World of Warcraft: Forever released earlier this week, and apparently it has surpassed the concurrent launch numbers of even Wrath of the Lich King. From Blizzard’s Twitter post:
Congratulations everyone, you made HISTORY!
WoW: Forever has achieved:
🔹The biggest launch in WoW history by peak concurrent players
🔹The highest number of returning players in WoW history
This is all because of you, the players. From all of us, THANK YOU!
It’s worth pointing out that “peak concurrent players” is not subscriptions or sales or anything other than concurrency. Considering that Wrath/Cataclysm saw 12 million subscriptions at their height, I am rather curious about how far apart concurrency was between them and Forever. Is it just an artifact of having enough servers available to keep the queues down? We may never know for sure.
In any case, I am surprised at the popularity of Forever given how WoW Classic exists. Or maybe I shouldn’t be. Classic came out in 2019, which… yikes, seven years? It came out pre-COVID? Anyway, Forever represents an interesting pivot opportunity that Classic is not able to deliver by definition: what if the devs chose a different development path? My understanding is that Blizzard is already sorta doing this in “Era” (aka progression Classic) by not having the Dungeon Finder, but the quest/dungeon/raid design is what it was for each re-released expansion. If you didn’t like the direction Blizzard was heading at the time, you will be effectively pushed out of the game all over again. Can’t wait to see who shows up for Classic Shadowlands.
As for myself, I will not be joining any version. I quit playing WoW because I no longer desired social obligation in my videogames, and that’s literally everything retail and Classic+ fosters. If that’s what you are looking for, great, you’re no doubt eating good. I will be following along on the outside, as I’m curious to see how Blizzard handles “horizontal progression” with a playerbase trained for decades on gear treadmills. Guild Wars 2 and a few others have figured it out, but largely because they had those systems in place at the start. Will there be enough Forever players chomping at the bit to raid whatever is after Naxx, if the gear has the same stats? We shall see.
Forever Past
Nov 8
Posted by Azuriel
World of Warcraft: Forever released earlier this week, and apparently it has surpassed the concurrent launch numbers of even Wrath of the Lich King. From Blizzard’s Twitter post:
It’s worth pointing out that “peak concurrent players” is not subscriptions or sales or anything other than concurrency. Considering that Wrath/Cataclysm saw 12 million subscriptions at their height, I am rather curious about how far apart concurrency was between them and Forever. Is it just an artifact of having enough servers available to keep the queues down? We may never know for sure.
In any case, I am surprised at the popularity of Forever given how WoW Classic exists. Or maybe I shouldn’t be. Classic came out in 2019, which… yikes, seven years? It came out pre-COVID? Anyway, Forever represents an interesting pivot opportunity that Classic is not able to deliver by definition: what if the devs chose a different development path? My understanding is that Blizzard is already sorta doing this in “Era” (aka progression Classic) by not having the Dungeon Finder, but the quest/dungeon/raid design is what it was for each re-released expansion. If you didn’t like the direction Blizzard was heading at the time, you will be effectively pushed out of the game all over again. Can’t wait to see who shows up for Classic Shadowlands.
As for myself, I will not be joining any version. I quit playing WoW because I no longer desired social obligation in my videogames, and that’s literally everything retail and Classic+ fosters. If that’s what you are looking for, great, you’re no doubt eating good. I will be following along on the outside, as I’m curious to see how Blizzard handles “horizontal progression” with a playerbase trained for decades on gear treadmills. Guild Wars 2 and a few others have figured it out, but largely because they had those systems in place at the start. Will there be enough Forever players chomping at the bit to raid whatever is after Naxx, if the gear has the same stats? We shall see.
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Tags: Concurrent, Horizontal Progression, Subscription, WoW Classic, WoW: Forever, Wrath