At Game Developers Conference lectures, studios and publishers usually share their successes. Blizzard Entertainment decided to tell its colleagues about the negative growth of World of Warcraft users.
As it became known at GDC 2024 , the company considers World of Warcraft: Shadowlands a frankly failed add-on. Usually, add-ons take a long time to “shoot”, this is the norm, but Shadowlands not only failed to attract the attention of the general public – the number of players returned to 2019 levels, and the number of subscribers decreased much more than expected.
Hoping to somehow brighten up the situation, Blizzard launched classic servers and World of Warcraft: Dragonflight. Alas, this also did not help to recover losses in a short time. Therefore, the company tried to understand the situation, identify shortcomings and listen to the complaints of fans. Now, the developers assure, users are returning to the MMO – the team is confident that it has managed to restore the trust of fans, and therefore it is working on the next DLC with a clear conscience.