WoW Peaked, W40K MMO Years Away

Because kicking up controversy is a good way of getting people to talk about you, THQ executive Jack Sorenson decided to note that World of Warcraft has peaked.

Sorenson commented: “However long it takes World of Warcraft to go through its cycle there will always be people on it, probably always be millions of people on it, but does it keep at that peak? And I think that, I wish I could see the numbers, but my guess is that it probably already has peaked – but it’s still a great business. Who wouldn’t want that?”

Following on from CEO Brian Farrell’s revelation that the game is still “probably a couple of years out”, Sorenson added: “We haven’t announced a release date, but it’s certainly not imminent and we plan on doing a very high quality job.

In another stirring bit of a petulant “they’re not that good”-ism, experts state WoW’s 10 million subscribers aren’t that good because theoretically – I repeat, theoretically – there’s 800 million perspective players out there.

In an online game panel at San Francisco’s ongoing MI6 marketing conference featuring representatives of Three Rings, Nexon, and Gaia, Outspark’s Andrew Sheppard said compared to the 800 million teenagers willing and able to play online games, World of Warcraft’s claim to 10 million players was “not a success.”