World of Warcraft developer Blizzard has finally admitted that the recent drop in their monthly subscriptions is, in part, due to the launch of the rival MMO Star Wars: the Old Republic.
Electronic Arts launched their Star Wars MMO late last year and the game had registered 1 million subscribers within the first three days of being launched. EA stated last month that the game has over 1.7 million subscribers and has sold more than 2 million copies of the game worldwide.
This is all well and good for EA, but the people at Blizzard have been slowly dropping subscribers during the same time. The game had 10.3 million players during their last count in November, which was down from 11.1 million just three months earlier.
A senior producer for World of Warcraft, John Lagrave, said that the recent drop in subscriber numbers is at least attributable to the release of The Old Republic. He goes on to explain that they have many smart guys doing analytics for them to figure out where WoW players go. “It certainly has to at least be attributable to The Old Republic,” but added that “it’s also attributable to people who want to wait and get Mists of Pandaria [WoW expansion pack due for release later this year], so it’s not surprising.”