World of Warcraft: almost a million subscribers lost last quarter

It looks like Activision Blizzard’s popular MMORPG, World of Warcraft, is finally starting to die out. At the company’s recent financial report conference call for Q3 2011, it announced that it finished the quarter with 10.3 million active subscribers. Compared to the previous quarter this year, which it ended with 11.1 million active subscribers, the game has lost almost a million active subscribers. With WOW being Activision Blizzard’s most profitable revenue-recurring business, this definitely isn’t a very good sign.

However, they did mention that they are working on developing new content to improve the game. A vital move considering that Activision’s biggest rival, Electronic Arts is releasing its own MMORPG – Star Wars: The Old Republic in December. Blizzard announced the next WOW expansion: Mists of Pandaria at Blizzcon last month which was generally very well received, and you can be pretty sure that when it is released, subscriptions will start climbing again.

Regardless, if WOW’s reign is over, Activision Blizzard has got some popular games to fall back on, namely: Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, and Call of Duty. Blizzard is also working on a next-generation MMO though details about it are scarce at the moment. How many of you still play WOW, and who plans to start/rejoin WOW when Mists of Pandaria is released?

George Wong
Categories: Gaming
Tags: Activision, activision blizzard, Blizzard, financial report, World of Warcraft, wow