Originally Posted by
Drithiend
Because it is not growth. Growth means exceeding your previous state. World of WarCraft's previous state has at a time been a bit more than 9 million subscribers, but before that it was well above 12 million. So, until it gets to that 12 milliom + once more, it is not growth, it is recovery. You can brandish it as growth, but that is, like Blizzard's press release, a deceiving move. Because just like a lot of people did not realise that there was no first-day sales figure for Mists, but an attempt to compare the first-week sales with those of the first-day sales of previous expansions, so in the case of growth, one can name recovery growth, but it is nothing but an attempt to deceive the perception of people. When you tell someone that there is growth in a game's profits, what he understands is that the game is making more money than ever, not that it is making more money than a specific period of time. Most people don't associate growth with recovery. They prefer recovery to be named exactly that, recovery. It is of course up to the individual to name recovery whatever he wants to, but he shouldn't expect others to agree with his naming. And so, for most people, not about this game, but sales in general, growth means treading new ground, not reclaiming lost one.