According to Blizzard’s recently released quarterly financial report, World of Warcraft is down 2.9 million subscribers since last quarter. WoW had rose from 7.4 million subs in Q3 2014 to about 10 million subs in Q4 2014 after the Warlords of Draenor launch. It is now back down to 7.1; Slightly below the pre-expansion numbers.
Not really that unexpected but still somewhat surprising as losing nearly 3 million subscribers is a pretty sharp decline, even for a 10 year old MMO. The fact that Warlords of Draenor has offered literally no player retention has to sting a bit. The recent expansion has thus far represents bot the largest expansion spike as well as the largest expansion drop to date.
If I had to take a guess at what I thought the main culprit would be, garrisons are a fairly obvious choice. They kind of had a lot riding on the garrisons and though I liked them a lot at first, investing that much time in the garrisons in my opinion at least, did not pay off. The garrison quests and benefits are little more than a chore now. I think guild housing would have been a better option. One can only spend so much time sitting in their own personal instance.