Just a while ago, YouTubers and some game critics announced that MMORPGs are dead. And now, bashing all these claims World of Warcraft subscribers has shown that even after two decades of launch, its magic is still on.
The game has got a new expansion and during the release, the spokesperson announced that they have subscribers for the first expansion. This clearly shows that players still love this game and wait for the new updates and expansions.
If you are one of those players and want to know more about World of Warcraft subscribers and the World of Warcraft then please give this article a read.
World of Warcraft Subscribers Increased over time.
For some time, some game critics and YouTubers were rolling their eyes and saying that MMORPGs are dead as no one plays them now. One of the prominent names in MMORPGs is World of Warcraft, which was launched two decades ago.
With the release of the latest expansion in the game franchise, the company took a stand against these assumptions. During the release of World of Warcraft’s latest expansion, John Hight, the Warcraft General Manager, talked about the game mechanics.
He said that this new expansion, Dragonflight, has more subscribers now than it had at the launch. Also speaking at the Game Developers Conference, he explained the game mechanics of World of Warcraft.
He said that the game historically has a very predictable pattern when it comes to subscriber churn. Every time a new expansion is released, there is a surge in subscriber numbers. And with time, this number declines and comes with new small bumps.
Finally, at the end of each expansion, the subscriber numbers hit a low point, and again, with the coming of a new expansion, the same chain is repeated. Only in the case of World of Warcraft: Classic, this pattern was disrupted for World of Warcraft subscribers.
In the words of Hight, it is a “constant inflow and outflow with almost as many new players coming in as other players going out.”
But something changed in this repeated chain pattern of World of Warcraft subscribers when World of Warcraft: Shadowlands was released. Allegedly more players fall off with time because of their dislike toward the story and content of the new expansion.
This surely affected the number of World of Warcraft subscribers, and now the recent expansion has been released. Hight even presented a graphical presentation of this pattern and showed that its subscribers were not going anywhere.
However, one content creator points out that there might be an extrapolation of the actual rough numbers based on the squiggly lines. Well, there can be a long debate on this topic, but we hope that World of Warcraft can find a way to retain its subscribers.