After a beta that brought servers to their knees, Blizzard’s World of Warcraft: Forever has continued the hype train to create the company’s biggest launch ever.
World of Warcraft: Forever’s beta was so popular that Blizzard admitted it wasn’t “ready for this kind of engagement”. That beta, which saw millions flood into Azeroth, was locked behind a paywall with all progress wiped before launch, but it was still the company’s biggest beta ever.
Despite this, the game’s actual launch has been even more successful than its beta. With only a standard WoW subscription needed to play, Blizzard’s Classic+ MMORPG has been a resounding success.
Announced on social media, Blizzard confirmed that the new MMO’s launch had the “highest number of returning players in WoW history”. Additionally, the game boasts the “biggest launch in WoW history by peak concurrent players”.
World of Warcraft lead Holly Longdale also took to Twitter to celebrate the game’s launch. In her tweet, Longdale added that the new MMO launch has seen “the most NEW players for a WoW launch in 15 years”.
“Welcome all! We’re so happy you’re here experiencing Azeroth for the first time alongside those of us playing it for the first time…AGAIN,” Longdale said. Longdale confirmed that World of Warcraft: Forever’s launch even eclipses the immense player counts of both The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King expansions for the original game.
While World of Warcraft: Forever is still impressive in its player counts, it’s not entirely surprising to see how many players are jumping into the MMO. WoW has never been unpopular, it’s still the biggest MMORPG around, but players have been begging for a Classic+ experience for over a decade now, and Forever finally fulfils that dream.
Private servers have existed with massive amounts of popularity entirely for that reason, and now that Blizzard is making the game players have spent over a decade asking for… well, of course it’s going to be a mega-hit. The promise of World of Warcraft has never been unpopular, but many are simply not as engaged in Retail as they were in Classic.
While Blizzard is planning to take it slow and steady with future expansions of World of Warcraft: Forever, its unbridled popularity may change that. Additionally, it seems that the MMORPG is finally heading to console which should introduce millions of additional players to the game. Really, it’s a World of Warcraft resurgence.
