The world’s largest subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game is officially beginning to fade … but only slightly.
Activision Blizzard sold 2.7 million copies of the latest expansion, Mists of Pandaria (available now for PC), in its first week. For reference, Blizzard’s Wrath of the Lich King add-on sold 2.8 million, and Cataclysm sold 3.3 million in a similar period of time. The game only just went on sale in China, a gigantic market for MMOs, on Tuesday, but analysts have registered their doubt that purchases there can make up the difference.
So this is the first WOW expansion that failed to outsell its predecessor. Although, 2.7 million copies in a week is still a huge success, and no other MMO is even in the same league in terms of sales.
“With Mists of Pandaria, we set out to expand on the sense of fun and discovery that’s always been at the heart of World of Warcraft — in addition to adding a huge variety of new content and features to the game,” said Entertainment chief executive officer Mike Morhaime in a press release. “It’s been gratifying to see the results of all of the work we put into this expansion and to hear all of the positive feedback from players so far.”
GamesBeat reached out to Activision for a comment about these sales figures, but the publisher had not responded at the time of publication.
Despite the small sales slump, Activision did point that this release put its total subscriber base back over the 10-million mark. Blizzard also announced that its development team is working on the first post-release patch update.