Stefan Mileschin

The age of World of Warcraft is finally coming to an end.

Activision Blizzard's cash cow is bleeding subscribers faster than a decapitated troll with 1.3 million defecting the game in the first quarter of 2013 alone.

In its earning press release, Blizzard said that the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) saw a decline of over 14 per cent subscribers in the first quarter of 2013, the total now standing at 8.3 million.

This is probably a sign that the long running game is on its way out. Launched back in 1994 as Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. It fell from fashion and then in 2012 had a boost when the version of Mists of Pandaria sold over 2.7 million copies in a week.

Now it seems that Blizzard is prepared to admit that WoW is finally going the way of all flesh and that numbers will continue to decline as time passes.

It is predicting that the subscriber base of WoW will dip further as more and more free-to-play games emerge on the internet.

Blizzard does not care too much. It is making cash from other franchises like the Diablo 3 and StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm alongside the Call of Duty series.

Activision registered sales of $1.32 billion in its first quarter as compared to $1.17 billion year-on-year and made a net income of $456 million which is an improvement of $72 million year-on-year.

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