WoW Forever had the biggest launch in WoW history, Blizzard says

Three days after launch, Blizzard put a label on what the queues and crowded starting zones already suggested. In a post on its official Warcraft social channels on November 7, quoted by GamesRadar and Windows Central, Blizzard said:

• WoW: Forever has achieved the biggest launch in WoW history by peak concurrent players.
• It also had the highest number of returning WoW players in history.

“This is all because of you, the players,” the post closes.

“WoW history” covers more than twenty years of launches, expansions and Classic re-releases, so this is a record against all of them, not only against other Forever events.

What Blizzard did not say

There are no numbers in the post: no peak player count, no sales and no subscriber figure. “Peak concurrent players” means the most people logged in at the same moment, not total sales. Treat any exact figure you see quoted elsewhere as an estimate unless Blizzard publishes it.

What it means while you level

A record crowd means busy zones for a while longer. Blizzard is still adjusting how players are spread across layers: on November 5 Aggrend said some areas were less populated than they should be, and the November 6 hotfixes raised how far away you can see other players. Expect that balance to keep moving in both directions over the next week.

Until it settles:

• Group up for named mobs and quest drops. A quick group shares the kill, and the November 6 hotfixes made the Riverglades quest drops shared in a party too.
• Run a dungeon when the zone is packed. Our dungeon chart shows which dungeons fit your level, with the quests to pick up first.
• Check the open problems before you log in. Our launch status page lists every known issue Blizzard has posted, each with its source.

The first round of class tuning follows on Tuesday, November 10.