Blizzard just gave us a hint of how many World of Warcraft subscribers remain (and it's still in the millions)

[Daniel Sims]

Cutting corners: Blizzard hasn't officially disclosed World of Warcraft subscriber numbers in nearly a decade. However, a vague chart from a GDC 2024 presentation, combined with bits of information from previous investor reports, enabled us to get a rough estimate for the game's current subscriber base and its ups and downs at various points.

According to YouTube channel Bellular Warcraft, World of Warcraft currently has around 7.25 million subscribers. While the game appears to have recovered from the disaster following the Warlords of Draenor expansion almost 10 years ago, it remains far from its peak of 12 million in 2010 during Wrath of the Lich King.

Subscriptions had been declining steadily since Cataclysm in late 2010, when Draenor managed to boost them up to 10 million. Unfortunately, the spike was short-lived, and Blizzard soon confirmed that WoW had plummeted to 5.5 million subscribers – the last hard number the company ever released.

WoW subscriptions (2005-2015, click to enlarge)

However, sources recently provided Bellular Warcraft with slides from the company's GDC 2024 postmortem, which included a graph showing WoW subscription growth since 2016. The only exact numbers on the chart are the years displayed on the X-axis, but comments from Blizzard over the years gave Bellular Warcraft just enough context to estimate the real figures.

An earnings report from the first quarter of 2017 mentioned that the 2016 expansion, Legion, slightly surpassed its immediate predecessor, Draenor. From there, Bellular Warcraft estimated that the game had around 5.8 million subscribers at that time. They arrived at the current number of 7.25 million by counting the chart's pixels upward from early 2017.

Furthermore, the company's Q4 2019 report noted that World of Warcraft Classic doubled subscriptions compared to Q2, which represented WoW's all-time low on the GDC graph following Battle for Azeroth. Combined with Bellular Warcraft's earlier numbers, the statement proves that the chart's Y-axis starts at zero, strengthening the channel's estimates.

(2016-Present, click to enlarge)

After Battle for Azeroth sank subscriptions to approximately 4.07 million, Classic bounced them back to 8.27 million. Then, the ensuing pandemic likely helped sustain subscriber counts at a higher average compared to the earlier trend of peaks and troughs. However, the critically panned Shadowlands, which Blizzard's panel admitted was badly executed, led to a collapse to 4.5 million in 2022. Subscriptions then recovered somewhat leading to Dragonflight later that year, which missed Blizzard's projections.

The GDC archives will likely release the full presentation soon, illuminating WoW's progress over the last eight years. Blizzard plans to launch the 10th expansion, The War Within, sometime this year. It will be followed by Midnight and The Last Titan.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/102391-blizzard-gdc-talk-offers-clues-post-2016-wow.html

 

[Demote6060]

The game has been significantly better in Dragonflight, which has helped. The bigger driver is having classic, where some people would rather play instead. Keeping both groups happy is key.

I never played "War for Azeroth".

 

[Neatfeatguy]

I wonder how many of those subscribers are still subscribed and are paying, but forgot to actually cancel their subscription. Kind of like you get those people that sign up for a streaming service, don't use it very often and eventually forget they're even paying for it and it just deducts monthly from their checking account.

I thought WoW was boring. I played off and on over about 6 months when the game first came out and then stopped my sub. A good year later or so a few friends were still playing and said I should get back into it because an expansion is coming out (Burning Crusades) and it was going to be really awesome! I started up again a few months before BC released and rumor was that jewel crafting was the next big thing with that release. In terms of crafting jewelry and you'd need ore and gems for recipes. I spent those couple of months or so just farming ores and sold stacks on the market once BC released, these stacks were going for tons of gold. I ended up with a few hundred thousand gold on my account, never picked up BC and didn't care about playing the game anymore so I stopped playing.

About 10 years later I guess my account got hacked (received an email from Blizzard about account password change), an account that I forget even existed. So who ever hacked that account got a level 45 hunter with a pet spider named "Leggy" that had a few hundred thousand gold in his bank. Hopefully they made good use of him and treated Leggy well.

 

[Achaios]

Our victory was so epic.

Blizzard had taken a very severe stance against WoW Classic fans.

Criticizing the modern game in any way (modern WoW sucks) resulted into near instant bans at their forums as did any mention of Blizzard bringing Vanilla back and giving us Vanilla servers.

Pro-Blizzard trolls and drones and ppl who worked inside the Company even started a since famous thread at the Blizzard Official Forums called "THE WALL OF NO" which listed all the reasons why Blizzard would NEVER give us Vanilla servers.

1. We were told we were an insignificant minority of "boomer" weirdoes and there were simply not enough of us to generate a profit.

2. They told us Blizzard did not have enough money to dedicate servers to the Vanilla version of the game because these were very expensive.

3. They told us that the code of the original version of the game had been irretrievably lost.

4. They listed all the -negative- responses by Blizzard employees to petitions for Vanilla server.

WoW Classic fans had been made into scapegoats. We were the Jews of the World of Warcraft.

The Blizzdrones allied to some ppl from within Blizzard were seething and raging and they were drooling venom at the forums.

In the end the poster who had put up the WALL OF NO post who was a Blizzard employee quit the game and left Blizzard too.

Even after the decision to run vanilla servers was taken the Blizzdrones continued the flame war at the forums claiming the project would be a failure and the servers would go down due to lack of interest. I have never seen so toxic people as Blizzdrones are.

I have been playing since 2005 and continue playing Classic (Vanilla) still on and off when I can b/c I have work obligations. I won't touch modern wow of course which is an abomination.

I think WoW was one of the best games ever made and I also think that Blizzard around 2004-2008 had the most talented people in the industry and perhaps in the world. They were the best.

 

[Zsoltblabla]

What about Starcraft??? If ever there was a diamond forgotten…

 

[Hexic]

A very good short clip was made to reflect the older generations and the current feel of WoW:

Mostly just full of nostalgia for me these days.

 

[Kn0xx]

WoW is a reference for many many companys/studios that what makes a great game is in fact how it makes fun to play, instead of how great is to look at.
Can have the visuals, can have the big name, but if it doesnt have the gameplay it falls quickly.
And nowdays its hard to keep people dedicated to a game long enough.... there are too many distractions and games releasing that grabs attention causing shifts on focus and playstyles....

WoW for me was a period in a timeline that will never go back, not because of the game, more because of people approach on games is very different nowdays than before....

 

[AccordXTC]

Been enjoying Turtle Wow and don't have to feel bad when I can't get to playing it because of another life obligations. If Blizzard wanted to lower their monthly price I would consider coming back but for now classic vanilla Wow with Turtle Wow is great!

 

[GoldenGoat]

I wonder if Microsoft is going to combine World of Warcraft into Game Pass. I wonder how many people subscribe to both. Probably not too many. It could be a way to add a lot of value without costing them numbers.

 

[Achaios]

I wonder if Microsoft is going to combine World of Warcraft into Game Pass. I wonder how many people subscribe to both. Probably not too many. It could be a way to add a lot of value without costing them numbers.

I hope they do b/c WoW will gain new players this way b ut it doesn't make much sense from a bean counter standpoint.

You have to pay abt 10 Euros for the cheapest Game Pass sub and 13 Euros for a monthly WoW sub.

 

[poohbear]

Our victory was so epic.

Blizzard had taken a very severe stance against WoW Classic fans.

Criticizing the modern game in any way (modern WoW sucks) resulted into near instant bans at their forums as did any mention of Blizzard bringing Vanilla back and giving us Vanilla servers.

Pro-Blizzard trolls and drones and ppl who worked inside the Company even started a since famous thread at the Blizzard Official Forums called "THE WALL OF NO" which listed all the reasons why Blizzard would NEVER give us Vanilla servers.

1. We were told we were an insignificant minority of "boomer" weirdoes and there were simply not enough of us to generate a profit.

2. They told us Blizzard did not have enough money to dedicate servers to the Vanilla version of the game because these were very expensive.

3. They told us that the code of the original version of the game had been irretrievably lost.

4. They listed all the -negative- responses by Blizzard employees to petitions for Vanilla server.

WoW Classic fans had been made into scapegoats. We were the Jews of the World of Warcraft.

The Blizzdrones allied to some ppl from within Blizzard were seething and raging and they were drooling venom at the forums.

In the end the poster who had put up the WALL OF NO post who was a Blizzard employee quit the game and left Blizzard too.

Even after the decision to run vanilla servers was taken the Blizzdrones continued the flame war at the forums claiming the project would be a failure and the servers would go down due to lack of interest. I have never seen so toxic people as Blizzdrones are.

I have been playing since 2005 and continue playing Classic (Vanilla) still on and off when I can b/c I have work obligations. I won't touch modern wow of course which is an abomination.

I think WoW was one of the best games ever made and I also think that Blizzard around 2004-2008 had the most talented people in the industry and perhaps in the world. They were the best.

I imagine there's a bit of nostalgia here. We often over romanticize the past...I recall in the 2000s people lamenting the exact glory days you're romanticizing, and saying the 1990s were the golden era of PC games w/ Sierra's RPGs. To each their own.

 

[WhoCaresAnymore]

Great game, but new players get lost and frustrated very quickly. It's non-linear and you just get thrown into a whirlwind.

 

[Zoneman]

Played Beta, spent way way way too many hours playing this game. Stopped after Panda and have never looked back. Have about 600 days played. What a waste.

 

[gingerbill]

Played Beta, spent way way way too many hours playing this game. Stopped after Panda and have never looked back. Have about 600 days played. What a waste.

I am the same as you in that I played beta and quit when the panda's came. However I don't regret it , great days . and I feel I quit at the correct time .I played a lot of ultima online before WOW and I don't regret that either.

 

[lripplinger]

I played WoW when the Lich King expansion came out. Lost interest fast when Cataclysm came out. I still have my special disc collection in a tote in the garage. I much prefer Final Fantasy XIV. Wow has a hostile, negative community. I've found the FFXIV community to be the complete opposite.