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

[Gorsameth]

Also, it's worded very differently. Iirc the old "subscriber number", such as that 12.5M mark, included anyone who payed for game time in the East (which is not monthly-subscription based as the West). Here they are using a different wording - "number of players on monthly or longer-term subscriptions". Which could mean the game is doing better in the West but worse in the East? Who knows. I think it's a push to assume it's at 12.5M subs, though not impossible!

Yeah, it won't include China and they made up a big part of WoW's numbers back then.

[Tesshin83]

This is a desd game only being on life support from classic players.

The numbers are manipulated by russia on order to achieve something something.

[callipygoustp]

It's laughable that people think a publicly owned company can "finagle" or "massage" these kinds of numbers. Publicly owned. Meaning: people(primarily investors not anonymous people on gaming forums), rightfully, justifiably, will fucking sue them for lying. There are real world consequences for finagling/massaging these kinds of numbers.

[Zig Zug]

This is a desd game only being on life support from classic players.

The numbers are manipulated by russia on order to achieve something something.

Lol, ok sweet heart.

I'd wager this game is older than some of you calling it "dead" - it's been dying for the last 16 years.

[darklogrus]

Sells well is great, but for a sub based game it can't keep em subbed and that my friends is a fact..

[Kyphael]

Good, now use some of that money and give us a new playable class next expansion!

[Gorsameth]

It's laughable that people think a publicly owned company can "finagle" or "massage" these kinds of numbers. Publicly owned. Meaning: people(primarily investors not anonymous people on gaming forums), rightfully, justifiably, will fucking sue them for lying. There are real world consequences for finagling/massaging these kinds of numbers.

The finagle is in carefully choosing your words, not in lying.

The people who craft these statements know how to appear to say one thing, while actually saying something slightly different in ways that will hold up in court if it comes to that.

Like how back when there were still quarterly sub reports they would report on active users and that active users meant anyone that logged in at some point in the past 3 months, including a guy in china who was online for 2 minutes and payed for 5 cents of gametime.

[callipygoustp]

The finagle is in carefully choosing your words, not in lying.

The people who craft these statements know how to appear to say one thing, while actually saying something slightly different in ways that will hold up in court if it comes to that.

Bullshit

But, as always, there's the anonymous people on the internet and then there is the real world.

Like how back when there were still quarterly sub reports they would report on active users and that active users meant anyone that logged in at some point in the past 3 months, including a guy in china who was online for 2 minutes and payed for 5 cents of gametime.

I was speaking to the variety of more hyperbolic comments in this thread. As an investor, I could easily digest the above.
Edit:
Granted, your comment is pretty dammed hyperbolic as well.

[Martymark]

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.

[xenogear3]

PC game, not console game or video game in any platform.

First, PC game is always selling less compare to console game.
Second, nearly all AAA games are on all platform. The sales number is divided by the number of platforms.

China is different. They don't buy the expansion.
They just pay based on the minutes.

Just like someone said, if the number is truly great, Blizzard would claim it has 15 million subs or something like that.

[Ihavewaffles]

Would never have happened if not for Covid-19, people got nothing to do...

[ryanmahaffe]

Ok but then it's disingenuous to call it sky shattering when it's not even close.

It is within the context they gave for sure. Fastest selling PC game ever, the previous "sky" or ceiling could be BFA, which SL passed by 300,000

[chaoticcrono]

let me remind people bfa was best selling also... and we all know how that turned out

[Nachtigal]

Because the mawis just 2 dailies in an annoying zone after youve done your weeklies and theres no reason to do torghast once youve got your weekly soul ash. Im just trying to figure out why people are praising this expansion when theres a lack of new, fun daily things to do

Because the game and story is interesting. You are one of the few rare elite that are superior to the masses of which are too easily enthralled by big bad Blizzard.

[MatadorMedia]

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.

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

The servers are still completely dead in retail

Do you have a source for such a claim?

[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