Anyone currently playing World of Warcraft is aware of the deep lull that is currently afflicting the game. Today's Activision Blizzard investor call provides numerical evidence of this: World of Warcraft has shed another 1.1 million subscribers since the 10.2 million total subscribers it claimed earlier this year (and as recently as May), bringing the total number of subscribers down to 9.1 million.

Considering we're sitting at the very end of Cataclysm's life cycle and Mists of Pandaria has not yet launched, it shouldn't surprise anyone to see this drop in active subscriptions. Players are going to cancel their subscriptions when there is no content left to explore -- that's an inevitability. The investor call following the release of Mists is what will provide a true indicator of the health of the game. Will a new release recover a portion of the lost subscribers, or are those who have canceled gone for good?

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Tags: breaking, subcriber-numbers

Filed under: News items, Mists of Pandaria