Tuesday, December 8th 2020
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands Becomes Fastest-Selling PC Game of All Time
Starting November 23, World of Warcraft players around the globe began their journey into the unknown reaches of Azeroth's afterlife in Shadowlands, the game's highly anticipated eighth expansion. Today, Blizzard Entertainment announced that as of the first full day of Shadowlands' launch, more than 3.7 million units had sold through globally, making it the fastest-selling PC game of all time industry-wide.
The previously announced industry record-holder, Blizzard's own Diablo III, sold through more than 3.5 million copies as of its first day of release. Today's announcement confirms that Shadowlands has surpassed that milestone as well as any other reported sell-through achievement for the same time frame among all PC games historically.
In addition, World of Warcraft has continued to see strong engagement from the global community franchise-wide:
The launch of Shadowlands is just the beginning of an adventure unlike anything ever before experienced in World of Warcraft, with much more in store for players in the weeks and months ahead. Starting today, Shadowlands Season 1 commences when the gates to the expansion's first raid, Castle Nathria—the gothic stronghold of Revendreth—open in Normal and Heroic difficulties. Mythic Keystone dungeons will also become available, tempting Azeroth's heroes with greater rewards for taking on increased challenges. This season's dungeon affix, Prideful, turns heroes' own sense of accomplishment against them in the form of ego-wrought manifestations. In addition, players will be able to put their skills to the ultimate test in Arenas and Battlegrounds as the expansion's first Rated PvP season begins.
The previously announced industry record-holder, Blizzard's own Diablo III, sold through more than 3.5 million copies as of its first day of release. Today's announcement confirms that Shadowlands has surpassed that milestone as well as any other reported sell-through achievement for the same time frame among all PC games historically.
- In the months leading up to the expansion's release and the time since launch, the game reached and has sustained its highest number of players on monthly or longer-term subscriptions compared to the same period ahead of and following any WoW expansion in the past decade, in both the West and the East.
- Players have spent more time in Azeroth year to date than in the same period of any of the last 10 years.
- In addition, total player time in game this year to date has nearly doubled compared to the same period last year.
The launch of Shadowlands is just the beginning of an adventure unlike anything ever before experienced in World of Warcraft, with much more in store for players in the weeks and months ahead. Starting today, Shadowlands Season 1 commences when the gates to the expansion's first raid, Castle Nathria—the gothic stronghold of Revendreth—open in Normal and Heroic difficulties. Mythic Keystone dungeons will also become available, tempting Azeroth's heroes with greater rewards for taking on increased challenges. This season's dungeon affix, Prideful, turns heroes' own sense of accomplishment against them in the form of ego-wrought manifestations. In addition, players will be able to put their skills to the ultimate test in Arenas and Battlegrounds as the expansion's first Rated PvP season begins.
25 Comments on World of Warcraft: Shadowlands Becomes Fastest-Selling PC Game of All Time
Is Blizzard trying to run one past the media by trying to pass off sales numbers as all fitting within a 1 day timespan instead of the some many months it actually took place over?
3.7 Million sales isn't a small number. How does it compare to previous WoW expansions? I find it hard to trust cherry picked numbers coming from a company that stopped releasing subscriber numbers to hide a decline.
I feel like I live in a parallel world, I am staggered this many people still play it. Mind you there is always an influx of players when a new expansion comes out and immediately after the player base falls of a cliff.
Or maybe you tried the same thing over and over again expecting a different outcome and came to us to preach your experience ?
You only think that, cause WoW hasn't really been that popular in EU and CIS to begin with. It never gave up position in US throughout all these years, only fluctuated user activity between expansion releases. Habit is a hard thing to change, even an outdated and expensive subscription-based model with a hefty entry price can't change that.
I think it's about the comfort zone for most people. After having played a long time, they feel attached and find it daunting to invest similar time to learn another game.
Surprisingly, I really didn't put much time into the game. I wasn't all that impressed with it. I guess I just liked the idea of WoW and not really what it had to offer in terms of value. I tried joining several different guilds - usually met with the same results when we'd try PvP for capture the flag....no one on my side knew how to work together. They all just ran around doing whatever the hell they wanted and we'd just get crushed....a lot of negativity and meanness between the players. I found it more entertaining playing the game solo instead of dealing with a bunch of ass hats.
I'm surprised some folks are still into this game after all these years, that's some serious dedication.
It'd also eat you guys up knowing the overkill hardware I play it on too :P *cackles*
Played vanilla until WOTLK came out, sold account. Started playing again with Legion and burned out from it with the last content updates for it... Never finished the whole xpacs dungeons. It is indeed more of the same. It still has some spark in it from vanilla but most of that unique atmosphere is just gone and it cannot be revived. That is why so many moved to private legacy servers...
But the thing is, WoW still has the best gameplay mechanics, game loops, and designs all rolled into a single MMO backed by great servers and support plus the absolute best and biggest lore base you can find in any of them. Blizzard built that up in its glory days and most of that is still preserved even if all those world maps are now deserted.
After WoW vanilla I explicitly looked for MMOs with similar magic but honestly I never found it. And I played a few dozen of them, mind, many hundreds of farm hours later I can still arrive in WoW snd enjoy it for what it is, albeit briefly. Other MMOs also shine but in their own way and more often than not, partly hecause they borrow concepts from WoW.
The whole quest marker system and multiple other ideas are now commonplace in almost every game.
Disappointed Lone Wolf Marksman, happier and healthier human. :peace:
Although I stopped playing 3 or 4 years ago, and had several years break in between stints, I racked up over 500K PvP kills and 10K Arena matches and around 500 days played. There was obviously something for me...
Only MMO I found somewhat okay, even while completely different was TESO (or ESO), but that was before F2P. Quit that exactly at that point.
Still kinda miss WoW I remember.. but its impossible to get back to it, no longer exists. Specific mixture of game and time.For most bugs in game? :D
www.tweaktown.com/news/76705/cyberpunk-2077-huge-on-the-pc-biggest-game-launch-ever/index.html
Kinda overhyped, not entirely finished looking, quite a few bugs and not so great on HW.
Which will if W3 is any indication improve in next half a year or a year. Which is about time Im going to buy it. :D Hopefully mix of better optimization and new GPUs will help. Unless world collapses.