It’s a very rare thing to witness history being made. A record shattered, a banner raised, or a momentous first. Even rarer is to witness two history-making feats within earshot of each other. Yet that’s exactly what World of Warcraft: Shadowlands and Cyberpunk 2077 has done.
These two games became the two top-selling PC games of all time within just three weeks in between their respective releases. Both games dethrone the previous record holder, another Blizzard game, Diablo III which retained the title for almost a decade now with its release on May 15, 2012, snatching the crown from WoW: Cataclysm (3.3 million copies) and WoW: Wrath of the Lich King (2.8 million copies) before that.
First came World of Warcraft: Shadowlands on November 23. The new expansion for Blizzard’s premiere MMORPG contained a host of improvements and additions to the game such as Mythic Keystone Dungeons, the Castle Nathria raid and its first-ever Rated PvP season as well as the next big chapter to its engrossing storyline featuring the culmination of Sylvanas Windrunner’s machinations of the past few years.
In anticipation of Shadowlands, World of Warcraft reached and sustained its highest number of active players and subscriptions as well as garnered the most amount of time spent by players in the game. This all came to a head-on November 23 when fans worldwide showed just how much they were looking forward to Shadowlands as it sold a whopping 3.7 million units on its first day!
Then, after a mere 18 days later, on December 11, Cyberpunk 2077 would arrive and set a new record to the tune of 4.7 million units sold worldwide on the first day. Cyberpunk 2077 is the hotly anticipated first-person role-playing game set in a neon-drenched dystopian future made by the esteemed creator of the Witcher videogames CDProjekt Red. The game’s atmosphere and tone coupled with CDProjekt Red’s penchant for world-building and storytelling stoked the anticipation of captivated fans. Add to that the big reveal of popular action movie superstar Keanu Reeves playing a crucial role in the story and the intense reception does not come as a surprise in the least bit.
As mind-blowing as this sequence of events is, this isn’t the only crazy factoid here: Diablo III was released in May 2012. Interestingly enough, May 2012 was also when Cyberpunk 2077 was announced, a game that almost 9 years after would take the throne. With its release, Cyberpunk 2077 also becomes the only game in the top 5 fastest-selling list that’s not a Blizzard/Activision-developed game.
It’s an amazing set of circumstances that prove that in life and in video games, the next big history-making moment might just be around the corner.
Did you pick up either one of these games? Let us know in the comments below. For more game stuff check out A Recap of the Winners and Major Announcements from The Game Awards 2020 and Epic Games is Making Two Hit RPGs Free for a Limited Time
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