09-19-2008, 01:38 PM
Quote:The decline is never sudden, it's slow as other MMOs bring new technology to the table. If you look at games like EQ and UO, their subscriber base is no where near what it was in their technological hay day. As new MMOs come out with better technology and have figured out Blizzard's formula, you'll see players start to dwindle away from WoW. Will WAR start to cut into Blizzard's subscriber base, I don't know, I don't think it will, but it could happen becaues WAR is using newer technology (remember, WoW is based on MMO technology started in 2001 and 2002 with updates here and there).
Let's assume a large 50% attrition rate per year. How many years does it take to cut the numbers from 10 million or so to where it's not economical to do an expansion? 6? 7? 8?
The conclusions you draw are based on extrapolating a very few data points to predict the course of a very-far-outlying data point. The course of WoW history is as likely emulate the Microsoft model as that of prior MMOs.