Blizzard Sees Notable Uptick in WoW Subscriptions

If you’ve read any of the articles I’ve written on the subject of World of Warcraft Classic, especially my earlier editorials that were published before Classic actually launched, you’ll know I originally counted myself among the portion of WoW’s subscriber base who were skeptical as to whether it would last once the rose-tinted nostalgia glasses worn by those who played Classic began to fall off. However, once World of Warcraft Classic became publicly playable last August and I first tried it for myself, I quickly changed my tune.

According to statistics mentioned by Activision and by Blizzard Entertainment’s president J. Allen Brack, during a financial presentation that took place within the last couple of days; it certainly appears as though I’m not the only one who was skeptical about the intentions and viability of Classic, but ultimately began to greatly enjoy the different experience it offers.

That theory is supported by the aforementioned statistics, which reportedly claim that the number of “active” World of Warcraft players who have at least a monthly subscription to the game had more than doubled at the end of last year compared to that same number when measured two months before Classic went live. Considering that players are automatically granted continuous access to WoW Classic for as long as they have an active subscription to the retail version of the game, it’s entirely possible that Classic has been the driving force behind that significant increase in active subscribers.

J. Allen Brack explained during that presentation that Blizzard thinks of the WoW community as supporting both the retail and “vanilla” versions of the game, “even though Classic and Modern are very distinct experiences. [W]e’re committed to continuing to support both of those experiences over the long term.”

That statement appears to be true, at least up to this point, as Blizzard is slated to release yet another major content update for Classic on February 13th, 2020. This update most notably contains the raid known as Blackwing Lair. Classic will also be getting the original version of the Darkmoon Faire quite soon; Blizzard reported in a recent Tweet that the Faire will be active in Mulgore beginning February 10th.

To conclude on a bit of a personal note, I sincerely hope Blizzard continues to update and maintain World of Warcraft Classic as they’ve said they intend to. If Classic is, in fact, among the primary reasons for the aforementioned more-than-doubling of WoW’s subscriber count over the past few months, I would imagine they have sense enough to know that abandoning the legacy version of the game would likely upset many of those paying subscribers. If they know that, they likely also understand why angering those players would be bad news.

Then again, I’m sadly well aware that there’s increasingly less of a reason to expect Blizzard to keep their word about anything related to their games, in light of the entire kerfuffle regarding Warcraft III: Reforged. However, I’ll reserve all my thoughts on that matter for their own dedicated editorial.