Thanks to over 3.3M in sales on launch day, World of Warcraft subscriber numbers have soared over the 10M mark, probably a large factor in the server issues for the first several days of the Warlords of Dreanor expansion. These are the highest subscriber numbers since 2012.
On November 13, millions of Azeroth’s champions enlisted for the war against the Iron Horde with the launch of World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor, the fifth expansion to the world’s #1 subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game.* Blizzard Entertainment today announced that as of the first 24 hours of the expansion’s availability, more than 3.3 million copies had sold-through† and the game’s global subscriber base had passed 10 million, with growth across all major regions.
The release last week in North America, Latin America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia brought some technical and demand-related issues that made the first few days especially challenging for many players. To address the issues, Blizzard worked around the clock to roll out a series of updates and increase realm capacity across the board, and performance has remained solid since then. The expansion launched today (November 20 local time) in South Korea, mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.
“We’re thrilled that so many players jumped in to play Warlords of Draenor on day one and are having a great time with the new content,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We poured a lot of hard work and passion into this expansion, and we appreciate all the kind words from players and the overwhelming support they continue to show for World of Warcraft.”
Players have been largely supportive of Blizzard's efforts to ease server queues and many herald Warlords as the best expansion since The Burning Crusade.
Source: Blizzard press release
