There's trouble in the World of Warcraft.

Not from a rampaging dragon or a demon army attacking the land of Azeroth, but from some unhappy players who, after 17 years, have had enough.

On YouTube, Reddit and Twitter, there are stories about people leaving the game.

As Scott Johnson, host of popular MMO podcast The Instance, put it: "You have the perfect storm for a lot of players to hang up their Azeroth gear for good and stake out for a new place to play.".

Activision Blizzard has not released official player counts for World of Warcraft (WoW) for years.

He doesn't believe the dissatisfaction is down to any one thing - but that after so many years, players are used to every twist on the core gameplay.

"You are still iterating on the same basic systems and I think players are hitting a point of 'been there, done that' that might be more widespread than in years past," he said.

At launch in 2010, it was famously so bad that the developers "destroyed the world" to rebuild the game from square one - a rags-to-riches redemption story that has since attracted millions of players.

But all of a sudden, it's seen player numbers surge during what should be a quiet time for the game - its next big expansion is not due for months.

"We usually get a lot of new players when an expansion comes, but this surpasses even that," she said.

But its beta test period saw it overwhelmed with server issues as it hit nearly 200,000 players joining the game at once.

Zepla was herself once a WoW player - but left years ago for FFXIV during its poorly-received Warlords of Draenor expansion.

She thinks many players have been frustrated for years.

Well-known WoW player Asmongold has been credited with driving many players to both FFXIV and New World in recent weeks.

After so many years, the time has come to say goodbye to World of Warcraft.

So is it the end of the world (of Warcraft)?

"While some players will be taking massive breaks, or leaving for good, there are others whose entire social circle is in the game - and leaving it would be like leaving family.".

"Without World of Warcraft, [FFXIV] would not exist," he said in the video translated by a fan

"WoW was the game we constantly looked up to

Spending Christmas in the World of Warcraft

The perfect storm striking World of Warcraft

The perfect storm striking World of Warcraft5