Blizzard Expects Diablo 3 to Steal Users From World of Warcraft

There’s no telling how many WoW subscribers will migrate to Diablo 3, but instead of ignoring the fact, Blizzard is choosing to embrace it.

It would be an understatement to say that publishers spend a great deal of time juggling release dates, trying to maximize profitability and avoid direct competition. When a company has just two or three major releases in a year that soon pass out of the public eye, there’s little reason to worry about one game sabotaging the other. But Blizzard is faced with a very unique problem, stemming from the ongoing success of World of Warcraft.

You see, Blizzard’s hordes of loyal WoW fans are also salivating over the launch of the long-awaited Diablo 3, meaning a dip in Azeroth’s population is almost a certainty. While some might see that as bad news, Blizzard’s choosing to look on the bright side: if anyone’s going to steal their business, it might as well be them.

It’s a unique problem, since the average lifespan of most games is at most a year or two. Other PC games and MMOs have far more staying power, but never reach the size of WoW‘s 12-million subcribers. So while Blizzard didn’t have as much to worry about with their release of StarCraft 2- since that was a distinctly different genre of game – Diablo 3 is a different story.

Another juggernaut in the dungeon-crawler RPG space, Diablo 3 is likely one of the few games that brought Blizzard to the attention of many current fans, so the impending launch is a major milestone.

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