In a few months, all Blizzard games will be available on the Chinese market after a long break. This could have an extremely positive impact on the player numbers for World of Warcraft – as shown by an official tweet from Blizzard’s partner Netease.
What is the tweet from Netease about? Blizzard’s Chinese partner released some exciting statistics a few days after the announcement of the return of all Blizzard games to China. These show how eager Chinese players are for World of Warcraft after the 15-month forced break.
- In just two days, two million players have pre-registered for the Chinese version of WoW.
- More than 92,000 accounts have been successfully restored up to this point.
- Nearly 147,000 accounts have been successfully reactivated.
- With over 950,000 comments, the community has expressed opinions on the reconstruction of the destroyed “Gorehowl” statue. Some of these comments will be immortalized on the new replica.
- More than 1,000 applications have been received for the new Blizzard/Netease office in China.
The upcoming WoW expansion The War Within brings exciting new features:
What does the return of China mean for Blizzard? The Chinese market has been enormously important for Blizzard for many years. How important is shown by the numbers of monthly active users (MAUs) from Activision Blizzard’s quarterly reports from 2022 and 2023.
According to the report for the fourth quarter of 2022, 45 million players were active in various Blizzard titles – this was before the loss of the Chinese market (via Activision Blizzard).
After the end of the collaboration with Netease, the number of MAUs fell to 26 million in the second quarter of 2023 (via Activision Blizzard). These are all players who suddenly no longer transfer money to California.
WoW returns to former glory
We assume that pre-registrations in China did not simply stop after the tweet was released. By now, the number is likely to be significantly higher. At the same time, information from GDC 2024 lets us guess how many players currently have an active WoW subscription (the estimate is 7+ million players worldwide).
This summer, not only is the return of Chinese players expected, but also an unusual amount is happening on WoW servers:
- For WoW Patch 10.2.7, another limited-time event is planned with WoW Remix: Mists of Pandaria – following Plunderstorm.
- On May 1, 2024, the pre-patch for Cataclysm Classic will be released, on May 21, Deathwing will break free from his prison and unleash the Cataclysm.
- The Season of Discoveries in WoW Classic will open the Level 60 area in the summer, with new endgame challenges.
- The new WoW expansion, The War Within, will arrive this summer, marking the start of the three-part World Soul saga.
If we put all of this together – the return of the Chinese players and the new content for modern WoW as well as WoW Classic – Blizzard is likely to surpass the mark of 10+ million active players with World of Warcraft this summer. Not bad for an almost 20-year-old MMORPG that continues to rely on a subscription model and has no console version. Or what do you think?
By the way, our WoW demon Cortyn is currently annoyed by parts of the WoW community: The players of WoW are never satisfied and it’s annoying
