RJO

*** Cross Posted From My AdventuresOfTaas.com blog ***

Last night I waited in line with over 74,000 other people. *What was I waiting in line for? *Probably the coolest looking mount in World of Warcraft:

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I was kicked out of the line twice at different points of the evening and judging by my line various line positions and how fast the line was moving at various stages you have to figure that Blizzard sold at least 250k of these things (and probably more). *Let me do the math for you. *That's SIX point TWO FIVE million dollars.

So while many including <a href="http://www.adventuresoftaas.com/?p=101">myself</a>*are heralding the beginning of the end of WoW's era let's not get ahead of ourselves. WoW is still a game with 10.2 million people in some way paying and playing for the game. *WoW is still a game with a tremendous potential to make revenue for Blizzard Activision.

Blizard Activision held their quarterly earnings call this past week and revealed that on the quarter WoW had lost 100k subscribers. *This was after losing 1.8 million on the year. *So clearly the churn is starting to slow down, or maybe even heading to a bottom. *Let's keep in mind that the MOP expansion is likely coming out early summer and that will bring people back in droves. *So maybe the old giant is battered and bruised but ready to fight on at this level? *It's starting to look like it.

The lesson here for me: *It's fun to predict the doom of WoW, but with its economic power for its parent company it would take a lot to slay this beast.