World Of Warcraft Subscriptions Take A Dip

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For seven years now, World of Warcraft has been the one to beat in the MMO market. Many MMOs have tried to top World of Warcraft and have failed, either being forced to switch to a free-to-play model or shut down their servers entirely. Blizzard has been enjoying the immense success of World of Warcraft for years, but if its freshly-released subscription numbers are any indication, the popular MMO is showing signs that some players are losing interest.

In an earnings call yesterday, Blizzard’s Mike Morhaime revealed that subscriptions to World of Warcraft were down year-over-year. In October 2010, World of Warcraft was sitting pretty with 12 million subscribers, but as of September 30th of this year, that number had fallen to 10.3 million – a loss of 1.7 million subscribers in a year’s time.

Of course, many of those 1.7 million lost subscribers were likely players who returned to the game in anticipation of World of Warcraft‘s fourth expansion, Cataclysm, and then left once they had seen everything it had to offer. Morhaime also said that a “majority,” of subscribers Blizzard lost were from the East, with China representing half of World of Warcraft‘s player base.

In any case, Blizzard expects that World of Warcraft will gain back some of those lost subscribers when the game launches in Brazil next month, and then again when Mists of Pandaria launches at a later, as-of-yet-unknown date. I don’t know that I’d expect to many players to return for Mists of Pandaria, though, as it seems to be something of a dividing factor among World of Warcraft fans.

Still, it isn’t as if dropping to 10.3 million subscribers is bad by any means. World of Warcraft is still one of the most popular MMOs out there, and I’m pretty sure its popularity will continue for at least a few years to come. It can’t stay on top forever, however, so is this the beginning of the end for Blizzard’s hit MMO? Only time will tell, but for now, I’m going to say the answer is a big fat “no.”