World of Warcraft loses 1.3 million subscribers

world of warcraft

world of warcraft

In a recent earnings report, Activision Blizzard announced that World of Warcraft has lost 1.3 million subscribers in the last 3 months. This may not seem like a huge loss but in 2010, World of Warcraft had roughly 12 million subscribers. CEO Bobby Kotick is not worried as he stated,

“And while we do believe further declines are likely, and we expect to have fewer subscribers a year than we do today, World of Warcraft remains one of the most successful franchises in the history of entertainment.”

Of course further declines are expected. World of Warcraft will be 10 years old in November 2013 and with a fifth expansion being released sometime this year. Does this mean the end is nigh for World of Warcraft? Being a vanilla player and having played through all four of the expansions I can understand the 14% loss of their player base. The game has undergone a lot of changes since the release of the launch in 2004. Regardless of this loss, World of Warcraft continues to be the world’s most popular MMORPG… for now.

Source: Forbes