World of Warcraft has hit its lowest subscriber total in ages.
As part of a quarterly financial statement, Blizzard announced that WoW hit a recent-years low of 5.6 million subscribers. In a follow-up financial call, the blue giant was jollier than you might expect, given that Diablo, Hearthstone, and Heroes of the Storm upped their overall revenue despite WoWâs woeful drop.
When we last got an official count from Blizzard back in May, WoW was at 7.1 million subscribers. It was a pretty steep drop from the gameâs post-Warlords of Draenor high of 10 million, and our own Gergo speculated that character boosts (which let people get to level 90 sans grinding) and a lack of compelling endgame content might have been to blame.
Since then, Blizzardâs expanded Warlords of Draenorâs endgame with some of their most challenging raid content yet, but perhaps it was a case of too little, too late. On top of that, casual players tend to return to the World of Chorecraft (hint: itâs real life) after hitting the level cap. Raiding, daily quests, and high end PvP? Not so much.
There is a silver lining here: Blizzardâs been trying to speed up their expansion cycle, and theyâre set to announce a new one this week. Given that the MMO megaton has been known to go far longer than a year without a new expansion, thatâs pretty huge. Perhaps, if Blizzard can reliably put their expansion factory into overdrive, players will stop canceling subs between expansions, throwing the game into this torrid cycle of boom and bust.
Weâll see. For now, though, are you glad that Blizzardâs doling out expansions with more regularity? Or did Warlords of Draenorâs brief run leave you feeling shortchanged?
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