I was scanning the investor reports. Given the way Activision/Blizzard tracks its numbers I don't think the game is going to really get rocked until Q2, Q3.
Whereas the game has maybe two months of adequately playable content, its not until Q1 that many players are going to realize that its time to unsub (many pay for subs in bulk, so that can actually get extended quite a bit). Unless I misunderstand how they track their numbers, if a player was playing at the start of Q1 that player still gets counted as part of the subscriber base as reported to investors. If the player bought a six month sub in bulk, that's going to get extended to Q2. The writing may already be on the wall, but its not actually going to be revealed until quite some time later.
So, we really aren't going to see if WoD succeeded or failed until Q2 or maybe Q3.
In this regard, Blizzard played it fairly smart. They didn't release the game until just before the holidays and just before a severe and protracted winter. They absolutely knew they could count on a significant number of return players given their marketing campaign. It is not until after a player has already bought the box and paid his sub costs that it finally dawns on him that WoD is not actually The Burning Crusade v2.
One of the things I find particularly interesting about WoD is how it precisely disappoints a player's expectations based on the BC v2 type marketing hype. The fact that they actually removed flight in the new WoD zones while attempting to imitate the expansion in which they so famously originally introduced flight into the game would seem to me like a pointed misstep.
Whereas raising the player base back up to 10 million can be a counted as a success regardless of what happens next, such success will be very negatively impacted if the player base drops radically in the first quarters of the expansion, as I personally expect it will. That in turn will most likely serve as a canary in the coal mine when it comes to how they proceed from here on out. If the numbers stay strong then business will continue as before. If the numbers drop off a cliff, then I think we shall see a revised business plan.
It sort of comes down to how many times and for how long they can trick the player base into buying the hype.
Maybe I missed it, but does any official source track the subscribing player base month by month within the reported quarters?