I am not one of these "WoW haters"; let me get that out there first and foremost. As far as the game goes, it was one of the first MMO titles to get it right. Otherwise, it would have folded a long time ago. Blizzard has been successful at indirectly killing off or forcing other MMO titles similar to WoW's genre into a Free-to-Play business model. For some this alternative business model has been a success for other titles it means death of the game. Either a game has that certain charm, flare, and gameplay worthy of such fanfare. And yes, WoW certainly has it.
It was reported just a couple of months ago that Blizzard has lost something in the neighborhood of 800,000 subscribers from July 2011 to September 2011. I don't care who you are, that is a huge loss. Is this a sign of the economy? A sign that people just aren't playing? Or are they getting spoiled to the Free-to-Play plan?
Regardless, looks like Blizzard is pulling out the one card that not many people on the face of planet Earth can shy away from: Panda's. I don't care who you are, but you have to be on bad dude not to have a soft spot in the old ticker for a panda. And Blizzard knows this, so coming soon to Azeroth will be a new expansion entitled: Mists of Padaria. This expansion will bring the Pandaren race as well.
Will the adorable pull of Pandaren Shaman draw people back? Time will tell.
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The reason they are losing subs is because that style of mmo is getting old. Wow has been around for almost a decade now, before that there was eq. The reason you see failtures (well, a failture in comparison to wow) like swtor, aoc, lotro, warhammer online, etc is because they have all followed in more or less 90% of the footstep blizzard has set out. Entertainment always changes, theres a reason that shows like friends and seinfeld arent popular anymore, they got old.