Subscriber numbers tend to ebb and flow 
with massively multiplayer games. No matter how high they get, people generally expect them to come down — unless that game is World of Warcraft.
So when Activision-Blizzard announced earlier this month that subscriptions of its crown jewel had fallen 5 percent, heads turned. Was the mightiest title in the persistent world universe finally showing signs of weakness?
Blizzard’s MMO juggernaut “World of Warcraft”
is showing no signs of slowing down.
The company announced Monday that the game’s latest expansion – “World of Warcraft: Cataclysm” – had sold 4.7 million copies worldwide in just one month. That makes it the fastest-selling PC game of all time, displacing “Wrath of the Lich King,” the previous “WoW” expansion.
The latest expansion to Activision 
Blizzard’s “World of Warcraft” franchise has sold more copies in 24 hours than many games sell throughout the course of their lives.
More than 3.3 million people around the world bought “World of Warcraft: Cataclysm” in its first day of availability — making it the fastest-selling PC game of all time, according to the publisher.
The latest expansion to the “World of Warcraft” franchise sold more copies in 24 hours than most PC games sell throughout the course of their life.
More than 3.3 million people bought “World of Warcraft: Cataclysm” in its first day of availability – making it the fastest selling PC game of all time, according to publisher Activison-Blizzard. (The previous recordholder, not surprisingly, was the last “WoW” expansion – which sold 2.8 million copies in the 24 hours.)
[As Cataclysm reboots many areas in World Of Warcraft‘s universe, Gamasutra editor-at-large Chris Morris talks to Blizzard co-founder 
and EVP Frank Pearce about why the early grind in WoW “doesn’t have the best content”, and how the expansion is fixing that.]
Blizzard has always been a collection of perfectionists. But it wasn’t until the impending release of its MMO expansion World of Warcraft: Cataclysm that we saw just how exacting they can be when it come to quality.
The rise of Deathwing the Destroyer in Azeroth, as you surely know by now, isn’t confined to the expansion pack. His eruption from Deepholm has ripped the entire game world asunder – even impacting what new players of the game see and experience.
It takes guts to radically alter a game that has 12 million paying subscribers—but when the company doing the tinkering is Blizzard Entertainment, you generally won’t hear a lot of complaints.
“World of Warcraft: Cataclysm” hits store shelves Tuesday and, as you might guess by the name, it will turn the world of Azeroth on its ear. At the same time, it could make the most popular online game in the industry’s history even bigger—and prove to be a significant revenue boost for Activision-Blizzard.
Chris Morris: Journalist 