Saturday morning, and the biggest story is a comeback: Blizzard says World of Warcraft: Forever had the biggest launch in the game’s history by peak concurrent players and the most returning players of any launch. Meanwhile a PlayStation mobile spin-off gets cancelled before it finishes launching, Gears of War turns 20 with a free character waiting for you, and Digital Extremes opens its fantasy project to every PC player.
The big one
Blizzard says World of Warcraft: Forever had the biggest launch in WoW history by peak concurrent players. The official World of Warcraft account posted the claim on the evening of November 6, at 02:34 UTC on November 7: “Congratulations everyone, you made HISTORY!” WoW: Forever launched on November 4, and the same post adds that it drew the highest number of returning WoW players in history. Blizzard publishes no headcount, so the numbers behind the record stay inside the company.
The launch came with the usual first-week patch list: tooltip errors, quest bugs and class changes such as a Voidwalker health bump and a cooldown manager that finally shows crowd control durations properly. The change battleground players will notice is Plainsrunning, which can no longer stack and loses its stacks whenever you are carrying a flag. The first raids, Barrow Deeps, Hyjal Summit and Onyxia’s Lair, open on December 9, so a record crowd has a month to level a second character. Starting from zero? Our beginner’s guide and the WoW: Forever hub have the details. The other half of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft is moving too: Midnight’s Talebound demo ran on the test realm through November 1, and its tales arrive in the next Midnight update.
The record itself is the easy half of the story. The number Blizzard put second is the interesting one, because a peak-concurrent record can be a launch-day stampede, while the returning-player count measures how many people came back for a second subscription. That crowd only matters if it is still there in December, when the raids open and the novelty of a fresh server wears off. Watch the returning players, not the peak.
Also happening
- Ratchet & Clank: Ranger Rumble is cancelled. The mobile spin-off from Oh BiBi, Insomniac Games and PlayStation Studios is being shut down before its worldwide launch finishes, and the dates come from the game’s own announcement: the final update rolled out on November 6, the app leaves the App Store and Google Play on November 21, and servers shut down permanently on May 1, 2027. IGN has the details. In-app purchases are already gone, the Super Pass is free, the Qwark Pass seasons run to the end of service, and all player data is wiped when the servers close.
- Gears of War turns 20 and hands out RAAM for free. Xbox Wire’s anniversary post says a two-week anniversary event is running in Gears of War: E-Day, with a Guardian mode in Versus and For the Queen in Horde Siege, where the supply cache is switched off. From today, November 7, every E-Day player can log in and claim RAAM as a free multiplayer character. Season 2, called Legacy, arrives on December 1 with returning maps, modes and skins.
- Where Winds Meet brings its Hutuo region to Xbox on November 13. The anniversary update adds a war-torn campaign around the Battle of Zhongdu Bridge, a Xiao Han boss fight, and two board-game modes, Horse Racing Chess and Jianghu Tactics. Xbox Wire also details Yuen Woo-ping’s Dual Spears martial art, arriving November 26, and more than $150 of anniversary gifts, including a free outfit set for Xbox players.
- Soulframe Open Preludes is free for every PC player. Digital Extremes, the studio behind Warframe, is opening its fantasy action game to anyone on Windows PC through the official announcement, where you sign up for an Envoy name. The studio says mounts and combat are still being refined on the way to a wider PC launch, and a Steam wishlist is open.
Out today
Saturday is a quiet one for console launches, but the week ahead is stacked. According to Xbox Wire’s week-ahead list:
| Game | Date | Game Pass | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hozy | November 9 | Not listed | No-timers home restoration |
| Football Manager 27 | November 10 | Yes | Football management sim |
| Ova Magica | November 10 | Not listed | Farm life with blob companions |
| Warhammer Survivors | November 10 | Yes | Roguelite survivors in the Warhammer universes |
“Not listed” means Xbox Wire’s list does not tag the game as Game Pass. We have you covered on Football Manager 27 and Ova Magica. One thing is live right now: the free RAAM character in Gears of War: E-Day, claimable from today.
Deal of the day
No Man’s Sky is 60% off at $23.99 on Steam, down from $59.99, through November 9. Valve’s own store data confirms the price, so if it is still sitting on your someday list, $23.99 is the cheapest yes you will get all weekend.
One more thing
Blizzard’s November 6 hotfix notes for WoW: Forever mix bug fixes with lines that read like they were written at two in the morning: “We moooved the lights around” for Thunder Bluff’s too-dark barbershop, and “Damp Note drop rate increased. Eww.” Buried in the same list is the Plainsrunning change, which stops flag carriers from stacking it in battlegrounds.
Edited by Kerwin Stewart, Editor-in-Chief · How we report
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Join the discussion Will WoW: Forever's record launch actually bring lapsed players back for the December 9 raids?
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