World of Warcraft still has millions of subscribers – Activision Blizzard

Blizzard hasn't released official World of Warcraft subscriber numbers in nearly a decade. But the chart used in the GDC 2024 presentation, as well as some information found in previous investor briefings, They let Techspot come up with an estimate The current number of subscribers, as well as the fluctuations that appear from time to time.

According to the Bellular Warcraft YouTube channel, World of Warcraft currently has approximately 7.25 million subscribers. Although the game appears to have recovered from the devastating impact of the Warlords of Draenor expansion nearly ten years ago, it is still a long way from the 12 million subscribers it had in 2010, when it was released.

The number of subscriptions has been steadily declining since Cataclysm's release in late 2010, when Draenor managed to bring subscriptions back to 10 million. Unfortunately, this recovery proved short-lived, and Blizzard confirmed shortly after that Wow had dropped to 5.5 million subscribers. These were the last specific details released by the company.

But Bellular Warcraft recently received some slides of the company's results at GDC 2024, including a graph showing the trend in WoW subscriptions since 2016. The only specific numbers on the graph are the years listed on the Over the years, Bellular Warcraft has created a picture clear enough to approximate the real data.

A report on the company’s profits for the first quarter of 2017 stated that the game expansion, which was released in 2016, entitled Legion, recorded slightly better results than its immediate predecessor, Draenor. Thus, we conclude that the game had about 5.8 million subscribers during that period. The 7.25 million figure was derived by calculating the upward trend of the chart in early 2017.

Additionally, the company's Q4 2019 financial results report indicates that World of Warcraft Classic doubled its subscriptions compared to Q2, marking an all-time low on the chart, post-Battle for Azeroth. In combination with previous data from Bellular Warcraft, this update makes it clear that the Y-axis of the chart starts at zero, enhancing channel estimates.

After Battle for Azeroth, where subscriptions dropped to around 4.07 million, WoW Classic rebounded to 8.27 million subscribers. The ensuing pandemic likely helped keep subscriber numbers at higher averages, compared to previous trends characterized by sharp fluctuations. However, Shadowlands, which Blizzard itself admitted was a problem, saw subscriptions drop again to 4.5 million in 2022. That number then rebounded somewhat, landing Dragonflight later that year, which still falls short of Blizzard's expectations .

The GDC Archives will likely release the full presentation soon, shedding light on WoW's trajectory over the past eight years. Blizzard is preparing to release the game's tenth expansion, titled The War Within, sometime in 2024. It will follow Midnight and The Last Titan.