For the first time since 2012, the new World of Warcraft expansion has not performed as well commercially as its predecessor. In Activision Blizzard’s Q4 2022 financial results, the company said “early Dragonflight sales have not reached the level of the prior expansion”.
The new World of Warcraft expansion failing to meet or exceed sales of the previous expansion is a rarity for the franchise. 2020’s Shadowlands sold over 3.7 million copies on its launch day, which outpaced 2018’s Battle for Azeroth. That expansion sold over 3.4 million copies on launch day, which was a record for the franchise at the time.
2016’s Legion sold 3.3 million on day one, matching the previous record. You have to go all the way back to 2012’s Mists of Pandaria to find the last expansion that didn’t match or outsell what came before.
Activision Blizzard didn’t provide a number of Dragonflight copies sold, but we know it’s fewer than Shadowlands’ 3.7 million. However, Activision Blizzard noted that it will deliver “substantially more follow-on content for the expansion than in the past,” and that post-launch subscriber retention in the West is stronger than recent World of Warcraft expansions. Blizzard also said mobile title Warcraft: Arclight Rumble continues to “progress well through regional testing.”
We awarded World of Warcraft: Dragonflight a 7 in our review, saying, “Dragonflight reignites the sense of wonder and exploration that originally drew me to World of Warcraft, for about the first 30 or 40 hours. Beyond that, it definitely starts to feel a bit threadbare.”
Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN covering video game and entertainment news. He has over six years of experience in the gaming industry with bylines at IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine, and Lifewire. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.
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