ALL THE LATEST NEWS ABOUT THE BUSINESS OF PC GAMES

News

World of Warcraft’s active subscriber count hits its highest point since 2014

World of Warcraft’s active subscriber count hits its highest point since 2014

The number of players actively subscribing to Blizzard’s flagship MMORPG hit its highest point since 2014 this August.

That’s according to information released by SuperData, which reports that World of Warcraft earned $161 million last month after the release of its seventh expansion pack, Battle for Azeroth. That figure omits pre-sales of the expansion in the months leading up to release.

The venerable online game was the second highest-grossing title in August, behind Korean title Dungeon Fighter Online.

Blizzard hasn’t released subscriber figures publicly since 2015, but the 2014 milestone represents a 10 million subscriber peak alongside the release of Warcraft’s fifth expansion, Warlords of Draenor, that year. The all-time record of 12 million subscribers, hit in 2010 with the release of Cataclysm, still stands.

Battle for Azeroth didn’t waste any time in smashing other records for Blizzard, though. Last month’s release quickly became the fastest-selling World of Warcraft expansion to date, with 3.4 million copies sold within 24 hours.

But elsewhere in the MMORPG space, the situation is less favourable. Wildstar developer Carbine Studios, which modelled much of its game after early versions of Warcraft, was shut down by publisher NCSoft earlier this month.


Staff Writer

Natalie Clayton is an Edinburgh-based freelance writer and game developer. Besides PCGamesInsider and Pocketgamer.biz, she's written across the games media landscape and was named in the 2018 GamesIndustry.biz 100 Rising Star list.