World of Warcraft developers Blizzard Entertainment have denied reports that the latest expansion to the critically acclaimed massive multiplayer online game has reached over 10 million subscribers. A report, originally surfacing through NeoGaf, stated that the Polish magazine Pixel had obtained Blizzards latest subscriber figures through an interview with WoW designer Tom Chilton.
Chilton is reported to have stated; “Currently, [our subscriber number] is around 10.1 million. You know, it’s difficult to say what the future will bring. We have an internal competitor, Overwatch, but it’s possible it’ll get even higher than 12 million. There are plenty of potential takers and there are over 100 million World of Warcraft accounts.”
Blizzard has since officially denied this figure and claimed to Polygon that it was “a misquote or some kind of misunderstanding on the part of the journalist.” However, Blizzard did not confirm or deny the 10.1 million figure was true or false, they simply stated that they do not and will not disclose subscriber numbers as has now become their policy.
While it is certainly possible that there was a “misunderstanding” it is also entirely possible that Chilton accidently let the figure slip and Blizzard are just trying to downplay the situation. If the figure is correct, it shows that Legion has brought back the levels of subscribers and thus success not seen since pre-cataclysm. In essence, it could potentially mean that the Legion expansion has succeeded where three other expansions could not and has returned a huge amount of players to the aging, yet highly successful MMORPG.
