World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, the latest expansion for Blizzard's longrunning MMORPG, sold less at launch than the game's previous expansion, Shadowlands. But lower initial sales doesn't mean WoW is on the way out. In fact, it's outperforming the previous expansion in a key metric.

As revealed in Activision Blizzard's fourth quarter 2022 financial results, early Dragonflight sales "have not reached the level of the previous expansion." It's hard to know exactly what that means since Blizzard has rarely in recent times revealed specific sales or player subscription numbers. However, Blizzard was quick to trumpet the success of Shadowlands when it sold 3.7 million copies on its first day back in 2020, making it the fastest selling PC game of all-time for a brief period prior to the release of CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077.

At the very least, it seems clear Dragonflight on launch day failed to reach Shadowlands' day-one numbers. That makes it the first time day-one sales of a new WoW expansion have not surpassed its predecessor since 2012's Mists of Pandaria. That news isn't entirely surprising. Despite strong sales, Shadowlands was a wildly unpopular expansion, and the last few years have seen Blizzard mired in controversy revolving around sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuits.