Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft has been arguably the most dominant MMORPG in the past decade, even despite the fact that it’s a long way from boasting 12 million subscribers per month. During Activision Blizzard’s Q3 2015 financial report, the firm revealed that it won’t be revealing subscriber numbers again in the future.

“This is the last quarter that we plan to provide subscriber numbers. There are other metrics that are better indicators of the overall Blizzard business performance.”

It’s hard to argue against this since World of Warcraft makes plenty of money through add-ons and micro-transactions, expansions packs and through its few free to play elements even with subscriptions at 5.5 million. Blizzard’s cash cow isn’t dying yet by a long shot but it will be interesting to see how player interaction is affected in the coming years, especially with World of Warcraft: Legion on the way.

What are your thoughts on Blizzard’s plan to no longer announce subscriber numbers? Let us know in the comments.

Users who subscribe to World of Warcraft need to pay $15 to play the game. Given that there haven’t been any major changes in the game, or consistent updates on the scale of Guild Wars 2 (which also has no monthly subscription), it’s not that surprising that players would be interested in playing something else.

The first signs of this were seen when the fourth expansion, Mists of Pandaria, sold less copies in a week than the Cataclysm had managed to sell in 24 hours (2.7 million vs 3.3 million).

Is it the beginning of the end? Time will tell, but at the very least, it indicates that Blizzard needs to up its game.