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WoW Userbase is Trickling Away

The MMO giant that is World of Warcraft is slowly losing its player base according to official figures. In the past seven months they are down a rather large 600,000 users, with 300,000 in the past quarter alone. This will equate out to over $160 million a year in lost revenue; though Blizzard has an answer for this.

They believe that towards the end of the year that subscription numbers will grow again with players joining up in emerging countries like China and Brazil where a new Portugese translation of the title is taking hold. Blizzard has also recently moved the first 20 levels of the game to a free to play model, so at least your first couple weeks of play time will be free of charge; after that, you’ll have to pay.

As it stands Blizzard have been working hard on other titles, so despite WoW receiving the hastily completed Cataclysm expansion not too long ago, Diablo III has likely taken up a lot of the company’s creative minds.

WoW has faced increasing pressure in recent years, despite its ability to shrug off many a competitive MMO. At nearly 7 years old at this point, this father of modern MMOs is beginnning to show its age and it seems likely that over the next few years players will move on to something bigger and better; perhaps Blizzard’s current secretive MMO “Titan”. It will be interesting to see whether a title like this ever rises to such prominence again, or if now the market is too fragmented.

Industry