An earnings report released by the newly independent Activision Blizzard shows that subscriber numbers for World of Warcraft have fallen to 7.6 million active accounts. The rate of players leaving the game has increased by an additional 25,000 a month.
Back in May Blizzard revealed that player numbers had fallen to 8.3 million. In the six months since another 700,000 players have left the game.
To compare the rate of players leaving the game we have to look back to the previous earnings report. In August 2012 Blizzard told us that there were 9.1 million subscribers. So, in the nine months between then and May, player numbers dropped by 800,000, a little under 90,000 players a month.
In the six months between May and November that rate of player exodus has risen to a little over 115,000 a month, with 700,000 players leaving the game.
As Activision point out in their newly published earnings report, “World of Warcraft remains the #1 subscription-based MMORPG”
Our Tim predicted that subscriber numbers would continue to decline unless Blizzard adopted a more frequent update model for the game but even he’s surprised the rate of players ending their subscriptions has increased and not slowed a little. As you can see from his graph:
