During the latest earnings conference call for the period ended in June 30, Activision Blizzard announced that the latest worldwide subscriber count for World of Warcraft has lowered further to 11.1 million.
Blizzard's president Michael Morhaime stated that the decline is due to how fast players consumed the contents of the new Cataclysm expansion, causing many to leave.
The bleeding of players, while slowed down, seems hard to stop, despite the fact that the new free to play (until level 20) model brought in a "significant increase" in the creation of new accounts.
Maybe the MMORPG market is simply starting to get ready for a new king, or even better, for many. I'm quite sure many MMORPG players would rather see an industry driven by healthy, fierce competition between many strong titles, than the current stagnant pond in which only one frog rules them all.