It came as a surprise to many World of Warcraft fans when Blizzard abruptly announced that they would be releasing a new expansion shortly after introducing their latest expansion, The Warlords of Draenor just late last year. But after taking a look at the newly released numbers from Activision’s second quarter financial statement for 2015, the motives behind Blizzard’s hasty move may become a little more apparent.
Blizzard has announced that WoW has plummeted to 5.6 million subscriptions in Quarter 2, down from 7.1 million during the first Quarter of 2015. This drop boils down to a loss of nearly half the original amount of subscribers from the launch of Warlords of Draenor back in November of last year. According to the press release from Activision, World of Warcraft’s latest update “Fury of Hellfire” released during June, has helped mitigate some of the subscription losses nearing the end of the quarter.
Considering that in the past, Blizzard has been known to to go a much longer span than a year without introducing any new expansions, the upcoming announcement of the latest expansion this week comes as pretty big news for the company. Will the boost of this latest expansion be enough to turn the tides and set World of Warcraft back on the right track? We can’t say yet, but time will surely tell. In the meantime, let’s hear what your thoughts are. Do you still actively play World of Warcraft? Or are you one of the many who have left the game by the wayside? And if so, what would it take to bring you back in?