Mist of Panderia: Subscription numbers (Pure speculation)

The Mists of Panderia is officially here. Hope everyone’s having fun. There are sure to be a lot of new and returning players.

Blizzard is usually mum about their sales numbers and expected subscription numbers. Last quarter, World of Warcraft subscriptions dipped below 10 million. This was almost certainly due to player ennui: There hadn’t been a new expansion since Cataclysm, almost two years ago. The pandas seem likely to give a boost to those numbers, but how much?

Well, history shows a nice boost in sales figures every time there a new expansion for WoW.  According to VGChartz, The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King sold about 4 million units, each, and Cataclysm sold about 3.15 million units. It’s pure speculations, but given all the incentives and offers, MoP will probably put up sales numbers comparable to the first two expansions. So expect sales around 4 million units when all is said and done.

All those people usually stay and play for a while. Only Blizzard knows what their retention rate is, but there’s always a bump. There’s been a lot of enthusiasm for this expansion and it seems full of content, so it’s safe to say a whole lot of people are going to play MoP. They’re going to stick around for a while to play the new content and get reacquainted with their old friend, the World of Warcraft.

With that in mind, look for a significant bump in subscriptions. Expect the total subscriptions to jump to 12.5 million when Blizzard releases their next quarterly earnings.