There has been little doubt in everyone's mind for quite a while now, that Blizzard's World of Warcraft is the biggest, the best and the most popular MMORPG of all time, featuring the deepest canon, the most spectacular and intricate game world and the most paying subscribers by far. Indeed, WOW's throne has never been under threat by a competitor, even when - for a long while there - the game bled subscribers and seemed headed to free-to-play/micro-transactions land. The much hyped and anticipated launch of the massive Warlords of Draenor expansion blew all that straight out of the water though, and by selling more than 3.3 million copies within 24 hours of its launch, it breathed new life into the old MMO in spectacular fashion.
WOW's woes were so "bad" that at one point, it was down to about 6.5 million subscribers. The impact of the Warlords of Draenor expansion was so massive though that now the subscriber number shot up above 10 million again, a number officially confirmed yesterday by publisher Activision Blizzard.
Given the fact that its peak saw WOW entertain some 12 million players, it's safe to say there's still some ground to cover before it begins breaking records again, but if the momentum generated by the WoD expansion keeps up, it may indeed happen.
The current uptick in WOW subscriber numbers may also be due to a perfect storm-kind-of situation, where the cancellation of Blizzard's Titan MMO last year played into the hype generated by WoD by raising player confidence in the game. With the full attention of the world's best gaming company focused on it, WOW does indeed look like a truly attractive and confidence-inspiring proposition for the foreseeable future.
Philip Thalberg has been working for Gosugamers since 2007. One of the hottest spots of the global eSports scene, Gosugamers features superb and continuously updated Hearthstone stats, based on competitive games.
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