World of Warcraft is often referred to as the spearhead of the MMORPG genre. It has done many things to pioneer the popularisation of the genre since it emerged in 2004, introducing a fantastic operating model that wasted no time in drawing in millions of players. It’s a game that boasts the ultimate level of freedom, allowing players to explore a vast open world, becoming the warrior they’ve always wanted to be. In this guide, we’re taking a look at the WoW player count in 2025, seeing how many people still play the game.
It’s an important question that sits in the minds of gamers the world over. After twenty years on the market, how many people play WoW? Is it still appreciated by millions of people around the world, or is it dying out over time against the ever-present force of rising competition?
Let’s find out.
@ Wowhead
WoW Player Count in 2025
According to the latest esports guides’ estimates, there are roughly 129 million active players in World of Warcraft. It was estimated in January 2025 that as many as 1.2 million players were logging in every day to experience all the wonder that World of Warcraft has to offer. That’s a staggering number that is a testament to the staying power of World of Warcraft. In 2025, a lengthy roadmap was set out to highlight the next twenty years of World of Warcraft, which means it’ll be a very long time before the game ultimately dies.
WoW Dragonflight Player Count
This is the ninth expansion pack for the World of Warcraft MMORPG, following Shadowlands. It was released in November of 2025, and it became quite popular. But did this expansion pack cause the player count to increase? It has been estimated that WoW Dragonflight is played by around 1.5 million players every day.
WoW VS WoW Classic Player Count
Also just called Classic, this is a new server option for WoW that was announced at BlizzCon in 2017. The World of Warcraft Classic allows players to experience the game as close as possible to what it used to be before The Burning Crusade expansion. How many players does Classic have compared to WoW? It’s estimated that around 528.8k daily players are enjoying Classic, with approximately 25.1 million players enjoying this version of WoW in general.
World of Warcraft Subscription Numbers
The number of subscriptions will not match the active player count because not everyone who subscribes plays the game consistently. In addition, since Activision Blizzard stopped reporting their subscriber counts after 2015, these numbers will not be 100% accurate. All of these are estimates that do not consider WoW Classic’s popularity and the rise in players during the pandemic. But here is the breakdown of WoW subscription numbers over the years with all WoW expansions in order.
| Year | Subscription Numbers | Expansion Release |
|---|---|---|
| 2005 | 5 million | |
| 2006 | 6+ million | |
| 2007 | 10+ million | The Burning Crusade |
| 2008 | 11.5+ million | Wrath of the Lich King |
| 2009 | 11.5 million | |
| 2010 | 12+ million | Cataclysm |
| 2011 | 10.2 million | |
| 2012 | 9.6 million | Mists of Pandaria |
| 2013 | 7.8 million | |
| 2014 | 10+ million | Warlords of Draenor |
| 2015 | 5.5 million | |
| 2016 | estimated 5.7 million | Legion |
| 2017 | estimated 5.4 million | |
| 2018 | estimated 5.2 million | Battle for Azeroth |
| 2019 | estimated 5 million | |
| 2020 | estimated 4.9 million | Shadowlands |
| 2021 | estimated 4.7 million | |
| 2022 | estimated 4.6 million | Dragonflight |
| 2023 | estimated 4.5 million |
World of Warcraft subscriptions peaked in 2010, but as we can see from the table above, the numbers started to change over the years. Some speculations following the Legion expansion release, the sub numbers reached over 10 million, but Blizzard never confirmed that. Thus, we can only speculate how many active players and subscribers the World of Warcraft and Classic have.
