Blizzard released its End-Of-Year Review report this week, revealing details of how players engaged with its titles in 2024. To that end, it revealed several statistics about player achievements across its various games, including World of Warcraft, Diablo . and Overwatch. According to the studio, players have invested a total of 8.34 billion hours of time in their games – or about 952,000 years.
Some of the stats are a little silly, like the one that reveals that Overwatch 2 players spent over 203 years on the game’s new skirmish maps, or that Diablo IV saw 480 million player deaths. The studio is also revealing more sobering stats like the aforementioned playtime, as well as the $12.3 million it donated to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation from the proceeds from the sale of Overwatch 2’s “Pink Mercy” skin.
Given that it’s been a tough year for live-service titles, it’s remarkable that Blizzard has maintained a steady interest in its own live-service games. 2024 saw the announcement of the closure of titles such as Concord, XDefiant, Foamstars, and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. However, Blizzard’s titles seem to maintain consistent enough player attention to post such high stats.
In a statement, Blizzard president Johanna Faries said: “2024 was also a big year for releases for Blizzard, including the multi-expanded World of Warcraft story, Worldsoul Saga, with the launch of The War Within, followed by a truly amazing anniversary celebration, covering the entire world of Warcraft, including WoW Modern and Classic, Hearthstone and Warcraft Rumble… Earlier this year, we were very happy to bring Blizzard games back to mainland China in partnership with NetEase. We are happy to once again serve our players in China and successfully welcome so many people back to World of Warcraft and Hearthstone in the region.