On Monday night, Activision Blizzard took their annual investor earnings call - an event traditionally watched like a hawk not only by investors whose actual money is on the line but also by journalists, whose ears are keenly trained for the sort of facts and tidbits that only come to light when people's actual money is on the line. While we did learn all sorts of exciting things about the Diablo III public beta, here at Massive Attack the biggest news of the day was what company boss Mike Morhaime had to say about World of Warcraft. Mathematically at least, the numbers weren't good.

"During the first quarter of 2011," said Morhaime, "as players have eagerly consumed the new content, we have seen subscribership return to prelaunch levels in the West. We finished the quarter with more than 11.4 million subscribers worldwide." It wasn't too long ago that Blizzard proudly announced they'd cracked the 12-million mark, and with the launch of Cataclysm now done and dusted, it seems likely the upsurge in popularity brought on by the expansion is now wearing off.

It's worth noting that these figures were gathered in March, which was the time that RIFT launched: a game that directly marketed itself as a challenge to World of Warcraft, and whose launch-splash in the MMO-subscriber pool may be responsible for these fluctuations. In any case, a company like Blizzard isn't going to take the loss of six hundred thouand subscriptions lying down, with Morhaime announcing that the imminent launch of Cataclysm in China, driven by NetEase, should help to stabilise those numbers somewhat.

The consumption of new content is seen by Morhaime as the primary reason behind the slump in subscriber numbers. "As our players have become more experienced playing World of Warcraft over the many years, they have become much better and much faster at consuming content. "And so I think with Cataclysm, they were able to consume the content faster than with previous expansions."

What's the solution to the problem of content consumption? "More content", says Morhaime. "We launched our first update last week and we have another update that's already in test. The response that we've gotten so far from players has been very positive and we really think that we need to be faster at delivering content to players. That's one of the reasons why we're looking to decrease the amount of time in between expansions."

An early image of Firelands from 4.2
The idea that players are consuming the content too fast and that Blizzard should upscale their production to match - or possibly outpace it - seems to directly conflict with what Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street said to us in an interview last month about the upcoming 4.2 patch. When he spoke to us, Greg implied that Blizzard had been burned (if you'll pardon the pun) on their release of Firelands, with many players complaining that they hadn't finished the old content yet, and weren't ready for new content - a theme that was repeated when we asked about their internal metrics used to determine content releases. Morhaime was asked if this new focus on faster expansions would mean releases that were lighter in content than past expansions but declined to answer the question, saying the company was not ready to discuss expansion content.

While it seems like there may be some big changes in store for Greg and his team in the World of Warcraft development offices, there's one thing that's for sure: Blizzard's focus on MMO's and digital delivery is paying off. Bobby Kotick revealed during the investor call that a full half of the company's $1.4billion in revenue for the first quarter of 2011 was from digital sources. "We are still scratching the surface," Kotick said, "when it comes to the role that digital delivery will play in our products and franchises."

source: www.wow-gold-team.com