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World of Warcraft crushes another sales record in Cataclysm's first month

by Krystalle Voecks on Jan 10th 2011 1:30PM

World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Expansions, MMO Industry, News Items

In news that pretty much surprises precisely nobody, Blizzard has once again topped the previously-set PC game sales records with the release of their newest World of Warcraft expansion, Cataclysm. Aside from their hefty day-one sales of 3.3 million copies sold (and that doesn't include Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Macau who had their release on the 9th) that we reported earlier, Cataclysm has now set a second record -- this time for most PC game copies sold in the first month -- with 4.7 million copies in all flying off shelves and into eager hands.

Despite reports that consumer spending on video games is starting to drop off, World of Warcraft isn't showing any signs of massive slowdowns anytime soon. Having crossed the 12 million subscribed player mark last year, and with a slew of new jobs open to support their current games as well as work on the next generation, things definitely look good for Blizzard.

Source: Blizzard

Tags: Blizzard, Blizzard-Entertainment, cataclysm, sales-records, World-of-Warcraft, wow

Reader Comments (33)

Lol @ the "f2p is the future" people.

@k3nt0456
F2P is the opiate of the masses.

And of those 4.7 million in sales, 4.5 million of those players are busy leveling alt #6 because the content is more shallow then it ever has been.

@(Unverified) Sadly, this is probably why I have put my sub on hiatus for the time being.

Everything was well done, but even without trying I fell onto level 85 in a matter of a coupel weeks. Had I wanted to put in a few 8 hour days in a row level 85 would have been reached in under a week (and this goes without saying I am not some sort of pursuer of server first achievements).

I'm sure I will be back. However they threw me so quickly into doing the heroics grind, the dailies grind, the reputation grind, and the vanity pet and mount pursuit, that I wondered what it was all for. It just gives me a chance to finally try out some other fine games after 3 years of steady WoW.

(and no, this is not a complaint. There are lots of great things they did in storytelling, graphic design, dungeon layout. The things I want though in a game felt underserved.)

@(Unverified)

Pretty much that. I'm already re-bored when not in a raid and even that will be boring in a bout a month when we have to start re-clearing it all as "heroic repeated content." Then we'll have the six month wait until the next raid content comes out.

WoW that's boring...

@Aelon and both @(Unverified)

Ditto. The new 80-85 zones were nicely done, but I disliked how we quickly go through them only to end up standing around in SW/Org once again less than 2 weeks after Cata came out.

It's got Blizzard quality all over, however I suspect what we got was a product that was rushed to meet a deadline; it's missing stuff, grinds are currently overtuned to make up for the lack of lv85 content.

I played throughout December, got two characters to lv85 and deactivated my subscription; I'll gladly come back when patch 4.1 comes out with new stuff to do.

@(Unverified)

Not sure why you guys are demoting this guys comment. I am a long time wow player, and as trolly as this sounds, cataclysm is pretty shallow and boring. The end game is identical...nothing new, just different skins. Same gameplay. It was fun in the past, but getting very old now.

@(Unverified)

Not sure why Unverified was so harshly downranked, but I agree. The 1-60 experience is INCREDIBLE, then you get bogged down in old content from 60-80. Then you get some good 80-85 quests, but none as good as the 1-60, before you're right back into the same, exact grind as before. After six years, and spending $40 on Cataclysm, I decided to get off the WOW hamster wheel.

I kind of wonder how long it will be before players notice that Blizzard is taking forever, again, to release new content, and then only for raiders? You can only do the same daily quests and (really unimpressive) new five-mans before it feels more stale than ever.

So the people who were playing WoW bought the expansion? Is that really surprising?

@juanele

Yeah, I don't really see the point of these articles.

BREAKING NEWS!

THE SKY'S STILL BLUE!
(healthy) GRASS IS STILL GREEN!
WORLD OF WARCRAFT IS STILL THE WORLD'S MOST POPULAR MMO!

WOW IS DIEING!!!!!!!

4.5mil copies of the new xpack sold....interesting considering thier "13million" userbase.....where'd the other 9+ million players go?

@Skyydragonn

It hasn't launched in Asia yet?

@Skyydragonn derp.

Arent there 12 millions suscribers to WoW?
Where are the 8 millions that didnt buy cataclysm then??

@Tazmanyak and Skyydragonn

6-7 million of these 8 million that didn't buy it are Asian players and Cataclysm hasn't released there yet.

@paterah

to add... 4.5 million is probably the vast majority of the North American and western European subscriber base.

Asian players often play in internet cafes, so fewer copies will be sold than there are subscribers to sit at those computers.

The only place it has not released yet is in China because they are an expansion behind us. Nice job fudging sub numbers Blizzzard! No way they are selling 8-9 million copies in China.

Yep, 4.7 million sales out of a 13 mill userbase, and it's released in ALL countries bar China smells alittle fishy.

Either there are 8 million chinese players or it's not only Blizzards quests that have alot of poo in them.

Nothing will ever kill WoW. LoTRO is actually the most well made fantasy MMO and Turbine is excellent at customer care, but I think we're not flocking over there because of the very limited option to kill other players.

I hate to say it but, after I get my fill of DCUO, I'll be going back to WoW. Many times I hated Blizzard, but some companies, like NCSoft, I came to hate even worse. Every other game offered superior graphics but still lacked some feature I'd grown accustomed to in WoW.

In every other game at least one of the following was not there:

That precise party loot system?
Not there.
A convenient LFG system?
Not there.
That one convenient chat feature?
Not there.

Obviously that's just a few. But my point? My point is:
You bet your booties I'm going to pay whatever they want for me to go back. The offer of F2P is the cake the others promise us. It doesn't take long for us to learn about the cake.

| 1 | 2 | Most Recent | Next 20 Comments

World of Warcraft crushes another sales record in Cataclysm's first month

Reader Comments (33)

Posted: Jan 10th 2011 1:40PM k3nt0456 said

Posted: Jan 10th 2011 6:32PM Fausts said

Posted: Jan 10th 2011 1:46PM Darkstryke said

Posted: Jan 10th 2011 2:44PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 10th 2011 4:30PM Aelon said

Posted: Jan 10th 2011 4:49PM Crsh said

Posted: Jan 10th 2011 5:22PM Laren said

Posted: Jan 10th 2011 6:10PM AlienFanatic said

Posted: Jan 10th 2011 1:52PM juanele said

Posted: Jan 10th 2011 2:50PM Audacious said

Posted: Jan 10th 2011 2:03PM Doba said

Posted: Jan 10th 2011 2:16PM Skyydragonn said

Posted: Jan 11th 2011 12:57AM SgtBaker1234556 said

Posted: Jan 11th 2011 9:24PM End Dream said

Posted: Jan 10th 2011 2:23PM Tazmanyak said

Posted: Jan 10th 2011 2:30PM paterah said

Posted: Jan 10th 2011 2:47PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 10th 2011 6:00PM SaintV said

Posted: Jan 10th 2011 6:12PM mmogaddict said

Posted: Jan 10th 2011 6:25PM Fausts said

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