World of Warcraft Loses 3 Million Subscribers in Three Months

After a record-breaking resurgence of players for the release of Warlords of Draenor, World of Warcraft subscriptions heavily dropped last quarter.

Looks like not everyone is for the Horde anymore as nearly three million subscribers packed up their garrisons and left WoW for greener pastures this past quarter. MMO-Champion assembled a fantastic graph of the recent rise and fall of Warcraft subscription numbers throughout the years, for anyone interested in that sort of longitudinal data. With the data in front of us, one question remains — why is everyone leaving?

Is it because Warlords of Draenor sucks? Nope; in fact, Warlords of Draenor may be one of WoW's finest expansion packs, bringing in new game mechanics to go along with exciting zones and a sense of nostalgia for the decade-old game. Is it a mass exodus of people disgusted with the new WoW tokens? Not likely, given that this data is from the subscriber base before the WoW tokens were implemented, and pretty much everyone likes being able to pay with in-game gold instead of real-life money for game time.

Some of the subscriber drop-off is just a natural part of the expansion cycle; a new expansion brings back curious newbies and veterans alike, and they don't all stick around after they've spent some time leveling up. Another portion of the drop-off is due to the serious lack of max-level content right now. Outside of raids and PVP, there aren't many worthwhile activities for WoW players, as there's a serious lack of rewarding daily quests, with many people skipping the five-man heroic dungeons just to get easy raid gear. There's some cool new content planned, like the Tanaan Jungle and shipyard content, but for many players, it's too little, too late.

At this point, even with massive player exoduses like this, it still seems like WoW will outlive the heat death of the universe. Other MMOs come and go, but World of Warcraft still stands strong (and so does its subscription fee).