Blizzard is developing a bad reputation for not fixing game play issues and ignoring customer complaints. Their tos is a joke that is used only by them to legitimize the abuse of paying subscribers. The only thing that's allowed to remain posted on their customer forums are either mindless meaningless nonsense or only posts that praise Blizzard in some way. The game itself has become inundated with people of lower intelligence and possessing a lack of common sense. Game and forum moderators are allowed to belittle and harass paying subscribers with legitimate complaints, leaving it to the individual gm or forum mod to decide the how a person should be treated. The whole scene has become a big cesspool of degenerates and reprobates. They love to brag about how many millions of subscribers they have and how rich they are, and treat their subscribers like shit. I think it would be hilarious if someone launched a class action lawsuit against them for infringement of constitutional rights or something, since they have such deep pockets.

I see mostly speculation and assumption here, no hard facts or numbers. It's clear to see that Blizzard is playing hardball with the market and they don't intend to give up their players easily. Even if they were losing a good amount of players, they aren't going to admit it.

I seem to remember McDonalds having this ad campaign showing how many burgers they'd served on the front signs but even years afterwards I still don't see Burger King closing their door. The longer Blizzard can try to convince everyone that their "burger" is the best the more players they'll retain. It's time now for the other MMO's to show why they have a better burger and keep things just different enough to give us consumers some choices.

Its really telling how many came back, and that Funcom refuses to release subscriber numbers from after the free month ended.

(They're way down, though.)

Oh that Conan... I honestly couldn't imagine Conan O'Brien stealing WoW players.