World of Warcraft holds steady at 7.4M subscribers

The bleeding has stopped in Azeroth — for now.

Activision Blizzard announced today that Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft (WoW) still holds the top slot in the massively multiplayer online gaming business with more than 7.4 million paying subscribers as of Sept. 30, the end of Activision Blizzard’s third fiscal quarter.

Last quarter, Blizzard had 6.8 million subscribers for its MMO. The company hopes to boost that further next week with the upcoming launch of the World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor expansion. Blizzard usually sees a boost after new content arrives for its flagship game.

“Blizzard’s Warlords of Draenor is on track to be a big success,” said Bobby Kotick, chief executive of Activision Blizzard (that’s the parent company of Blizzard Entertainment), in an earnings call today.

During the quarter, Blizzard Entertainment’s newest franchise, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, exceeded 20 million registered users since its release on the PC and mobile devices last year.

Blizzard is working on an Android version of Hearthstone, as well as a port to the iPhone. Hearthstone is currently available on just the Windows PC, Mac, and iPad.

Regarding World of Warcraft, Mike Morhaime, head of Blizzard, said on the call, ” So much of the resurgence comes from returning players, many of whom already have strong connections to the game. We’ve been focused on making it easier for players to return, and I think the character boost really plays a big role in that helping people quickly get up to speed with their friends and also catching up with all of the changes we’ve made to the game over the years. The growth that we’ve seen has been proportional to historic ratios between the East and the West, and we don’t make predictions about subscriber growth in the future, but we’re feeling very good about the expansion launch next week.”

And as for Hearthstone, he said, “So we already announced that the Android tablet version of the game will be coming in December. And we are working on Android phone and iPhone versions that will come at some time after that. We’re particularly excited about Android, especially as it relates to China and Korea where Android is the dominant mobile platform. Our developers are really busy right now working on our new expansion, and we’re very encouraged from what we’ve seen when we launch the Naxxramas adventure, how important new content can be to engagement in the game. So those are the big areas where we are focusing right now and will continue to add content and features to the game as time goes by.”