Opinion    The Inexorable Decline of the World of Warcraft  World of Warcraft's precipitous decrease in subscribers continues. - Share  -   -   -   -   - Send it to Kindle   -   Related  Maine Republican Party: Playing World of Warcraft renders you unfit for office  Apocalypse MMO - Death Becomes World of Warcraft  World of Warcraft is blocked in Iran Unexpectedly, Blizzard explains how  Email Print - Share on Facebook  Twitter  Tumblr  LinkedIn  StumbleUpon  Reddit  Digg  Mixx  Delicious  Google+ Follow @techland The edifying news from Blizzard is creating a stir. World of Warcraft, the most popular online roleplaying game ever created has lost 14% of its users over the past three month. That's 1.3 million players. But we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves. Even with that dramatic drop, the not-so-little fantasy MMO that could still has over eight million subscribers worldwide; most MMOs these days, say Star Wars: The Old Republic are lucky enough to swing a million. It will be celebrating its 10th anniversary (November 2014) and the next expansion likely to arrive later in the year. WoW had a peak of 12 million subscribers in October 2010, which was a huge number. By August 2011, however, that figure had fallen to just over 11 million, and then in November 2011, it dropped again to just over 10 million. This is an increase of 25% from the top of the mountain to just 8 million.  Datchley's News This is despite Blizzard's efforts to get players to join WoW's third and fourth expansions, which were released in September 2012 and December 2010. Blizzard hasn't revealed what's coming next, however Activision CEO Bobby Kotick said the game still had "long-term value" during an earnings call this week (via Seeking Alpha): It's important to recognize that the nature of online games has changed, and the online gaming environment is becoming more competitive, particularly with games that are free to play. To address this, we're aiming to bring new content out more frequently to keep our players engaged longer and to make it easier for those who have lapsed to get back into the game. We believe in the long-term worth of this franchise and will continue to devote substantial resources to World of Warcraft. The fact that every game has a shelf is a bit like watching trend-watching seasons or sunspot cycles, so let's focus on the less obvious things, like that a significant part of WoW's subscribers has been in the East, and that a significant portion ("a majority," says Blizzard) of the 1.3 million players who have been lost are of that demographic (the BBC reads this as an inability on the part of Blizzard to reach out to this market with recent game upgrades). Activision has also stated that they expect "further volatility" due to competition in the market and the time between expansions. Kotick said that the next content update, which is not an expansion, is scheduled to launch later this month. Part of Kotick's plan to revive WoW involves somehow wooing lapsed subscribers, who, like me, often move around and sign up for a bit whenever something new is announced and then getting off the train for months or years at one time. To stop this Kotick suggests Kotick We are looking into ways to help returning players to return to the game. We've seen players quit World of Warcraft every now and then. We're currently looking at ways to ease the transition. Three words: believing is seeing. These four words are easier to say than done. While you rarely see this kind of analogy, I do think that Blizzard was hoping WoW could become an online Disneyworld where fantasy-lovers could sign in to ride the rides and enjoy the attractions for a long time. However, the game runs on a platform in slow decline, and faces increasingly stiff competition from tablets and other mobile devices. It's difficult to know the extent to which WoW's rapid platform shift is responsible for the drop in subscriptions in the US and in other places. However, regardless of the next MMO ("Project Titan") or "World of Warcraft 2", "World of StarCraft" or something entirely different - it almost certain will not be PC only.