The number of subscribers in World of Warcraft has dipped by 3 million players to 7.1 million, down from 10 million announced back in November following the release of the Warlords of Draenor expansion pack.
"As mentioned during our February earnings call and consistent with our experience following prior expansions, we saw a decline in World of Warcraft subscribers," said Dennis Durkin, Activision Blizzard’s chief financial officer. He made the comments during the publisher's overnight earnings call, as transcribed by SeekingAlpha.
Activision says that in spite of this fact, the publisher is moving away from its reliance of World of Warcraft, so it’s not all bad for the company–though it may spell bad things for the game itself.
"Blizzard has successfully expanded their portfolio over the recent past and continues to do so," said Durkin. "Growth from franchises like Hearthstone and Diablo have boosted Blizzard's top line and have pushed Blizzard's non-World of Warcraft revenue stream from 30% of total revenue in 2013 to 40% of total revenue in 2014, even while the World of Warcraft revenues also increased in that period. And new franchises like Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm are expected to further expand non-World of Warcraft revenue to more than 50% share of the Blizzard business in 2015."