Report: WoW's Actual Subscriber Count & Blizz's Official Shadowlands Post-mortem



Read more about World of Warcraft ➜ https://worldofwarcraft.mgn.gg

You read the title correctly: this is the data we’ve all been waiting for. Learn Back-end Programming: https://boot.dev, and check them out on Boot.dev’s YouTube: @bootdotdev! Use code BELLULAR for 25% off. Sponsored by Boot.dev. This comes from a GDC 2024 talk done by John Hight, who is the executive producer of the Warcraft franchise.

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50 thoughts on “Report: WoW's Actual Subscriber Count & Blizz's Official Shadowlands Post-mortem”

  1. My SoD GM knows what the MDI is but has not played retail since WoD, the better performing players in the guild participate in retail, the rest of the guild are casual classic only players. Some of them didn't know mythic plus was a thing. I had to explain it to them. I was very surprised.

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  2. where does the WOD "5.5million" number come from? We've never been given such data officially. Also the whole "unverifiable millions of chinese users" that everyone in the AAA gaming industry does makes it harder to determine the numbers

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  3. As a classic only player, Legion was the last retail expac i had fun in. The theme of the expac was top notch. I still watch bellular to see whats going on in retail wow if i return one day or not. I might try out War Within as the theme seems to be going back to warcrafty stuff i like.

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  4. Those Shadowlands stats are very suspiciously low, in other words I call BS on this. There is no way the game now (10.2.6) has more active players than SL had back during 9.1 (I "quit" just before 9.1.5 so can't speak for that specific time) and 9.2 unless I'm missing something. I believe that retention was DF's unique strength but I think it's just as unpopular as SL was on average. I might just be dumb, I look forward to be corrected.

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  5. I do feel like dragonflight is one of the best (if not the best) expansions ever released. This being said – I literally unsubbed few months after release. Honestly I'm still wondering why I'm not finding an enjoyment out of WoW anymore…

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  6. Havent you yourself claimed once as absolute fact that wow's worst time was when they had barely above 1mil subs. But apparently now its 4x higher? Youre just guessing every video and acting like its some expert opinion.

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  7. Lol the irony. bellular has been harping on the "WoW is dead" train for a few years now. TBH WoW might not be at it's sub peak, but it is certainly at it's profitability peak, and that is undeniable. Between tokens, the store, 1yr sub bundles, ect.

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  8. Retail WoW doesn't feel like Warcraft, it's an absolute mess of a bunch of colors flying around. Go to Stormwind or Orgrimmar and just look at what you see, take a look at the flying mounts and how ridiculous it all looks, it doesn't feel like WoW, it looks like a Deviantart meetup.

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  9. im back playing from legion im loving the variety of it all. I might do a couple of levels on HC, then some retail, then do my lockout of season of discovery im enjoying the change !

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  10. This shits hilarious, saying a number so high is sure to get clicks and get the grifters reacting to it. 0 chance WoW has that many players. Blizzard would never do a presentation and allow themselves to look negative like this after all the shit they have pulled.

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  11. Dragonflight wasn’t bad gameplay wise(barring a few issues that have been present for years) the story is just bland this expansion. It used to have a level of grit and darkness to it and now we have happy dragons and alexstrazza saying she has mommy energy, like wtf blizzard

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  12. My question is. Is WoW getting new players or only surfing with the original players( Classic to Wrath). In 2024 with so many other good games it's hardly believable that theyve been able to keep that many players

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  13. Great vid and I'm glad we are getting some info about this, but if you say we cannot do exact ones but, in the title, you have the word 'Actual'. Catchy title is fine, but don't say something in the title like that and then say we cannot do exact the numbers. It's misleading.

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  14. There's a correlation here made that is false, M+ is not at its best in terms of population just because a lot of people are playing it, it's because this season has become very accessible regardless the skill level except a breaking point around 24 key level. Just saying.

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  15. People reslly need to understand that gross profits are not net profits. Wow likely does not make a profit from sub numbers only, or a small one. Expansions and micro transactions help but if you review back years when activision reported results quarterly, king who just makes candy crush, was always way more profitable. Simply because blizzard has insane costs due to where it is (irvine califonia), and high heeadcount for little production on that headcount (wow expos, hearthstone expos and a new game every decade or so).

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  16. It is a struggle for me to find things to do in WoW right now. I found 10.1 and 10.2 to be largely unappealing patches in terms of aesthetic and while DF as a whole has been fine from a gameplay perspective the whole expansion has just felt "off" in terms of presentation. Nothing in DF 'feels' like world of warcraft which has hurt my motivation to play it. BfA was the last time that WoW actually felt like WoW. SL and DF both feel like fan fictions.

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  17. Classes are still bloated messes of key bindings though. And hero talents are going to make it worse.

    This is one of the leading issues in the game and no one seems to realise the hellscape we are gleefully traipsing in to.

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  18. It doesn't really matter if they have 600 employees working on WoW, as that alone doesn't tell us how many are actually developing the game, probably not a lot. Its kind of unrelated, but Mojang also has, approximately six hundred people working in it as of 2021, yet players were greatly dissatisfied with the lack of content.
    Most of these people are probably there for marketing, or some other business staff

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  19. To repair the lore damage would really help, they could make it so Shadowlands was just a dream brought onto everyone through Nzoth (or whoever) and then revert everything back to before SLs happened so that all the main characters are still around and go from there.
    I doubt they'd do that but they should, imo.

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  20. I unsubed for the stunt they just pulled. Dont put "content" in the patch timeline if its not related to the game. Also not playing a no new content game untill the new exp. Mark my words bliz is going to kill the game with this. Nobody wants to play old content after spending months and months farming it….

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