Despite maintaining the highest population of subscribing MMO players of any game, World of Warcraft has been in decline in the past few years, dropping from its historic peak of over 12 million, to an all time low of just under seven million.
However, with the release of Warlords of Draenor, Blizzard has managed to bring back many previous residents of Azeroth and some new ones, selling more than 3.3 million copies in the first 24 hours alone and sending its subscriber numbers rocketing back up to over 10 million.
The last time this happened was back in 2011.
The question now is, how long can Blizzard maintain these numbers? As lots have presumably returned just to take a look around the new content, which sees players heading off to an alternate timeline when the Orks didn't become "slaves."
Part of the big resurgence is no doubt down to Blizzard marketing however, as it recently showed off a 10 year anniversary documentary about the game and released a long cinematic back in August that showed just how far pre-rendered game CGI has come.
