Azeroth has found itself just a little bit lonelier over the past three months as subscribers are slowly letting go of the game in search of greener pastures.
After the successful release of its latest expansion “Mists of Pandaria” a little more than six months ago, the World of Warcraft has found itself just a little bit quieter as subscribers are slowly leaving their orcs, elves and gnomes in favor of other online games. In the past three months, the subscription base has found itself going from 9.6 million players down to the 8.3 it currently sits at. While this number remains ahead of its competition, Blizzard’s award-wining franchise has definitely had its armor chinked by the droves of players leaving en masse. While a large portion of these subscription drops are coming from the Eastern end of the world, the West has seen a significant dip in numbers as well.
Free to play games on the other hand are seeing increased numbers of players as they offer a similar online experience at absolutely no immediate cost to the player, instead offering alternatives and cosmetic purchases in-game. With an increasing library of these games being released, World of Warcraft is not the only subscription-based MMO suffering from this cutthroat competition coming from other developers.
Games like Perfect World’s Neverwinter, Gravity’s latest Ragnarok Online 2 and NCSoft’s Aion being entirely free to pick up and play, players are beginning to let their wallets speak for them, it remains to be seen if Activision Blizzard will decide to take players’ sides and offer them a free to play version of the game, or simply let the franchise slip away. After almost 9 years of continued success, it remains to be seen when the plug will be pulled on what many describe as the most successful online game of all time.
Source : The Verge
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