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

[EternalBany]

And this is after BFA
shocking

[MatadorMedia]

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

[Druantis]

So 3.7M sales of Shadowlands indicates clearly how many players there are (including those who buy more than one copy for their accounts), right?

Since the estimates have been somewhere around 4-4.5M subs this makes sense.

And the "Players have spent more time in Azeroth year to date than in the same period of any of the last 10 years" is because BFA was all about the sociopath accountants bloodsucking ko-tick brought with him focusing on cost cutting via reskinning/repurposing old content and then only reporting play time metrics spent through implemented unending grinding mechanics over last year to get themselves (and him) christmas bonuses as opposed to creating entirely new and fun content.

3.7M is launch, within a few months it will shed many subs as it always does after each expansion release peak (so maybe 2-3M actual continual players?) -- hopefully this doesn't mean a re-introduction of grinding mechanics to increase play time metrics. Though after BFA, unless they introduce more grind again, I guarantee they will focus on different metrics next year (as with lesser forced grind and more gated content, play time will be down, and they will chose other numbers to get their bonuses).

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

You can see from graph below why they focus on play time and not subs anymore:

(feel free to check out the facts for your country as well) https://trends.google.com/trends/exp...0of%20warcraft

[anon5123]

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

wake me up when it's back at 12 million subs again

[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

[Daemos daemonium]

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.

[Daemos daemonium]

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.

[Daemos daemonium]

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.

[Daemos daemonium]

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.

[Daemos daemonium]

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.

[Daemos daemonium]

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!