World of Warcraft: Legion report says subscribers reached 10M, Blizzard denies it

Blizzard has issued a statement denying the report about World of Warcraft: Legion subscriber numbers currently making the rounds.

World of Warcraft: Legion has been well-received by fans and critics alike. As with the release of every new expansion for the subscription-based MMO, lapsed players rejoin alongside new ones, pushing up the total subscriber numbers.

We may never find out how many came back after the release of Legion, because Blizzard previously said it would no longer reveal those numbers. However, according to an interview with game director Tom Chilton in Polish gaming magazine Pixel (via Reddit), the number is currently at 10.1 million.

As translated by a NeoGAF member, here's what Chilton told the magazine, "Currently, it's around 10.1m. You know, it's difficult to say what the future will bring. We have an internal competitor - Overwatch but it's possible it'll get even higher than 12mil."

"There are plenty of potential takers and there are over 100 million WoW accounts," he added.

The last time Blizzard officially reported player numbers was during an earnings call in November last year. At the time, paid subscribers were estimated to be 5.5 million.

Since the report appeared online, Blizzard released a statement denying that Chilton has provided these numbers. "This was a misquote, or some kind of misunderstanding on the part of the journalist," Blizzard told PCGamer.

"Our policy for almost a year now is that we do not talk about subscriber numbers, and Tom did not do that with this publication."

As for Legion, Blizzard did previously reveal that it had sold over 3.3 million copies in the first 24 hours, the same amount the Cataclysm expansion moved in the same period. Both now share the record for highest day-one sales.