World of Warcraft Sees Cataclysmic Drop In Subscriptions.
World of Warcraft used to be my fucking jam. Now it’s old, man. Cataclysm barely held my interest, and the friends I hang with feel the same way. Apparently we’re not alone. WoW is shedding subscribers like a motherfucker.
Kotaku:
Six months after buzz for the Cataclysm expansion drove World of Warcraft numbers to an all-time high, Blizzard reports the lowest subscription figures for the massively multiplayer game since December of 2008.
During the Activision Blizzard first quarter 2011 financial results conference call today, Blizzard president and co-founder Mike Morhaime told us that as of March of this year, World of Warcraft numbers had “returned to pre-Cataclysm levels in the West,” which is a rather nice way of saying dropped considerably.
In October 2010, two months before the release of the Cataclysm expansion pack, Blizzard reported that World of Warcraft hadexceeded 12 million subscribers. Today Morhaime gave a figure of 11.4 million. That’s 600,000 subscribers gone.
Morhaime said that subscriptions had returned to pre-Cataclysm levels. They’ve nearly dropped to pre-Wrath of the Lich Kinglevels, to be accurate. A month after the second expansion pack’s November 2008 release, subscription rates hit 11.5 million. A little over two months’ prior they had just hit 11 million.
I’d be a genuine fucking asshole not to acknowledge that any game that still has 11.4 million subscriptions is clearly doing fucking well. You know, with people with no lives who farm herbs for an existence and shall die alone. Oh shit!, inappropriate dig. And then there’s people like me who are pathetic, undisciplined assholes and keep rolling their account despite not playing for months.
Nonetheless, I think that it is indicative of a slight cooling for the franchise. I don’t begrudge the motherfucker anything. It’s given me hundreds if not thousands of hours of enjoyment. It looks old though, and the missions are repetitive, and the universe exploited. My friends have moved on, and it doesn’t hold my attention anymore.
Where art thou, new Blizzard MMO?