In a few months, all Blizzard games will be offered on the Chinese market after a long break. For World of Warcraft in particular, this could have an extremely positive effect on player numbers – this is now shown by an official tweet from Blizzard's partner Netease.
For new players, iGV has got you covered with the cheap and fast WOW Gold to help you immerse yourself in this game even faster.
What is Netease's tweet about?
Blizzard's Chinese partner released some exciting statistics a few days after announcing the return of all Blizzard games to China. They show how hot Chinese players are after the 15-month forced break from World of Warcraft.
- In just two days, two million players pre-registered for the Chinese version of WoW.
- More than 92,000 accounts have been successfully recovered by this time.
- Nearly 147,000 accounts have been successfully reactivated.
- With more than 950,000 comments, the community commented 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.
What does the return of China mean for Blizzard?
The Chinese market has been hugely important to Blizzard for many years. The importance is shown by the figures of monthly active players (MAUs for short) from Activision Blizzard's quarterly reports from 2022 and 2023.
According to the report for the fourth quarter of 2022, there were 45 million players in Blizzard's various titles – this was before the Chinese market disappeared (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 lost players who suddenly stop transferring money to California.
WoW Returns to Greatness
We assume that pre-registrations in China did not simply stop after the tweet was published. In the meantime, the number is likely to be significantly higher. At the same time, the information from GDC 2024 gives an idea of how many players currently have an active WoW subscription (the estimate is 7+ million players worldwide).
Not only is the return of Chinese players coming back this summer, but there is also an unusual amount happening on the WoW servers:
- WoW patch 10.2.7 has another limited-time event planned for WoW Remix: Mists of Pandaria – after Plunderstorm.
- On May 1, 2024, the Cataclysm Classic pre-patch will be released, and on May 21, Deathwing will break out of his prison and unleash the Cataclysm.
- WoW Classic's Season of Discovery will open up the level 60 area this summer, with new endgame challenges.
- With The War Within, the new WoW expansion will be released this summer, marking the start of the three-part World Soul saga.
If we put all of this into one pot – i.e. the return of Chinese players, but also the new content for modern WoW and WoW Classic – Blizzard should almost certainly break the 10+ million active player mark with World of Warcraft this summer. Not bad at all, for an almost 20-year-old MMORPG that still relies on a subscription and doesn't have a console version. Or how do you see it?