World of Warcraft subscription plummet slows

World of Warcraft lost 300,000 subscribers in the past three months, dropping to 7.7 million subscribers as of the end of this fiscal quarter, Activision Blizzard CFO Dennis Durkin said in a conference call this morning.

In May, the company reported that World of Warcraft lost approximately 1.3 million subscribers during the company's first fiscal year quarter, bringing total subscriptions down to 8 million. The game's all-time high was 12 million subscribers in 2010.

Last year, subscriptions to Activision's MMO fell to 9.1 million. In October 2012 the number jumped back up to just over 10 million, bolstered by sales of the game's latest expansion, Mists of Pandaria, which sold 2.7 million copies during its launch week.

Earlier today, Activision Blizzard announced that it was separating from parent company Vivendi Universal and would buy itself back for $8.17 billion in a in a two-part share acquisition plan. The company will share more financial details for its second quarter, which ended on June 30, in an earnings call on Aug. 1.