking game as in decline.

What about being record breaking prevents a game from being in decline?

[oplawlz]

Glad to see it, shadowlands has been a blast so far. Hopefully they can keep the momentum and don't make too many brain dead decisions like nerfing popular legos or covenants.

[nnelson54]

The amount of people here who are so bitter about Shadowlands being successful is just sad.

[FelPlague]

It does state within the past decade so up to 2010 which would be right around Cataclysm's release date. But, of course, Classic only players are helping boost this since it is World of Warcraft. No idea how the breakdown would actually work if reported.

Classic only players dont buy shadowlands though.. this is tracking expac buys, not subbed this month.

- - - Updated - - -

In other news, WoW now has 3.7 million players.

in other news wotlk only had 2.8 million players.

https://investor.activision.com/news...f%20all%20time.

[ryanmahaffe]

Well it's not. Remember GTA V?

Yes I remember the highest selling entertainment product in history. Is that your bar for good sales? A massive multi-platform game sold to the masses of gamers and not gamers alike? If that is the threshold then almost every other game sold like dogshit and is a failure.

Compare with something more realistic, God of War sold 3.1M in it's first 3 days
Diablo 3 was less than Shadowlands and that sold crazy well also.

Insanely disengenous comment to go "yeah bro but Grand Theft Auto"

[Lurker1]

"BUT WOW ONLY HAS 3.7 MILLION PLAYERS, DESPITE THE EXPANSION BEING THE FASTEST SELLING PC GAME OF ALL TIME!"

You guys are pathetic. Just be glad WoW is doing good. God, you guys are weird.

- - - Updated - - -



You're the one making up random ass numbers. How about you, ya know, play the game and enjoy it with your friends? That's what we're all doing right now. SL isn't cluttered with stupid ass systems like BFA, so it's very easy to get into this expac.

i agree even if the number was 10 million and blizzard talked about subs again they wouldn't belive it i don't blame them for stoping the detailed info on there products.

[kranur]

The only expansion that didn't meet or exceed the previous expansion day 1 sales was MoP. And while Shadowlands is higher than all of them, it's not by very much and has been available for pre-order and thrown in your face for 1 year.

Fact is there are at least 3.7 million retail players at this time. How many more will join and how many will drop after 1-2 months, no one can say.

[Nerovar]

Lol, doubt.

I'm curious about what you are basing this on because Blizzard basically said that a lot of the pre-launch subscriptions exist due to Classic.

From their latest earnings call:

In World of Warcraft, for example, we've seen unprecedented engagement trends since the subscriber base
doubled following the launch of Classic last year.

[kranur]

I'm curious about what you are basing this on because Blizzard basically said that a lot of the pre-launch subscriptions exist due to Classic.

From their latest earnings call:

You can look at the amount of shadowlands servers vs classic servers and their population. Then keep in mins that Shadowlands servers hold about 4 times more players. I.E. Shadowlands high = classic x 4 high

Classic has declined a lot since release. At launch my server had about 16k people on and now it barley reaches 3k. 90% of my friends list was playing classic where now literally only 1 person still plays.

[Kolvarg]

The amount of people here who are so bitter about Shadowlands being successful is just sad.

The thing is it's not really an indicator that Shadowlands is particularly more successful than any other expansion.

The number of day-one sales has been getting higher and higher every expansion, which as far as we know hasn't stopped the long-term number of concurrent subscribers to stop declining.

[callipygoustp]

Doesn't matter how well Blizzard does, there will always be some people that doubt it or twist it to make it seem negative. Good for a laugh.

[Life-Binder]

Omg Sylvanas' impact

^ unironically this

Sylvanas is a draw

[Nerovar]

You can look at the amount of shadowlands servers vs classic servers and their population. Then keep in mins that Shadowlands servers hold about 4 times more players. I.E. Shadowlands high = classic x 4 high

Classic has declined a lot since release. At launch my server had about 16k people on and now it barley reaches 3k. 90% of my friends list was playing classic where now literally only 1 person still plays.

Shadowlands servers don't really work the same way. If you have like 10 realms with very pitiful individual populations that are connected you will see only the combined population for all of them in the realm list. You can see this if you look at German RP realms. The indisputably biggest German RP realm (die Aldor) is the only RP realm that is not connected to any other realms. It is displayed as low (was medium at the start of BfA and high prior to that expansion) whereas all the other 14 German RP realms (which were practically ghost towns for years now) are shown as medium because they're all connected.