ALL THE LATEST NEWS ABOUT THE BUSINESS OF PC GAMES

News

World of Warcraft Classic growing subscriptions for the MMO

World of Warcraft Classic growing subscriptions for the MMO

The recently-released World of Warcraft Classic edition has been growing overall subscriptions for the long-running MMO.

That's according to Activision Blizzard COO Collister Johnson, who told investors - as transcribed by Seeking Alpha - that player engagement for the vanilla version of its popular online title has been continuing into Q4.

World of Warcraft Classic is a version of the smash hit MMO that takes the game back to its early days. It released in August. 

"Launching World of Warcraft Classic into the existing subscription was very intentional. We made a conscious choice to have one ecosystem and one engaged base of players," he said.

"The goal of that system was a frictionless movement between classic and modern. So now we have a large group of players and we have the challenge of keeping them engaged. And I think we have a number of different ways to do that.

"In Classic, you've already seen the first example with the Dire Maul update, which was released in mid-October. And we've seen player engagement into Q4, with subscriptions in some regions continuing to grow. We also have the added benefit for Classic with a known content road map for players.

"Personally I'm super happy with World of Warcraft and where it is, announcing Classic two years ago was one of the highlights of our professional career and to see the excitement of the players and the joy that has kind of come from that is awesome for me personally."

Last month, Blizzard said that World of Warcraft Classic had exceeded its expectations, while Twitch viewership for the title apparently more than doubled in Q3 thanks to this vanilla release.

Research firm SuperData says that World of Warcraft subscription revenue grew by a whopping 223 per cent month-on-month in August thanks to this launch.


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.