Warcraft
In 2004, Blizzard Entertainment moved the series away from the real-time strategy genre and released "World of Warcraft", a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). Requiring a subscription fee to be paid to play, it also introduced regular additional content to the series in the form of patches. "World of Warcraft" gained popularity worldwide, becoming the world's largest subscription-based MMORPG in 2008. The game reached a peak 12 million subscribers worldwide in October 2010. "World of Warcraft" has had seven expansions as of 2018. During the production of "", Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce stated that "If there's a team that's passionate about doing another "Warcraft" [real-time strategy], then that's definitely something we would consider. It's nothing that we're working on right now, we have development teams working on "", "", "Diablo III", and when those teams are all off the projects they're working on, they'll be intimately involved in the discussions about what's next".
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm
"World of Warcraft: Cataclysm" has received critical acclaim. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the game has received an average score of 90 based on 53 reviews, which indicates "universal acclaim." "IGN" scored the game 9/10 saying "Cataclysm is far and away the most impressive expansion to an MMO ever made" with "better content than Wrath". "GameSpot" rated the game 8.5/10 and with a critic score of 9.1/10 declaring World of Warcraft "in the best shape of its life" though stating that some of the new content is "mind-numbing and that there aren't enough new zones". "GamePro" gave it 4/5 stars calling the game "another solid release" and "much improved in terms of its overall design" but contrastingly stated Cataclysm to be "not quite as impressive as previous expansions". In addition, GameSpy gave Cataclysm their "MMO Game of the Year" at their 'Game of the Year 2010' awards.