World of Warcraft decline continues, loses 300k subscriptions

Blizzard's highly-successful World of Warcraft MMO continues on a steady decline, losing roughly 300,000 subscriptions between May and July 2011.  As of now, the MMO juggernaut's worldwide subscription count sits at 11.1 million, reflecting a continuous pattern for two successive quarters.

Prior to May, Blizzard reported that their initial quote of 12 million players had dropped to 11.4 million since October 2010.  At the time, CEO Mike Morhaime suggested that the decline in subscriptions could be attributed to player experience, stating that the WoW community had "become much faster at consuming content." 

The company predicted that subscriptions would start picking up again once the Cataclysm expansion hit China on July 12.

Just as before, Morhaime provided an explanation for the wilting player base, and it mirrors his response from May practically word for word.

"As our players have become more experienced playing World of Warcraft over many years, they have become much better and much faster at consuming content," he stated.

"And so I think with Cataclysm they were able to consume the content faster than with previous expansions, but that's why we're working on developing more content."

Blizzard's solution to the issue also remains the same.  The studio is hoping to pour more content into World of Warcraft at an even faster rate.  In June, they removed the time limit on the trial version and renamed it "World of Warcraft Starter Edition," allowing players to play for free up until level 20.