I say this a lot, but I feel it's worth pointing out in any story covering the massive success of World of Warcraft Classic because I find it genuinely hilarious. Do you all remember when Blizzard went on record as saying, in response to a question about a vanilla server for World of Warcraft, that we - the fans - thought that's what we wanted, but that we didn't actually want it? Good times. On a completely unrelated note, it turns out that World of Warcraft subscriptions have shot up by 223% since the launch of Classic last month.
A new report from Superdata has found that a huge number of players getting in on the Classic action were actually returning fans who'd given up on World of Warcraft and cancelled their subscriptions, only to come back once Blizzard released the thing they told us we didn't want. Am I coming off as too sarcastic here? Too bitter? Ah well.
According to the report, subscription revenue from the game rose by "an estimated 223% in August compared to July", making it the seventh top-grossing game on any platform in July, and the third on PC behind Dungeon Fighter Online and League of Legends, which supports Riot Games' recent claims that the MOBA is currently the most popular game in the world right now.
While it looks like WoW Classic is doing all the right things for Blizzard, Superdata reports that the total revenue the game brought in over August still wasn't quite up there with what Blizzard raked in this time last year following the release of the Battle for Azeroth expansion. There's also a good chance that we'll be seeing a pretty sharp drop in subscribers again soon, as the joy of returning to a classic World of Warcraft could be little more than a disposable novelty for many of the returning players. We'll have to wait and see.
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Speaking of impressive World of Warcraft Classic-related statistics (I know you love them) Pornhub Insights recently uncovered that on August 26, when players were faced with hours-long queues to get into the game, Pornhub searches for Warcraft-related terms rose by an eye-watering 210 percent above the daily average. These numbers have of course since gone back down, but I don't think any of will ever forget to communal World of Warcraft self-love session of August 2019. No matter how hard we might try to.
Featured Image Credit: BlizzardTopics: Blizzard, World of Warcraft