Blizzard: '70% of WoW players drop out'

Blizzard has revealed that 70% of World Of Warcraft subscribers stop playing before reaching level 10.

Speaking during Activision Blizzard's year-end financial call, company CEO Mike Morhaime said that the aim of the upcoming Cataclysm expansion is to make the game more accessible to new players.

"Our research shows that trial players who play World Of Warcraft past level 10 are much more likely to stick with the game for a long time. Currently, only about 30% of our trial players make it past this threshold. So anything we can do to improve the new player experience is a huge opportunity for us," he said.

"With Cataclysm, we will be overhauling the early gaming experience for players, bringing all of the content in World Of Warcraft up to our current design standards and ensuring that even new players to the game will experience the best work of our development team.

"This will also provide additional replay ability for our veterans players as well. In the long run, we hope that this effort will capture more players and drive continued growth. Development on Cataclysm is proceeding smoothly and we're making great progress due release in the back half of 2010."

The studio has confirmed that Cataclysm will launch alongside StarCraft II later this year.