In the fantasy MMO World of Warcraft, the number of active players has increased ahead of the expansion Warlords of Draenor. Currently, the number stands at 7.4 million players.
Three months ago, the numbers looked bleak. World of Warcraft had shrunk to 6.8 million players (which is still a significant number), but with three more months of content drought until Warlords of Draenor, it was expected that the numbers could fall further. However, Blizzard managed to avoid this. The reason likely lies in a series of promotional activities and perhaps also the return of players after visits to MMORPGs that suffered from launch issues and quickly lost steam.
As some media report, citing a statement from Blizzard in light of the pre-patch, World of Warcraft has gained 600,000 subscribers compared to the second quarter and now boasts 7.4 million players. Even though this is still far from the 12 million that World of Warcraft achieved at the peak of the second expansion “Wrath of the Lich King”, the decline has been halted.
Although the industry always anticipates a boost in subscription numbers with the launch of a new expansion, the fact that it has already happened beforehand is certainly a good sign. However, Mists of Pandaria also briefly caused WoW to exceed the million mark before it went down again. In recent months, Blizzard has promoted several promotional and trial activities to attract more players, although an announced price increase in China caused a brief stir.
In the “paying players”, Blizzard also includes players of the Chinese World of Warcraft, who do not have a monthly subscription but pay by the hour in the so-called PC bangs, the Internet cafés in Asia.
