World of Warcraft might be over 15 years old, but it can still pull in commercial gamers like nothing else. Its most recent expansion, Shadowlands, has become the quickest selling PC game ever made. It outpaced the previous PC darling, Diablo III, which was released back in 2012, by shifting more than 3.7 million units in just the first day of being on sale.
Despite repeated calls over the years that PC gaming was dying, it has only grown from strength to strength. New sales records are rare, however, even with an ever growing player base. That's because of a mixture of two factors: the player base is fractured among many games and many genres, making it hard to release a new game that taps into a wide enough audience to break sales records. The scene is also dominated by free to play games that onboard gamers are a far easier and faster rate than commercial titles.
Just look at the tens of millions of players who enjoy Fortnite, League of Legends, and their ilk. If any of them released a commercial version, they might hope to steal the crown, but WoW's longevity, loyal player base, and recent resurgence under the legacy server system mean that it's uniquely positioned to take a top spot and Shadowlands has helped it do so for the first time in a long time.
This isn't the only WoW stat worth noting though. Developer Blizzard points out that Shadowlands has helped players spend more time in the game than in a long time.
"Players have spent more time in Azeroth year to-date than in the same period of any of the last ten years," it said in a statement. Better yet for Blizzard, gamers have also spent twice as much in Azeroth during 2020 as they did in 2019. That's thanks to the pandemic, no doubt, but also suggest WoW's enduring popularity isn't going to end any time soon.
