Being a casual raider since the launch of the money making machine that is World of Warcraft, i can safely say I've experienced the game to it's present entirety.
However a question has come up a few times on several forums lately. For how much longer can it be on top?
"Aion is the WoW killer."
This has been said quite a few times now, although other games with hyped launches have received this label. The difference is that this time it stands a good chance. This is all largely speculation by myself, but hear me out.
Surprisingly not many people know that WoTLK still hasn't launched in China due to a largely undead expansion, which is taboo supposedly for them. I'm sure by now many Chinese subscribers are getting fed up with WoW because of this and are moving on to other games. Aion is likely to be the most appealing at
this point.
The consensus seems to be that Aion = WoW with prettier graphics and not quite as polished game play. Can another game's superior graphics cause another game to fail? Not likely but stranger things have happened.
Since China makes up 35%-50% of subscriptions (information is speculative based on past announcements from Blizzard) this could hurt WoW's continued growth quite a bit. However I'm assuming it would require at least a 95% drop in Chinese subscribers to accomplish hurting Blizzard since the US seems to be still going strong.
Blizzard is currently working on another MMO that they said will not be apart of an existing franchise. Many suspect this has come about due to losing Chinese customers with the WoTLK fiasco, and are seeking to create a game more friendly to such an immense market that any gaming company in their right mind would want to reach.
Recently however, Blizzard's head of International Operations made a statement that they are making real progress, so we may soon yet see a revival of the "11 Million Subscribers" statements often made by Blizzard, which have not been seen for quite some time.
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