At GDC last week, Warcraft franchise Senior Vice President and General Manager John Hight gave a presentation that looked back upon 30 years of Warcraft, including World of Warcraft subscriber trends and figures.
When it comes to World of Warcraft, the presentation (with details shared over at Inven in Korean with additional info from MMO Champion), the information Hight shared included some of the factors that went right, leading to WoW’s iconic MMORPG status. Among those were an approachable high fantasy setting with global appeal, a bright visual style that remained timeless and distinct, and consistently evolving gameplay. “Evolve proven systems” reads one slide, along with iterating upon what you’ve created. As for other key factors, “the world is the star”, along with having “epic events” and “key story characters”. Add in a strong community, and when you mix these ingredients together, from our perspective in 2024, it’s easy to see the elements of World of Warcraft.
Hight also featured talk on what went wrong, including with Shadowlands, and this section included new data on subscriber trends, from Shadowlands to Dragonflight. It's one place where it gets interesting, because in the slides of the presentation, the team had a chart of expected subscriber trends, but what they saw was a series of declines after shadowlands. With expansions being a key source of continued content expansion, their initial expectations were for sustained growth.
When Shadowlands released, numbers were still strong, but then, they tumbled in “historically higher churn”. That eighth expansion came out in late 2020, and Blizzard expected that the following WoW Classic expansions, The Burning Crusade Classic and Wrath of the Lich King Classic would bring players back and reverse course. Yet, that didn’t happen. Until Dragonflight.
In charting what went wrong, Hight mentioned things like the afterlife setting, a poorly developed antagonist, lack of variety, and a lack of transparency, along with gaps in content. Prominent WoW community creator Bellular (Michael Bell) estimated the numbers as low as 8.27 million subscribers for a high point, and around where Shadowlands launched, to a low of about 4.5 million somewhere in 2022. Now, he estimates, they sit around 7.25 million.
Bellular’s estimates are estimates, since Blizzard revealed no figures, but according to an X (Twitter) post, he claims some have backed him up.
Worth noting that @JezCorden's sources have confirmed my analysis is 'roughly on the money'. So good news! WoW is in a healthy, albeit fragmented spot, with modern having plenty of headroom to grow. https://t.co/FMl4cTVl8A pic.twitter.com/fdS1SZJBGb
— Michael (@BellularGaming) March 25, 2024
As for Hight’s GDC talk, one late slide says “We re-established the relationship with our players” as the current period is marked by “Record post-launch stability and growth”. As we head into Cataclysm Classic and The War Within later this year, Hight mentions that they’re listening and working to give players reasons to stay. He even touched on the long-running same subscription price, saying that they work to add more value to it rather than raise prices.
