World of Warcraft lost 800,000 more subscribe

World of Warcraft lost 800,000 subscribers in the last quarter, according to numbers revealed by Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime during an Activision Blizzard quarterly conference call on Tuesday. As of September 30th, the ending of ActiBlizz’s previous quarter, WoW held 10.3 million paying players. The previous quarterly result had been 11.1 million, which itself was down from a 12 million WoW Gold peak.

Morhaime explained that the bulk of the losses came from Eastern territories, including China and Korea. What’s more, expansions like Cataclysm are only yielding temporary spikes in players. Experienced players resubscribe to the game to play the expansion content but unsubscribe again as soon as they complete WoW Gold. That gave a net loss of nearly 1 million subscribers, according to reports from the call. Mists of Pandaria, a panda-ful content expansion pictured above, was announced at last month’s BlizzCon fan convention and is expected to launch next year.

Also at BlizzCon, the company also announced that it’s giving away Diablo III to players who buy a year’s subscription to WoW. Rather than pay month-to-month, a down payment of a year’s worth of subscription money will get you the WoW Annual Pass and D3 for free.

The gaming press has often looked for signs of the decline of WoW Gold. Falling subscriber numbers have been a telltale sign, but for me it’s really the Diablo III tie-in. Blizzard’s willingness to discount WoW – by just throwing in a free copy of their hugely anticipated new game – shows a certain sense of urgency coming from Irvine.