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

[Izzyfurious]

Yeah, it's called the ever-increasing list of connected realms: https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/14296.

Yeah, cross realm tard ****. Oh yeah that has more Cons than Pros despite making this happend to a new expansion.

**** this system, i wish they would just remove it since years ago already. It is beyond a mystery why no one over at Blizz HQ can tell them to go back to One Community Only again even after all these years! (it's great for group finder through. But thats it. All the other situations i despise it with a passion).

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Blizzard is becoming like pro wrestling, just making up whatever numbers sound good and sets a record. The servers are still completely dead in retail lol what a joke.

Yeah... if you play on the ghost town alike ones.

Go play on the high pop or full ones than come back to say that again.

[Druantis]

And with how big WoW seems when you are playing (I loved it before bloodsucking ko-tick came along), you should always compare it to actual massive pop games for perspective:

https://trends.google.com/trends/exp...nite,minecraft

[Lorgar Aurelian]

I assume most of those sales were in China. It's the first WOW expansion to come out on time in China and align with China's censorship policies.

They don’t have to buy expans in China and this one defiantly wouldn’t align with there censorship where they have to replace things like skulls with bread given what Maldraxxus looks like.

[munkeyinorbit]

I guess the answer will differ vastly depending on whether you define a decade to be from 0-9 or from 1-0. Strictly speaking, the latter is the correct one since there exists no year 0 in our calendar. If it's the first one however we could be anywhere between 10 and 12 million. Otherwise we would be between 7.5 and 10 million subscribers (which sounds more realistic to me).

We'll know when the Q4 earnings call happens.

Absolute dribble. They said a decade which is 10 years. They didn't say last decade as in a specific decade. There's no interpretation. It's within the last 10 years. Look it up and that's your figure.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Long way down from 12.5M subs at the peak -- which is why the wording was carefully phrased "in the last decade"...

You know when they had 12m subs they didn’t sell 12m day one of a expan right? Subs have always been many times higher then day one sales they are way above 3.7M subs.

[Druantis]

They never once said subs are at the highest in a decade, they said this year's play time was highest in a decade -- and we all know they cherry picked that stat because of the entirely enforced grind mechanics built into BFA.

There is no way they have more than 4.5M subs at peak (including Classic) with each recent expansion release -- and they clearly say only (and it is "only" compared to big games) 3.7M have purchased Shadowlands.

Without proof, you can't say there are more subs than 3.7M right now, and there will be drastically less than 3.7M within a few months as there is after every expansion release peak.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

They never once said subs are at the highest in a decade, they said this year's play time was highest in a decade -- and we all know they cherry picked that stat because of the entirely enforced grind mechanics built into BFA.

There is no way they have more than 4.5M subs at peak (including Classic) with each recent expansion release -- and they clearly say only (and it is "only" compared to big games) 3.7M have purchased Shadowlands.

Without proof, you can't say there are more subs than 3.7M right now, and there will be drastically less than 3.7M within a few months as there is after every expansion release peak.

I mean this is right in the middle of there post.

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.

They have more then 4.5M.

[Dracullus]

They never once said subs are at the highest in a decade, they said this year's play time was highest in a decade -- and we all know they cherry picked that stat because of the entirely enforced grind mechanics built into BFA.

There is no way they have more than 4.5M subs at peak (including Classic) with each recent expansion release -- and they clearly say only (and it is "only" compared to big games) 3.7M have purchased Shadowlands.

Without proof, you can't say there are more subs than 3.7M right now, and there will be drastically less than 3.7M within a few months as there is after every expansion release peak.

Delusional is high in this one.

Cata - 12M subs, 3.3M sold up to first day
WoD - 10M subs, 3.3M sold up to first day

SL - 3.7M copies sold up to first day, clearly game has 4.5M subs at best. Oh, this including Classic people. Of course.

[Druantis]

I love it when people make up stats.

Cata subs dropped to 9.1M by end of expansion (scroll down to Subscriptions section):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_...aft:_Cataclysm


WoD subs then continually dropped to 5.5M by end of expansion and because of this Blizz stopped reporting subs (scroll down to Sales section):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_...rds_of_Draenor


This continuous drop in subs exactly matches the Google graphs I posted above. Which is further confirmed by continual realms merging, including the huge realms merge just this July (which is the only reason there were connection issues on launch week for newly high pop realms):

https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/14296
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...nderway/572562

And now that I actually looked up the stats, 4.5M was incredibly generous of me -- I'm going back to my original 2-3M continual subs number (after expansion peaks level out).

Please stop lying to yourself, living in an echo chamber, and being a fanboy/whitehat. Try to deal with reality.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

I love it when people make up stats.

You must as your bending over backward to do it.

The subs are higher then the numbers your pulling out of your ass they said so them selfs in the blue post.

[Rusken]

Blizzard cheats these numbers so hard it's not funny, or fair.

"Blizzard Entertainment’s latest release achieves sky-shattering sales record with more units sold through as of first day of launch than any other PC game in history."

Key words in that sentence; AS OF.

This is counting every pre-order from the day it was available. Meaning it's actually taken over a year to sell that many copies, pre-orders were opened on November 2nd, 2019. (https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/ne...hadowlands-now)

It's the same with Diablo 3, it counts everyone who got it for free through the 6-month sub deal even if they never played or even installed the game. That was also available several months before D3 actually launched.

Now I'm not bashing the game at all, it just feel disingenuous to claim "fastest selling PC game ever" when it's been available for purchase for 13 months.

[Druantis]

You must as your bending over backward to do it.

The subs are higher then the numbers your pulling out of your ass they said so them selfs in the blue post.

Awww, don't be afraid to click on the links I provided and actually learn that you are completely wrong.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Awww, don't be afraid to click on the links I provided and actually learn that you are completely wrong.

Literally none of your links back up any of your made up numbers.

[Druantis]

Literally none of your links back up any of your made up numbers.

Then you literally didn't click on the links and scroll down and read the one paragraph per link for Cata and WoD. Sigh, reminds me of the same uneducated denial and delusions in politics right now.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Then you literally didn't click on the links and scroll down and read the one paragraph per link for Cata and WoD. Sigh, reminds me of the same uneducated denial and delusions in politics right now.

Again neither of those back up your made up numbers.

Of course the copy pasted numbers are right but just because you can copy and paste something doesn’t mean the numbers you made up (4.5M 2-3M) have any backing.

[jlrm365]

And people are saying WOW is dead lol, nahh WOW is doing way better than before.

Yup. Eat it, haters!
Some folks don't seem happy unless they're complaining. I hope that headline hurts them enough to shut up or leave.
If the worst we have to complain about is a game, life's good.
Enjoy!

[munkeyinorbit]

as much as i like wow i find this very hard to believe,some shady stat manipulation going on.

Explain what stat manipulation you think is going on. It's pretty clear. It is so clear that the number of subs is at the highest it has been in 10 years or they are lying. It isn't inconceivable for this to be true. Remember Classic has just released the most anticipated raid since ICC. It was a failure gameplay wise but a lot of people have been waiting for it for years.

[deenman]

I dont get the logic of people complaining that pre orders dont count as day 1...they could cancel the pre order whenever they want to

Anyways,wile getting the game now is easier than it was in wrath days,its still amazing that after all these years its still breaking records,considering how on the decline the mmo genre has been

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They never once said subs are at the highest in a decade, they said this year's play time was highest in a decade -- and we all know they cherry picked that stat because of the entirely enforced grind mechanics built into BFA.

There is no way they have more than 4.5M subs at peak (including Classic) with each recent expansion release -- and they clearly say only (and it is "only" compared to big games) 3.7M have purchased Shadowlands.

Without proof, you can't say there are more subs than 3.7M right now, and there will be drastically less than 3.7M within a few months as there is after every expansion release peak.

so by that logic,wrath 12 min subs was a lie,it was only 2 mil

[Druantis]

I agree, there is no reason to believe WoW is dead at all.

After 16 years, it is down to but maintains 3M average continual subs per month

which is $45M per month in revenue

which is just over a half Billion ($540M) dollars in sub income per year.

On top of the 3.7M x $/unit in Shadowland unit sales (min $185M)

All before store, tokens, and in-game services revenue.

WoW is not going anywhere, and with bloodsucking ko-tick's constant office closures, removing development costs by not creating new classes and races, firing costly experienced talent and replacing with younger cheaper workers without families and willing to work huge hours for the opportunity, merging of realms/servers to reduce costs, and the continual reskinning/repurposing of old content, WoW will generate massive income for years to come.

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This is the moment where people would offer facts. "Hard to believe" thus "shady stat manipulation is going on" is not gonna do.

Beyond the fact that, yes...pre-orders also are counted among "day 1" sales (as has been agreed upon here) - what "stat manipulations" do you accuse people / Blizzard of?

I mean...if they say they sold 3.7 million units, it won't work if they only sold 1 million come the moment they have to file tax reports...so...enlighten us?

No one is saying they didn't sell 3.7M units, we're saying that's about what the level of subs are as well, people who think WoW is anywhere near 5.5M (which is what WoD was down to before Blizz stopped reporting the continually declining sub numbers and focused on playing time metrics) or higher are just completely wrong.

[Kumorii]

Man, so many people in denial. Why does it matter if the game is successful or not? Move on if you hate it so much that you want to see it fail.

It's a successful game no matter how you spin it. Yes even WoD and cata was successful even with its big declines... That speaks more about how big the game is. That it can have huge decline and STILL be successful.