But to your point about the most profitable mmo, Blizzard is leaking subscribers in the hundreds of thousands recently. The subscription model is becoming obsolete. WoW is an awesome game but times are changing.
And more to the point, WoW is still going to be the genre definer for the next five years. That's not exceptional on Blizzard's part, though: winning an overwhelming amount of market share lets you coast. It doesn't mean the merger didn't have significant negative effects. (Yay double negatives. ):
Well, yes. But the game came out in 2004 and for the majority of its history its growth was astronomical. It's only recently that subscription numbers have been declining at a steady rate. And even then, the game still has years left before it becomes obsolete. You can see that this is Blizzard's thinking as well, since they recently scrapped Project Titan (their new upcoming MMO) and started over.
Show me one F2P MMO that has more active players than WoW and I'd agree with you. Subscription isn't dying at all. WoW is just old. If anything, with all the failed F2P games dying I'd say it is the opposite.
Agreed; there's a natural lifetime to games. WoW is rolling through its middle age now and its health is starting to get a bit "off".
However, WoW simply is more playable than its competitors. I played a few of them, and WoW was still better. The next MMO to carefully build itself to be super playable will be quite a hit, I think. Note - when WoW was released, mobile wasn't here. If most casual gamers have moved to Facebook/mobile instead and won't get a desktop to play their MMO, the market will have shifted such that there won't be another WoW.
