I just saw this posted on MMO champion and wanted to put it out there for discussion. For reference, World of Warcraft is now 10-years-old, at its heyday had over 12 million subscribers, and has since fallen to under 7.5 million subs. With the release of their next expansion, World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor, they have climbed back over 10 million PAYING CUSTOMERS. While obviously not representative of players who will log-in in 2 or 3 months, I think that's pretty incredible. Thoughts?

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That's incredible. Good for them to take a once top of the market MMO back "from the dead". I doubt most people would have assumed when they dropped below 10 million that they would ever climb back above it. And to do so with interesting content and updates is very impressive.

Hopefully other MMO and game developers see how even an older game can still be supported and nurtured to live well beyond a game's usual tenure.

Hail to the king, baby.

Though having 6 million subscribers at the lowest point isnt excactly dead either. Especially when one considers that almost all of those players have subscriptions. Well at least the ones in USA and Europe.

People still play original everquest mmo and that game was released in 1999. Successful mmo´s have a pretty long life.

Also down the line blizzard could also adopt the free to play model if it feels that it is losing too many subscribers (a few millions?). People would probaly flock to wow in masses if it went free to play. Though I think that as long as Blizzard makes expansions people will continue play the game. Wow is a pretty hard habit to break. It took me about 9 years before I was able to quit permanently and not go back when the new expansion was released.

I couldn't be happier personally, I am loving the experience as I feel it hearkens back to the heyday of the franchise. But the numbers are absolutely shocking! It shows that they really nailed the marketing with this launch, and are providing content the fans have been clamoring for.

Edit @nardak You preempted my argument Sir, I found the argument, 'WoW is dying' to be fallacious even at the 6 million point. Dying implies a lack of interest to the point of failure, WoW is too big to fail! #American Airlines... Kidding of course, but I think MMO's become so firmly entrenched in the playerbase that they will exist in perpetuity.

I was tempted by Pandaria and now I'm tempted again, but doubt I'll go back. WOW is a massive time suck, and there are so many other games to play.

WOW!

It's a really good game. I'm not sure why so many people have this idea in their head that it's "over" or something.

It's probably cause wow kinda reached it's "jump the shark" moment after the lich king was defeated. After that it was kinda like where does the series go from there, take that as you will.

Yeah, even at it's lowest point Wow has still been making Blizzard over a billion dollars every single year. At it's average it's makes them nearly 2 billion. Wow could be "dead" and still make Blizzard enough money to be a monolith of financial security. At this point even with the extra content they've developed and the constant support they've maintained the net income on that game must be straight up silly.

Another sad reminder that a proper RTS Warcraft 4 will probably never be a thing. CURSE YOU ARTHAS!

Damn! I knew this expansion was gonna be big, but I didn't have any idea it would put them back over 10 mil! I might have to resubscribe... God help me!

Yea I loved the stories from Warcraft 1-2-3 they were surprisingly in depth for an RTS, I like WoW don't get me wrong but I feel like the MMO butchered the lore. I only say that because I thought the lore was worth caring about Pre-WoW now its a mess of memes and movie/TV references but I didn't expect it to hold to that level of quality there is just to much content to keep it interesting.

$65 to get WOD and 1 month. That's more then any other game coming out this season.

Did that work?

is a 7.5 million recurring customer base business (even if that's bloated and it's only 3 million) really dieing?

But ya, this is not a surprise. People are checking out the new content. This happens when all the expansions release plus I got the impression people were anticipating this one.

Was that to not make him go back? I want to be the other guy and convince him to resub.

Think of all the loot, man. If you're not there to pick it up, who's going to pick it up? Some random guy is going to get his dirty hands all over it.

You people are tearing me apart! I'll probably resub, but I have to wait until the end of the semester before I do. There's no way I'd be able to keep up with my schoolwork AND WoW.

The interesting thing is that the launch of Mists of Pandaria also put them back up over 10 million but that was up from 9.1 million at the time so this is way more impressive. I think this also says a lot about the state of the MMO industry that it doesn't appear like any of the new MMOs have deterred people from picking up the new WoW expansion.

The real question is how many players will be left in 3 months.

No clue why they even posted this as news. A new expansion came out, of course they gained 2-3 mil subs. Check again in 3 months, don't get shocked if they are back down to 7mil or lower.

Of course 8.5 million of those are in China but who's counting.

It is a great expansion. I haven't had this much fun in the game since Wrath of the Lich King.

It's really really really good. I just beat my first level 100 dungeon (Shadowmoon Burial Grounds) and good god was it not only fun but it was actually a bit challenging. If they can keep up this level of quality for their updates I'll be stoked. I guess that 4 year layoff really rejuvenated me. Now to finish up Nagrand cause I need to know what happens!

Also 6 MILLION active paying subscribers IS STILL A LOT OF FUCKING PEOPLE! Even during its down time, it's still bringing in money. Man, this game...

insert snarky comment, because I got nothing. I'm baffled that this expansion pack really got people back.

If anything, you just argued in favor of it; he can put an infinite number of hours into WoW in a month and not have done everything, whereas you can 'finish' 90% of AAA releases in a couple days to a week. MMOs will always be the best dollar per time investment in video games; it's simply up to the consumer whether that's what they're after and whether they enjoy the game or not.

Let's see how that holds up in a couple months. Every new WoW expansion a huge amount of people come back, and then a few months later after they're done they leave again. Its happened constantly, and I don't believe it will be any different this time. Time will tell.

I'm not surprised. They have been doing a lot of work in preparation for WoD and it really shows in the quality of the expansion. I've only played a few hours of the new content but it is in my opinion the best content in WoW.

10 millions!? pfff who cares? Goat MMO Simulator is where it's at...

This happens every expansion. I don't understand why people are ever surprised by it.

They still don't have League of Legends numbers, though.

There's usually an upswing but I don't think they were expecting 3 million subscribers. In fact I could almost certainly say they didn't with how much downtime they've had lately. Still not World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade bad.

I don't think any game will have League of Legends numbers unless they invent a new genre that becomes an incredibly popular esport. At least in the near future if the moba genre keeps going as strong.

Good for them will definitely come back at some point. And people saying they don't have time to play WoW, have you played WoW recently? It's a game you can easily put an hour or two into a day and still make decent progress and have fun. Blizzard is now in a good position with this expansion, lets hope they don't make the same mistake three times now and fail to get further content out the door before people start dropping off.

Never thought they would reach that number again. I never jumped on the WoW bandwagon but seems people still like it.

Enjoying the game as much as i ever have right about now

@zirilius: I'm more than certain that they expected to hit 10 million again, since it's what happens with every expansion. Moreover, they were doing a major numbers overhaul with this expansion, as well as that tried-and-true promise of "hey, remember Burning Crusade and how much you loved it, because we're going back to that stuff...remember the Dark Portal that led to the Outlands, because it's on your login screen?"

I won't lie: when I saw the Dark Portal on that login screen, they almost...ALMOST...had me pre-ordering and resubscribing. However, I realized that I'm still thigh-deep in Marvel Heroes. Dare I say, the game has me by the left testicle. After watching people up here play it...and subsequently complain about it after they were praising it on the first day, I'm glad I didn't resubscribe. However, I will give it to Blizzard for at least FINALLY bringing the in-game damage numbers back down. The co-efficients on that shit were starting to get ridiculous.