Activision Blizzard's first quarter 2013 earnings report shows that World of Warcraft has continued to lose subscribers. The official number is down to 8.3 million as of March 31st, a number that has surely reduced even further over the past month.
Kotick stated that that among several other challenges "subscriber declines in [Activision's] World of Warcraft business all raise concerns".
World of Warcraft remains the most popular MMO in the world nine years after release. Even in a climate where the free-to-play model has become the triumphant key to success, and tons of players feed into the easy-to-access titles, World of Warcraft stands at the top. But it won't last forever.
Forecasts at Activision were previously more positive, and it doesn't have anything surprising for the rest of the year. Kotick added:
While we have had a solid start to the year, we now believe that the risks and uncertainties in the back half of 2013 are more challenging than our earlier view, especially in the holiday quarter
World of Warcraft is in recession as Diablo 3 struggles to keep players logging in. StarCraft II is doing the best of the three with an increasing competitive presence after the recent expansion, Heart of the Swarm.
Blizzard isn't as dominant as it has been in the past and it dislikes that as much as gamers do. All bets are on the studio's next MMO: Project Titan. BlizzCon is coming in November, so maybe we'll finally see it then and get an idea of whether or not it'll be what shoots Blizzard back to the top.
