Over 3.3 million copies of World of Warcraft: Legion are sold during the game's worldwide launch, as the MMO's concurrent player count reaches its highest point since 2010.
There was a time when every new MMO led to discussions about a potential WoW killer. Now, over ten years after Blizzard's MMO launched, it's now just an understanding that World of Warcraft is nearly untouchable. The game doesn't boast the same worldwide subscription totals that it did in the first few years after launch, but the latest expansion, World of Warcraft: Legion, proves that the active player base is still alive and well.
The new content launched on August 30 (here's how to get started in Legion) and unlocked a new questing zone (The Broken Isles), ten new levels of content, a new hero class, and lots more. As always, WoW is seeing a boost in sales and active players as a result of the expansion content and Blizzard is happy enough with the results to share some numbers with fans. According to Activision's announcement, Legion saw over 3.3 million sales at launch.
"...As of the expansion's first full day of launch on August 30, more than 3.3 million copies of Legion had sold through, matching the all-time record achieved by previous expansions and making it one of the fastest-selling PC games ever..."
"In addition, World of Warcraft's launch-week player concurrency climbed to its highest point since the 2010 launch of the Cataclysm expansion, as champions from around the world united to strike a mighty first blow against the fel invaders. But the battle has only just begun."
Blizzard stopped sharing specific WoW subscription totals in recent years, but seeing the highest concurrent player count in the same spot as 2010's numbers is incredibly impressive. The game is one of the few MMO's that can still get away with a monthly subscription fee and players seem willing to return to Azeroth every time new content is released. Blizzard suggest a few years ago that it would like to move to annual expansions (probably similar to the current big patches), so it will be interesting to see if the team goes forward with that plan.
Some gamers are still hopeful that Blizzard will offer more options for fans who miss the vanilla WoW days, but the majority of the player base seems to be happy with the updates to make WoW more user friendly and accessible. Selling new players on a game that has twelve years worth of content to explore is a tough task, but luckily veteran players are still willing to drop money on expansions, in-game items, and a monthly fee. The original game and expansions are close to free at this point, so price isn't a barrier for entry until you run out of free play time and start getting hit with the $15/month charge...
Have you purchased the new WoW expansion? Do you think the game will continue to grow in popularity or drop off again once the expansion hype dies down? Let us know in the comments!
World of Warcraft: Legion is available now for PC.