World of Warcraft has been around for 12 years now. The MMORPG has had its ups and downs. Lately, there’ve been more downs than up. The last time we heard any subscriber numbers was back in November 2015, when Blizzard said it only had 5.5 million at that point and decided to stop announcing the numbers of people paying to play the game. Which was smart, considering it had over 12 million people subscribing in 2010. But now, it seems like an expansion may have helped turn things around.
Legion, World of Warcraft’ s sixth expansion, was just released on August 30. It was quite a success. We know now that it’s sold over 3.3 million copies. This makes it the third World of Warcraft expansion to do so, with 2010’s Cataclysm and 2014’s Warlords of Draenor also having that honor. Blizzard even says subscriber figures are up, though still declines to provide numbers. And, when you think about what went into this expansion, it’s easy to see why it is what it is.
Think about the new Demon Hunter class. It has a lot to do with what makes Legion special. People could sample it ahead of the expansion’s release, as part of an early access promotion. Like the Death Knight, it offers an unexpected experience. You begin at level 98, rather than at square one, in Mardum, the Shattered Abyss. There, you go through unique questlines that teach you how to be a Demon Hunter and bring you up to level 100. It’s atypical, which can help pull people in.
Legion does even more to show Blizzard’s renewed commitment to the game and its players. In addition to the aforementioned Demon Hunter, the expansion also brings artifact weapons, with their own quest-lines, abilities to power up as players level, and order halls where such weapons can be customized. It improves PvP, with PvP honor talents and unique abilities, prestige levels that change appearance, and rebalanced stats for the players participating in the battle. Even existing elements were adjusted and improved, with class changes, rebalancing, and a Transmogrify 2.0 system to alter people’s looks.
It came at the perfect time as well. The World of Warcraft movie tanked, in terms of reviews. It’s currently at 32% on Metacritic and 28% on Rotten Tomatoes. It only made $47.2 million in North America, less than its $160 million budget, though the foreign sales were $386.3 million, making it the highest-grossing video game movie to date. Still, it didn’t hook people here the way Activision Blizzard expected, and movie tickets don’t always translate to game subscribers. Legion lifted us back up.
Let’s be positive, though. World of Warcraft’ s sudden uptick could be temporary. All expansions bring people back, for a time, and lead to success for this particular MMORPG. This could be the honeymoon period for Legion . Or, it could be making a legitimate difference. Let’s hope it’s the latter, for the sake of World of Warcraft and all the people who still love and play the game.