Since it started consuming lives and ruining relationships in 2004, Blizzard has been diligently collecting World of Warcraft stats on everything from the faction split figures to how many times poor Garrosh Hellscream has been killed. They’ve made a handy World of Warcraft – Infograph so that we can drown in glorious stats, and some of the numbers are, frankly, a bit crazy.
The big number that Blizzard really wants you to know about is the 100,000,000 accounts that have been created since 2004, including trial accounts. 20 times the number of people living in Scotland have made WoW accounts. Of those 500 million characters, 11 million of them are the newest race, Pandarans. And to cater to these social pandas and all their friends, 9 million guilds have been founded.
But, amid these earth shattering statistics lies the truth, and although it is an achievement well worth the commendation, Blizzard is struggling to keep its players playing. A statement released at the end of 2013 showed World of Warcraft went down 100,000 subscribers to 7.6 million. This is a drop from the 7.7M reported for the second quarter of 2013. This represents a continued decline from the 12 million subscribers reached at the height of WoW’s popularity in late 2010. However the most recent subscription decline is a fraction of what previous quarters have seen. For the first quarter of 2013, WoW lost 1.3M subscribers, landing at 8.3M. The second quarter of 2013 lost 600k subscribers.
It would appear that the subscriber losses are levelling off. Regardless of the losses, what Blizzard have here is still a massive money making machine, second to none. Enjoy the stats below, and marvel at the magnificent achievement.
