‘World of Warcraft’ Breaks 1.5M Subscribers

By Ian Bell March 17, 2005

Building on its record-breaking debuts in North America, Korea, and Europe, “World of Warcraft” has reached global peak concurrency – the number of subscribers playing at the same time in each market – of more than 500,000 players.

“All of us at Blizzard are extremely gratified and amazed at the international demand for ‘World of Warcraft,'” said Mike Morhaime, president of Blizzard Entertainment. “From region to region, we’ve seen a phenomenal level of enthusiasm for ‘World of Warcraft,’ and we’re absolutely thrilled people are enjoying the game so much.”

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Since its debut in North America on Nov. 23, 2004, “World of Warcraft” has launched to critical and commercial success in Korea and Europe, exploding in popularity across the globe. In the span of a few short months, “World of Warcraft” has achieved record-breaking milestones, including:

    --  Europe:        --  Over 290,000 account creations and 180,000 peak            concurrency in its first weekend.        --  Over 500,000 active subscribers and 230,000 peak            concurrency to date.    --  Korea:        --  The most successful 100-day launch of any MMORPG in Korean            history since its commercial release on Jan. 18, 2005.        --  "World of Warcraft" is currently played in 75 percent of            Korean Internet Game Rooms (IGRs), the primary venue for            playing games in Korea. IGRs subscribe directly to MMORPGs            and then players buy blocks of time from the IGRs for game            time.    --  North America:        --  Over 200,000 subscribers and 100,000 peak concurrency            achieved in the game's first 24 hours.        --  Current subscriber base of over 800,000 players.

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Gaming

Activision Blizzard plans mobile Warcraft, next Call of Duty

Warcraft 3 Reforged main character holds a hammer and stares at the camera.

Activision Blizzard plans to release a new Call of Duty game and mobile Warcraft game in 2022, according to a February 2022 financial results report.
As part of that report, the company went over what investors could expect from Activision, Blizzard, and King in 2022. Notably, a Warcraft game for mobile phones is officially teased for the first time: "Blizzard is planning substantial new content for the Warcraft franchise in 2022, including new experiences in World of Warcraft and Hearthstone, and getting all-new mobile Warcraft content into players’ hands for the first time."
We've yet to learn the title of this game or see it in action. It'll be the first Warcraft game released since the disappointing Warcraft 3: Reforged in 2020, and the second to hit iOS and Android, following Hearthstone.
In the same report, Activision discussed Call of Duty in great detail. While the teased Call of Duty game is still untitled, this financial results report and a tweet from Infinity Ward heavily suggest that it's Modern Warfare 2. "Development on this year’s premium and Warzone experiences is being led by Activision’s renowned Infinity Ward studio," the results state. "The team is working on the most ambitious plan in franchise history, with industry-leading innovation and a broadly appealing franchise setting." Shortly afterward, Infinity Ward tweeted, "A new generation of Call of Duty is coming soon. Stay frosty."
https://twitter.com/InfinityWard/status/1489346822208249861
"Stay frosty" is an iconic line of John "Soap" MacTavish, a classic Modern Warfare character that was only teased in the 2019 reboot. Considering that 2019's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is widely regarded as the series' best game in recent memory, it's not a surprise that the Modern Warfare 2 rumors are true. A report from Bloomberg claims that this game will still release on PlayStation consoles, which makes sense as the Microsoft acquisition isn't expected to be complete until June 30, 2022.
Despite the acquisition being in progress, developers fighting to unionize, and the delay of Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV, this financial results report confirms that we can still expect new games from Activision Blizzard in 2022.

Gaming

World of Warcraft will finally unite the Alliance and Horde

Human and orc sharing a drink together.

Peace has finally come to Azeroth. World of Warcraft will finally allow players to party together across the two factions. Now players from the Alliance can form a group with Horde players to take down dungeons and raids together. The cross-faction instanced content will be put on the public test server soon for update 9.2.5.

Since the beginning of World of Warcraft, two factions have dominated the fantasy world of Azeroth, the Alliance and the Horde. The opposing factions have been, more or less, in open conflict with each other for almost twenty years. Player versus player content has almost exclusively revolved around this premise, until now.

Gaming

World of Warcraft development paused amid Activision-Blizzard harassment lawsuit

A party attacks a red dragon in World of Warcraft.

Following an explosive lawsuit filed against publishing giant Activision-Blizzard, development on World of Warcraft has been paused according to a senior designer working on the game.

Taking to Twitter, World of Warcraft senior system designer Jeff Hamilton didn't mince words, saying "I can tell you, almost no work is being done on World of Warcraft right now while this obscenity plays out. And that benefits nobody -- not the players, not the developers, not the shareholders."