I never realised this thread existed, and just from a brief look it definitely went to some weird places!
It's probably worth noting that according to the release the majority (?) of the subscriptions lost were in Asia.
I'm not sure how the release of MoP will go for them. Anecdotally, pretty much nobody I know is excited about it, but that might change when the prerelease events or patches start. Guild Wars 2 and Planetside 2 are taking up most of the excitement bandwidth, but at a September 25 release date it might be far enough away from Guild Wars 2 that the honeymoon period will be over. I'll be surprised if they see a big drop in subscribers.
For my part, I didn't get into Starcraft 2 very much - I thought the single player had enjoyable gameplay but a story that seemed to retcon Brood War out of existence and ended by depowering and objectifying one of the most iconic female characters in gaming. The multiplayer I didn't like very much because of the "blink and you'll miss it" battle speed, where most games culminate in one ten second-long battle.
Then comes Diablo 3, with a story so badly conceived and executed that it shatters the believability of the world. Not only does it have villains who monologue, completely guileless, like they're on a cartoon - it literally was co-written by a kids' cartoon writer. Er, not that there's anything wrong with writing cartoons or things for kids, but it was a funny coincidence!
The environments were often fun to explore, and I liked the art (and blowing up some of the scenery was pretty entertaining - talk about bubble-popping!) but there were so many story interruptions and so many set pieces that it was very difficult to get into them, and if I did it wouldn't be for long. The combat was just... completely unfun and uninteresting. The abilities were sometimes nice in isolation, but so much of the gameplay boiled down to "press this one when you have no mana, and this one when you have mana, and maybe press this one when it's off cooldown because cooldowns are fun!"
No interesting story to draw me in and no fun gameplay make for a game I just have no reason to want to play (HI BORDERLANDS).
Anyway, sorry if I'm derailing the thread by talking about Diablo 3!
