Will the Numbers Continue to Grow?

Player vs. Developer has announced that he is now playing another game. Yet, he will not be canceling his World of Warcraft account. He simply has less solo material in Warcraft to do and now has more time to explore other games.

I wonder how many other players are like this? I am one.

I have seen often on message boards and other blogs that Warcraft loses players in between expansions. Yet, the subscriptions only seem to increase, albeit at a slower pace. Then suddenly, an expansion drops and the servers become overcrowded for weeks. Even after several months have passed and some of the subscribers have gone to other games, Blizzard must still add more servers.

I certainly agree that the realms seem to become less populated, and some people do cancel their accounts, but it might just be that players simply play less while more players continue to come into the game. Then when the expansion drops, or a particularly lucrative patch is released, even more new players jump in for the first time while the dormant players suddenly become far more active.

It seems obvious. Yet the "word on the street" is that World of Warcraft actually loses subscription numbers in between expansions. Well, I'm not buying it.

Quite simply, subscriptions increase faster than cancelations. A lot of people seem to be at the edge of their seats waiting for the moment when World of Warcraft finally experiences its first official decrease in subscriptions. I long for the moment myself, if only to sit back and watch these bottom feeders claw at each other's throats in their attempt to be the first to report the news.