Blizzard Accelerating New ‘World of Warcraft’ Expansions To Reenergize Base

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The world of World of Warcraft isn’t as big as it used to be – but at least Blizzard Entertainment has a plan to deal with recent shrinkage.

Blizzard’s noticed two alarming trends in its subscription model for WoW: that subscriber numbers dip between expansion pack releases, and that those dips are happening closer and closer to the release dates. The takeaway, according to Blizzard president Michael Morhaime:

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, and so I think with [the most recent expansion pack] Cataclysm they were able to consume the content faster than with previous expansions, but that’s why we’re working on developing more content.

The solution, at least in Blizzard’s eyes, is obvious: increase the rate of expansions, and keep players involved in the game through continual updates. “We need to be faster at delivering content to players, and so that’s one of the reasons that we’re looking to decrease the amount of time in-between expansions,” Morhaime explained.

No date has been given for the beginning of the updated release schedule.

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