We're just about three weeks away from Shadowlands, the hotly anticipated World of Warcraft expansion that will send everyone into the afterlife to hopefully same the world of Azeroth. There's already a pre-patch available that boosts the level cap to 50 before Shadowlands arrives to boost it all the way to 60, and also a large amount of newly added character customization options and item adjustments.
There's also a lot of hype surrounding Shadowlands, as evident by the number of pre-orders. During Activision Blizzard's Q3 earnings call last week, CEO Bobby Kotick said that Shadowlands' pre-sales "are the highest we've seen at this stage ahead of any release."
And it seems like World of Warcraft sees no sign of slowing down. "We've seen unprecedented engagement trends since the [World of Warcraft] subscriber base doubled following the launch of Classic last year,” Kotick added, while COO Daniel Alegre explained that "franchise engagement is at its highest level for this stage ahead of an expansion in a decade."
Along with Call of Duty and Candy Crush, World of Warcraft is one of the few game franchises that generate over $1 billion in net bookings annually, according to Alegre.
Speaking of Call of Duty, that same earnings call also saw the announcement that Warzone would integrate with the upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War later in December along with the arrival of the game's first season. Warzone has proven to be an unprecedented success for Activision, especially when it comes to marketing future Call of Duty games. Thanks to the millions of players that engage with Warzone, Activision can advertise directly to Call of Duty players in the form of in-game events and special offers, and all for an extremely low price compared to traditional advertising.
Source: PC Gamer