World of Warcraft remains the reigning titan in terms of subscription-based games... but the titan is looking just a little bit leaner at the moment. The most recent subscriptions numbers for the game were released today in theActivision Blizzardearnings report for Q2 2012, and the game has dropped to a total of 9.1 million subscribers as of the end of June. For those keeping track at home, that's a loss of 1.1 million players since the last update on subscriber numbers in May.

Despite the subscriber loss, the overall earning report is positive, citing the announced launch date of Mists of Pandaria and the success of Diablo III (it sold over 10 million copies) as major milestones for the company. According to the report, most of the lost subscriptions are coming from Eastern players rather than US and European players. This is the first time in several years thatWoW has been beneath 10 million players, and it's certainly interesting in light of recent discussions about the future of games with a subscription fee.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/08...llion-players/