14 DAY TRIAL // Blizzard is apparently looking to further expand World of Warcraft, the most successful massively multiplayer online role-playing game to date, beyond the upcoming Warlords of Draenor expansion.
The game's subscriber base has been slowly dwindling since its peak of 12 million concurrent users a few years ago, and it's now down to just over 6.5 million people. While that might seem like a dramatic drop on paper, it's far from being a sign of bad health for Blizzard's superstar.
Interest in the game is currently at its lowest potential point, with nothing new added to the experience in months and a new expansion underway. The truth is that for those who embarked on the Mists of Pandaria experience at launch, there is nothing to do right now.
Even those who were late to the party had ample time to experience everything there was to see and kill each and every last boss in all the raids, as well as to get shiny PvP gear through arenas and battlegrounds.
So, in case you're not one of the crazies populating the test realms, there's nothing new waiting in World of Warcraft, not for another month or so at least.
The adventure is hardly over
Thus, having 6.5 million subscribers in its lowest point is not a sign of failure, but a testament to the quality of the World of Warcraft experience, able to keep people interested even when there hasn't been anything new to do for over a year now.
Blizzard has repeatedly stated its commitment to further expanding the game, in spite of not expecting it to rise to the level of popularity it enjoyed a few years back.
Even more, the development team for the game is larger than ever now, and a part of it is already working on future expansions, dreaming up what lies beyond Warlords of Draenor.
"The World of Warcraft team is 50 percent larger today than it was when we shipped Mists of Pandaria [two years ago]. We're already working on the next expansion. We already have ideas for the expansion after that. We've never been larger. We've never been more forward-thinking about the types of things that we can do with World of Warcraft," World of Warcraft Executive Producer J. Allen Brack told Polygon.
Warlords of Draenor, the massively multiplayer online role-playing game's fifth expansion, is due out on November 13, celebrating World of Warcraft's tenth anniversary.