All graphs up to WoD tell the same story because they all use blizzard’s official sub numbers. Cata started with 12 million and slowly dropped to 9 million. In the very last quarter Cata gained 1 million subs. The most reasonable explanation for a million people resubbing for the last quarter of Cata is because of the MoP prepatch.
That may be true but how ever excited they might have been in just a few months WoD lost 3 million subs, one third of the players it started with.
Yet Blizzard released sub numbers for over 10 years even as subs were dropping all through cata and all through MoP. They even released sub numbers for the first 2 quarters of WoD. But in the second quarter subs dropped by 3 million. By far the largest and fastest drop in wow’s history. That huge drop in subs in just the first few months of WoD was unprecedented. You can claim it’s just a coincidence and all mmo’s did it but the most reasonable explanation is WoD was rejected by a third of the players almost immediately so blizzard decided to no longer release sub numbers.
https://www.techspot.com/news/61642-world-warcraft-loses-another-15-million-subscribers-ahead.html