It’s been a year of discussing World of Warcraft’s peak and gradual downward shift. In the first quarter, Blizzard revealed that subscriber numbers dropped from Warcraft’s peak of over 12 million down to 11.4 million. By the second quarter, those figures had slipped down to 11.1 million. Despite this, Blizzard noted that revenue from the MMO was higher than ever, thanks to the sales of cash shop pets and mounts. The company pinpointed the loss of subscribers as directly related to the release of expansion packs, vowing that expansions would be released at a greater pace from now on.
According to Venture Beat, Blizzard is now reporting a subscriber number of 10.3 million in the third quarter, a loss of 800k subscribers since its last report. But put your pitchforks and torches away, Blizzard trolls, because despite the loss of over one million accounts this year, profit has reportedly tripled. So again, the people paying for sparkling horses and vanity pets are more than making up for the people quitting.
So what does this mean? I predict that World of Warcraft will settle just like Everquest did. It might not be number one in a few years, but it’ll still be healthy enough for Blizzard to keep the servers rolling, keep churning out regular updates and expansions, and everyone will be all hunky dory.
Until then, Blizzard will enjoy its seat at the head of the table.
MMO Fallout 