Despite the brief rise in subscribers at the beginning of this year, it appears that World of Warcraft is once again on a downward trend. Yesterday, Activision Blizzard announced that World of Warcraft has lost about 800,000 subscribers in the company’s quarterly earnings report. Is this a sign of an inevitable end for WoW in the near future?
Ever since the MMO giant, World of Warcraft, hit it’s subscriber peak of 12 million back in Q3 of 2010, it has had a steady decline of subscribers in each quarter following. Despite a few spikes in subscribers following the release of new expansion packs, the trend has stayed fairly consistent. Now in 2014, 10 years after the game’s original release, the amount of subscribers for WoW is equivalent to numbers recorded back in 2006. So this raises some pretty serious concerns for fans and investors alike.
However, while it is true that World of Warcraft is in decline, Blizzard has also mentioned recently that there are already over 1.5 million pre-orders for the the expansion, Warlords of Draenor. Also, it is starting to appear as if about 7 million is the new norm for the MMO and this current decline is only part of a natural “ebb and flow” of consumer behavior. So WoW could easily have a long and fairly prosperous future for the company in the years ahead. To put it frankly – there still is not enough data yet to conclusively project the end of the game in the future.
Either way, all good things eventually will come to an end, (Even if it happens to be one of the biggest MMO’S to ever exist.) and it doesn’t always have to be a bad thing. So whether it be a few years from now, or even a decade, whenever World of Warcraft ends, hopefully it will cause the birth of many great new MMO’S to follow in it’s massive footsteps.
My Opinion:
I believe that the end of WoW is closer than most people probably think. At this point in the MMO’s life, for the company it is an upwards battle with time. Blizzard may be able to milk the game for a few more years, but eventually the MMO will begin to lose subscribers enmass again. I wouldn’t worry too much however. Activision Blizzard most likely understands this and will be prepared for the future. Who knows, perhaps we will see a sequel to World of Warcraft sometime soon?
What do you guys think? Are these recent numbers foreshadowing the end of World of Warcraft? Feel free to comment below!
Tyler Bartlemus is an Associate Writer for MONG and is enthusiastic about anything relating to Science Fiction. You can follow him on both of his Twitter and Instagram accounts.
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I left WoW because of its lack in difficulty. It pains me to see them screwing around with the classes again. They might as well bring in vampires and zombies to play as now, because they are apparently only catering to the children. I hate trying the game again every year for a month to relearn how to respec my Warrior, Priest, Hunter, Warlock, and even their pets! This crap needs to stop. Make up your minds Blizzard! You are breaking something over and over again that shouldn’t have been messed with in the first time.
It’s sad when an MMO only caters to one group. I would rather it be to hardcore players, because those are the games that create legends. The only great stories I remember hearing about WoW before playing it are the insane raids in Vanilla days, and video/audio clips of kids freaking out at their guildies or parents. We won’t see that anymore, because Blizzard prefers impressing the new crowd rather than their ‘beloved’ veteran players who have stuck around since the first Warcraft.
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having been lucky enough to try the WOD Beta I simply cant understand what is going on with the reasoning of class changes. The perfect example go a frost mage you wont see much difference yet go Arcane/Fire and the classes have been eviscerated. They talk about spell/ability removal giving Button bloat and the reason yet some classes are almost the same whilst others now have a single rotation.
just like CATA Genuine concerns on the BETA forum are ignored
what should be the start of a new expansion is just hype around new models (which will be in the pre launch patch anyway) Garrisons are
just going to enclose the community more. If anyone needs further proof maybe wow needs new blood on the Dev side they allowed the timeless isle basically 15 months to see the players through there has been no new content.
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