Two days after WoW: Forever went live on November 4, Blizzard said it set WoW records for peak concurrent players at launch and for returning players. Blizzard did not share a player count.
World of Warcraft: Forever just posted a record for the series. Blizzard’s official @Warcraft account said at 9:30 PM ET on Friday, November 6 that WoW: Forever has achieved “The biggest launch in WoW history by peak concurrent players” and “The highest number of returning players in WoW history.” WoW: Forever went live on November 4.
What you need to know
- The record: biggest launch in WoW history by peak concurrent players, per Blizzard. This is a concurrency record, not a sales figure.
- The second record: highest number of returning players in WoW history, per Blizzard.
- What Blizzard didn’t share: no actual player count. The claim is a ranking, not a number.
- The Wrath comparison: Windows Central’s Jez Corden writes that it beats even Wrath of the Lich King, from WoW’s previous height almost two decades ago. Blizzard’s post itself does not name Wrath.
- Where to play: PC through Battle.net, plus cloud streaming like NVIDIA GeForce Now, per Windows Central. It is not on Xbox consoles.
What WoW: Forever is
Per Blizzard, WoW: Forever is a “permanent home alongside modern and Classic WoW.” It’s set after the events of Warcraft III Reforged: Forsaken Kingdom and before Molten Core, and takes players across the original continents up to level 60.
- More than 1,000 new quests across the level 1 to 60 journey.
- New and reimagined zones, including Mount Hyjal, Shen’dralas, the Riverglades and Zephras Isle.
- A new playable race, the Skyborne, plus new race and class combinations like Orc Mages and Undead Paladins.
- Rulesets instead of realm selection, with Windows Central crediting the game’s “Megaserver” setup for handling more players at once than old realm servers.
A smooth launch helped
Windows Central reported on November 5 that players were calling it the smoothest launch in WoW’s history, with login queues of only a couple of minutes, minimal server lag and no constant disconnects. Jez Corden called it a “very stable launch.”
Corden’s view is that the record leaves the main game, currently in its Midnight era, with “a bit of a headache,” since Forever’s slower, more social design seems closer to what lapsed players want.
The Xbox angle
Blizzard is part of Microsoft through the Activision Blizzard deal. Windows Central notes Xbox has been teasing a World of Warcraft port to Xbox consoles for some time, but no console version has been announced. We covered Blizzard’s “whatever you want” comments about Project Helix and WoW: Forever, and the deleted Xbox UK listing.
WoW: Forever just beat Wrath. Should it come to Xbox next?
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OnPoint’s take: A WoW record for launch-day concurrency and returning players, from a Blizzard that now sits inside Xbox, is a big deal even without a number attached. Blizzard built what lapsed players kept asking for, and they showed up. The next question is the one Xbox fans keep asking: when does it come to consoles?
Image: Blizzard Entertainment
