WoW is said to currently have more players than at the historic peak during Wrath of the Lich King

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For more than 14 years, World of Warcraft’s record of more than 12 million subscribers stood above Blizzard and the entire MMORPG genre. Now there are signs that WoW is being played by even more people for the first time.

Where do these clues come from? Kihra, the person behind websites like warcraftlogs.com, fflogs.com and esologs.com, put forward the theory on X that more players are currently playing World of Warcraft than ever before. She bases her assumption on the following data:

  • Currently, the number of Chinese players playing WoW: Wrath of the Lich King Classic alone would be the highest number of retail WoW players recorded since warcraftlogs.com was founded.
  • On September 9, 2024, there were Ulduar logs for 11 million different characters.
  • Of course, you also have to add WoW: The War Within, Season of Discovery, WoW Classic Hardcore and WoW Cataclysm Classic to these numbers.

    • Concrete figures for The War Within will only be available in the coming days, once the first season has started in all regions. Nevertheless, Kihra is certain that the previous player record of more than twelve million players from the last months of 2010 has been broken.

    Will Wrath of the Lich King set another player record? Here is the Classic trailer:

    WoW Classic: The trailer for Wrath of the Lich King

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    The return from China pays off

    Why do Chinese people play WotLK Classic? After Blizzard and Chinese publisher NetEase were unable to agree on a contract extension, WoW, Overwatch and Co. were unplayable in China for 18 months.

    The comeback for the modern World of Warcraft did not happen until August 1, 2024. The Wrath of the Lich King Classic servers went online a little earlier, allowing Chinese players to catch up on the Northrend adventure in a heavily supported (and shortened) phase and land in Cataclysm Classic in a timely manner. And it is precisely this version that is currently extremely well received by the Chinese.

    How have the number of players developed over the years? As is well known, Blizzard officials last revealed official subscriber numbers in 2015. At that time, the number stood at 5.5 million WoW subscriptions worldwide. The peak, as already mentioned, was at the end of 2010, when there were just over 12 million subscribers.

    However, at GDC 2024, some Blizzard officials showed an exciting slide with a graph showing the development of player numbers from Legion to Dragonflight. The most important conclusions from the graph:

  • The lowest subscription numbers in Battle for Azeroth may have been around 4 million players.
  • During Shadowlands, the low point was around 4.5 million active players.
  • It is believed that subscription numbers have increased so much with the current Season of Discovery that by March 2024, around 7.25 million players could have played WoW.
  • At the launch of WoW Classic, around 8.27 million players are believed to have had a subscription. This is consistent with the associated financial report (more than twice as many players as at the low point of Battle for Azeroth).

    • If you add to that the returning community from China from August and all the players who are currently trying out The War Within, it actually seems quite likely that Kihra is right in her assumption. Or what do you think? More on the information from the GDC panel: For the first time in 9 years, there is current information on WoW subscriptions – then the MMORPG was particularly unpopular.

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