World of Warcraft subscriptions continue to fall… Is this the begining of the end for WoW?

Last week, Blizzard Entertainment CEO Mike Morhaime revealed that the number of players subscribed to the developer’s massive title World of Warcraft has dropped by approximately 300,000 in the last couple of months.

So this brings the total number of worldwide World of Warcraft subscribers to 11.1 million. Ok, so while some of us may think that is a massive drop since May, I should point out that even with this massive drop WoW is still by far the largest subscribed game in the world.

The franchise is still throwing out expansions to its MMO. The most recent expansion, Cataclysm, recently launched in China and China as some of you may or may not know is one of the largest MMO market in the world.

Morhaime told investors at the meeting that the company had major plans to turn back the tides of unsubscribers, by revitalising its MMO with fresh content. The company recently trademarked the name “Mists of Pandaria” and this could signal that the company is set to lean more heavily on the Chinese market, as the name and suggested story borrows heavily from eastern lore.

It’s this writers opinion that the decline gamers using subscription-based MMOs is just part of the industry’s life-cycle. It was inevitable that these MMO’s, that take hours of attention were due to decline at some point; be it either the financial costs of the game model or the strain on gamers time.

Saying all that, it could be just because there are several high-profile games due out in the next twelve months and gamers are just waiting to see if these titles bring a new challenge.

So the true question is, how long can Blizzard push back the inevitable or is this just a lull?

What’s your thoughts on this?