World of Warcraft: Blizzard Halt the Subscriber Exodus
Finally some good news for World of Warcraft developers Blizzard. Kotaku are reporting that the subscriber numbers for the world famous MMORPG have stabilised. The game that made MMOs famous, even to non-gamers, has been suffering what can only be described as a hemorrhage in players over the last year.
World of Warcraft follows a subscription based model, where players must pay an annual sum to play the game. Many reason have been speculated as to why Blizzard saw an average of 200,000 subscribers a month leave the MMO over last year. These reasons included the threat from other MMOs such as Lord of the Rings Online, and Star Wars – The Old Republic. Other ideas were that World of Warcraft no longer offered players players good value for money, as the trend for free-2-play MMOs started to take off. Blizzard combated this by making World of Warcraft (or WoW as it is usually referred to) free-2-play until level 20. Free-2-play games make their money with the sale of virtual items such as weaponry upgrades. This is also possible in WoW.
Screenshot from World of Warcraft (Credit: Blizzard)
The great news for Blizzard is that the subscriber level has stabilised at the 10.2 million mark. And it has remained that way since December 2011. 10.2 million subscribers still places World of Warcraft in first place as the MMORPG with the most subscribers worldwide. This is quite an achievement. Blizzard will be hoping that they can start to claw back the numbers they once saw which reached a peak of just shy of 11.5 million players by introducing a new extension pack this year. It is great to see that Blizzard have finally plugged the World of Warcraft hole. A lot of people would be disappointed if Azeroth went dark for good.
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