Blizzard’s cash cow 
is starting to produce less milk.
Subscriptions for World of Warcraft fell to 10.3 million at the end of September, the company announced in its quarterly earnings call Tuesday. That’s a drop of 800,000 subscribers — or more than 7 percent of its customers — in just three months.
For the past dozen 
years or so, Hollywood has leaned on classic (and not so classic) television shows as the source catalog for new films. As that trend comes to a close, studios are focusing more and more on the videogame industry.
Despite the tarnished history of videogame adaptations, studios are moving forward with more than dozen big-screen gaming movies. What’s amazing, though, is it’s possible — just possible — that some of these films might not stink.
Communication and 
financial problems are the two leading causes of divorce today, but a new study shows that video games are quickly climbing the list.
Conducted by Divorce Online, the study breaks down the reasons couples split. Of the wives that pointed to “unreasonable behavior,” 15 percent said their husbands put gaming before them. One year ago, that figure stood at 5 percent.
Mickey Mouse may have 
two theme parks under his belt, but The Horde is getting ready to rush his castle.
What seemed like the stuff of a fanboy fantasy – a theme park dedicated to mega-hits World of Warcraft and Starcraft – has opened its gates in China. Dubbed “World Joyland,” the park is located just north of Shanghai and brings new meaning to the term “E ticket.”
If we’ve learned anything about 
addiction, it’s that the easiest way to get someone hooked on something is to offer it for free for a while. Once they can’t live without it – bam! Charge ’em.
Given how many people need their daily fix of World of Warcraft, we have to wonder why it took Blizzard so long to figure this out.
When U.S. prisoners journey beyond their prison 
walls, it’s usually because they’ve been assigned to a roadside cleanup crew. In China, they head to World of Warcraft.
In addition to the physical labor he was required to perform during the day, a former inmate at the Jixi labour camp in northeast China is alleging he — and 300 fellow prisoners — were forced to play online games at night, raising credits and finding loot that prison guards then resold for real-world money, reports The Guardian.
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?
You might think that after creating a 
title that has over 12 million customers happily paying a monthly subscription fee, Blizzard Entertainment would be immune to some of the fears circling the video game industry.
But Frank Pearce, co-founder of the development giant, says he’s just as worried about the impact of Facebook and iPhone games as everyone else.
David Webb is a core gamer – an enthusiast who 
has a passion for story-driven role-playing games. He’s also a person who knows how completely those games can take over his life. He lost a girlfriend, in part, to excessive playing of World of Warcraft and when a compelling single-player game is released, he goes on self-described “bender” sessions – lasting 12 hours or more.
“My solution has been abstinence, to a large degree,” says Webb (not his real name). “I don’t generally grant myself a single-player game unless it’s reported to have a short playtime – and multiplayer games have to be jump-in, jump-out, like a first person shooter. On rare occasion I’ll buy an role-playing game, but then it’s pizza boxes and soda bottles until I finish. I genuinely feel like an alcoholic with it.”
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.
Chris Morris: Journalist 