As you know; Blizzard launched their 5th expansion in 2014 which was titled Warlords of Draenor. This expansion took players back in time; into a different reality of events through Outland - it gave people the opportunity to see Outlands before it was destroyed by Gul'Dan and his foul magic. Anyway, regardless of details - it looks like things aren't going too well for the game.
When the expansion hit us in November of 2014, subscriptions raised to a staggering 10 million active subscriptions; which was a significant rise from what it was prior to the expansion which was sitting at 6.8mil in Q2 of 2014. This could be due to a number of small things, or rather not so small for some people.
With the release of the new expansion, Blizzard actually raised the prices of subscriptions; whilst this is not a very wise thing to do with their player base, I think with 10million subs at the time it wouldn't hurt them much if a few people left over it. They also introduced a product which allows people to buy game time with in-game gold. Both of these moves are considered unwise and seem to only support the people that can either dedicate a lot of time to this game or just pay for a subscription. As said previously; them increasing the price by £1 gives them an instant £10mil just from their active subs.
As we move further into the year, and have another look at their financial and statistical report; we can see that the number of active subscribers has dropped down to 7.1 since the expansion's release and it doesn't seem to be stopping there. I personally believe that it will keep falling but at a not-so alarming rate, I get into the game but then I also get bored very quickly but i will also play it for a few months when the expansions have hit; I don't have the time to get into anything too hardcore.
I have had many discussions in multiple games about the credibility of Blizzard and also if WoW is a dying game; statistics show and the number of active people tell us that the game is definitely not going anywhere, any time soon. Whenever I get into a discussion with people about this; they seem to say "but the actual numbers for people playing are at 3-4mil" but this just seems to be made up on the spot as they failed to cite any sources for their information. Although, on some of the discussion threads, players predict that the number of subscribers will drop well below 5mil during WoD; but we will see how this is when it comes to the Q2 and Q3 report - I'm sure that Blizzard have another expansion planned for Q4.
Sources & related info:
Q year statistics
Player's thoughts and discussions (on World of Wracraft forums.)
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