Mists of Pandaria discussion

[Lissa]

And that is the real problem Blizzard is truly facing. The fact that their veteran players are leaving and not returning after taking a hiatus. The fact that people that have invested so much time into WoW are willing to just throw aside the time they spent and go to something else should worry Blizzard a lot.

It's a game. People play it to have fun. That usually means picking up a game, fiddling with it for a few weeks/months, and stopping. WoW is now on year seven, and has only just now stopped growing. What is amazing is not that World of Warcraft is losing players. All games lose players. What is amazing is that it still has so many after so long.

-Jester

Not really. Just about every single MMO peaks around the 5th to 6th year and declines, just not as rapidly as WoW is going through. Go back and take a look at subscribers for UO, Asheron's Call, and EQ, you'll see the same situation, subscribers build for the first few years, a peak occurs around the 5th to 6th year of the MMO, then declines. What is telling is the loss rate.