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WoW loses 800K subscribers, Blizzard hangs hopes on panda-filled future

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By Henry Gilbert published 10 November 2011

With over 10 million subscribers left, WoW is far from doomed

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Last October we heard the subscriber base of MMO juggernaut World of Warcraft had slipped some since its peak of 12 million players. In fact it lost almost a million users in less than a year. In the recent Activision-Blizzard earnings call we found out that downward trend has only continued, as WoW lost another 800,000, bringing the total to a still monstrous 10.3 million. If Blizzard is worried, they aren’t showing it, as the mega-developer believes the user base will expand again soon thanks to the magic of pandas…

In yesterday’s earnings report Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime blamed the slump on a lack of engaging casual content in the last expansion Cataclysm. That’s something the next one, Mist of Panderia, intends to fix, with plans for Pokemon-esque monster collecting and fuzzy, lovable Brewmasters. Also, there are other smaller updates coming along the way to keep the current install base happy. That’s all well and good, but what’s really annoying is they didn’t use this call to finally confirm a true Diablo III release date. Sigh…

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Henry Gilbert is a former GamesRadar+ Editor, having spent seven years at the site helping to navigate our readers through the PS3 and Xbox 360 generation. Henry is now following another passion of his besides video games, working as the producer and podcast cohost of the popular Talking Simpsons and What a Cartoon podcasts. 

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