World of Warcraft: Dragonflight Gross sales Have But to Outpace Shadowlands

For the primary time since 2012, the brand new World of Warcraft growth has not carried out as nicely commercially as its predecessor. In Activision Blizzard’s Q4 2022 financial results, the corporate mentioned “early Dragonflight gross sales haven’t reached the extent of the prior growth”.

The brand new World of Warcraft growth failing to fulfill or exceed gross sales of the earlier growth is a rarity for the franchise. 2020’s Shadowlands sold over 3.7 million copies on its launch day, which outpaced 2018’s Battle for Azeroth. That growth sold over 3.4 million copies on launch day, which was a file for the franchise on the time.

2016’s Legion bought 3.3 million on day one, matching the earlier file. It’s important to go all the way in which again to 2012’s Mists of Pandaria to seek out the final growth that did not match or outsell what got here earlier than.

Activision Blizzard did not present quite a lot of Dragonflight copies bought, however we all know it is fewer than Shadowlands’ 3.7 million. Nevertheless, Activision Blizzard famous that it’s going to ship “considerably extra follow-on content material for the growth than previously,” and that post-launch subscriber retention within the West is stronger than latest World of Warcraft expansions. Blizzard additionally mentioned cell title Warcraft: Arclight Rumble continues to “progress nicely via regional testing.”

We awarded World of Warcraft: Dragonflight a 7 in our review, saying, “Dragonflight reignites the sense of surprise and exploration that initially drew me to World of Warcraft, for concerning the first 30 or 40 hours. Past that, it undoubtedly begins to really feel a bit threadbare.”

Logan Plant is a contract author for IGN protecting online game and leisure information. He has over six years of expertise within the gaming business with bylines at IGN, Nintendo Wire, Swap Participant Journal, and Lifewire. Discover him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.