Palworld

VS

World of Warcraft Classic

Palworld is a survival/adventure sandbox game released in January 2024 by Pocketpair. It experienced an explosive launch with millions of sales and high concurrent player counts on PC. Since launch, player counts have declined from their peak but remain strong for a new multiplayer survival game, thanks to active updates and ongoing community engagement. It's not an MMO, as servers are typically limited to smaller group sizes and don't feature a true persistent, massively multiplayer world.

World of Warcraft Classic, released in 2019 by Blizzard Entertainment, is a major MMORPG revival of the original WoW experience. The game continues to have a robust, though markedly smaller, player base than at launch, thanks to a steady cycle of classic content and expansions (like Wrath of the Lich King Classic). As an MMORPG developed and maintained by a top-tier publisher, it sees strong retention, but is several years past launch and shares its community with retail WoW. Given this, an estimate in the 200,000–250,000 daily player range is reasonable as of 2024.