14 DAY TRIAL // Video game developer Blizzard has announced that the number of players who are subscribing to the MMO World of Warcraft has dropped to 11.1 million during the first fiscal quarter of the year, which has ended on June 30.
It is the second three-month period that World of Warcraft has seen a drop in subscribers, which must be bad news for the company, despite the fact that the MMO remains the most successful in the genre.
Michael Morhaime, who is the president of Blizzard, has offered some explanation about the drop saying that “what we have seen is that subscribership tends to be seasonal and driven by content updates.”
He added, “So as we're heading further away from an expansion launch, it's normal to see some declines.”
The decline was more pronounced in the last fiscal quarter of 2010 and Blizzard believes that, as it begins to talk about its next expansion and add some more content via updates, a lot of the players who have abandoned the game will make a comeback and push the number of subscribers back up over the 12 million mark.
Blizzard says the new trial system, which was introduced in June, will also keep players interested as they can now play for free for as long as they want without going over level 20 for the characters they create.
Morhaime says the new trial mode is “an important direction for us to continue lowering that barrier to trial and reaching new players around the world,” which suggests that Blizzard might offer more content for free in the coming months and years.
The international expansion in places like Russia and Brazil will also help stabilize the subscriber base.
Sales of the expansions of Cataclysm and of World of Warcraft in China have helped revenue derived from the game grow to 313 million for the fiscal quarter.