The last few years haven't been kind to the World of Warcraft franchise. One of Activision Blizzard's (ATVI) most profitable brands, the title once boasted as many as 12 million paying subscribers. But WoW's user base is down a steep 40% from that peak set in late 2010.
World of Warcraft subscriber count. Source: Company financial filings.
Still, Activision isn't close to walking away from this title, Fool contributor Demitrios Kalogeropoulos notes in the following video. In fact, the company just expanded Warcraft's development team with the aim of raising both the quantity and quality of new content it plans to crank out for the game.
The most immediate fruit of those investments will come in the form of a new expansion pack set for release later this year. And that content is on pace to be one of the franchise's most popular expansions, with over 1 million pre-orders booked to date. So, while brand-new titles such as Destiny might get all of the attention during Activision's presentations at next month's E3 conference, investors shouldn't forget about the World of Warcraft franchise, which still has a long life ahead of it.
