The latest Activision Blizzard investors conference call has revealed World of Warcraft's subscriber base continues to shrink. Roughly 800,000 subscriptions were lost over a span of about three months, and while that's a pretty substantial number no matter how you slice it, it's not as if it's about to put Blizzard out of business.
In August the company reported WoW had 11.1 million members; that figure has since dropped to 10.3 million, reports GamesIndustry.biz. Blizzard's CEO Mike Morhaime is happy to note that number is still enough to make it "by far the most popular subscription-based MMO in the world." It's also still "one of the most popular online games in China," a market where the largest number of those 800,000 lost subscriptions came from.
The game's fourth expansion pack was announced just last month during BlizzCon. Mists of Pandaria adds a new race, class, continent, and a great deal more, although we don't know when any of this will be coming. We've heard repeatedly that Blizzard wants to increase the rate at which it releases expansion packs, but it looks as if it'll be at least another one-to-two year wait between Cataclysm (released last December) and Pandaria.
In the meantime, the big 4.3 update is expected to keep fans busy with new raids and other content. Morhaime noted the update isn't geared towards bringing in new subscribers, but keeping existing (or former) fans happy.
"It's really not intended to go out and drive new user acquisition, that's a whole other strategy," he stated. "But it does drive engagement with the game, and so that will impact churn if we do it successfully, and will eventually drive winback, as players tell each other about the content they're enjoying."
Subscription rates for the game traditionally fall as time passes following the release of an expansion pack. Pandaria will no doubt bring back a wave of players who have allowed their subscriptions to lapse (perhaps as well as a few panda-loving gamers who have never played the game before), but it's no guarantee that it'll bring subscription numbers back to their peak again. What will likely help that effort is the Annual Pass -- those who commit to subscribing to WoW for a year will get a free digital copy of Diablo III upon release. It's a more expensive route than buying the game on its own, but some may look at it as paying full price for a copy of the game and then only having to pay $10 per month for WoW.
WoW may remain the biggest subscription-based MMO around, as Morhaime noted, but that's becoming less and less meaningful as MMOs go free-to-play. DC Universe Online, The Lord of the Rings Online, City of Heroes, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Age of Conan, and many others have decided to adopt the increasingly popular free-to-play model.
The one big subscription MMO coming up is Star Wars: The Old Republic, and even developer BioWare has talked about how F2P could eventually become the dominant model. Blizzard has talked about the possibility of dropping subscriptions at some point, and players are now free to play the game up until level 20. However, with upwards of 10 million people still willing to pay a flat fee to play every month (in addition to the money brought in through all of the premium extras we've seen introduced in recent years), don't count on that happening until Blizzard has no other choice.
Source: http://www.1up.com/news/world-of-warcraft-subscriptions-continue-fall
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