WoW

[Alig]

Don't know if anyone else has thought about this but with Blizzard having 1.5 million subcribers worldwide means they make £13'485'000 per month (assuming everyone payed monthly in £ but they don't but still don't US pay the same price about in $?)

 

[simmo]

Jesus christ :O, with those earnings surley they can lower the fee a bit ?

 

[Eg.]

not for the fact they have to pay for internation al taxes, pay for servers, maintaince of servers, paychecks, supplies and the rest. mmorpg are huge cash cows, but they need a whole support wing for themselves

 

[Ren.182]

All that doesn't cost 13 million a month....

 

[Cole]

You see how much bandwidth costs for 1.5 million people constantly using your servers. Now you even have to send more when it comes time to tell where other players are to another player. Either way.. I don't know everything on it..I'd have to email blizzard.

For $, 1,500,000 x $15 = 22,500,000.

They should lower that fee lol. I mean $22.5 million is.....alot...

Well I guess they deserve it for making 1.5 million people overjoyed with there game.

 

[OmegaX]

Yea, the fee should be lowered. I wish there was some sort of trial, because i don't wanna start paying a monthly fee and not enjoy the game.

 

[Lemonking]

Yea, the fee should be lowered. I wish there was some sort of trial, because i don't wanna start paying a monthly fee and not enjoy the game.

the first moth is free...... :hmph:

 

[StardogChampion]

Surely it costs them well under £1,000,000 per month to run the servers. I would guess the wages for all the staff that manage the servers costs a lot though.

You see how much bandwidth costs for 1.5 million people constantly using your servers. Now you even have to send more when it comes time to tell where other players are to another player. Either way.. I don't know everything on it..I'd have to email blizzard.

The most they've had online at one time is only around 500,000 which is a record.

 

[Hazar]

I think that they have many more users than that....

are you sure that wasn't just the european users?

 

[Sparta]

Fair out.....they should give us free gold to celebrate it

 

[Darkknighttt]

All Of That Costs Way Less Than $13,000,000 A Month, Even In A Year I Bet It Still Doesnt Add Up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Burn]

All that doesn't cost 13 million a month....

And you know this.....how?

No its not going to cost 13 mill in total, but you dont know anything about Blizzards profits and costs....

 

[Mr. Redundant]

the fee is fine, I would prefer better service.

 

[Alig]

All Of That Costs Way Less Than $13,000,000 A Month, Even In A Year I Bet It Still Doesnt Add Up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My figure was in £ Way stronger than your $. I bet it does cost over £13 mill a year to keep WoW running. The entire Blizzard team (including the people behind the scenes - server maintainers etc...) is probably in excess of 150 easily and there wages alone will be a few million a year. It probably cost millions upon millions to originally make the game. I just find it facinating to know how much money WoW made with it being one of the most hated genre's in general, even though i find it the best genre and the only one left thats got light at the end of the tunnel, as i'm sure many people who hated MMO's before playing WoW think now.

I figured they made £50'985'000 just of the original game sale, 1.1mill of them being standard, 400k being CE (i reckon and after all...you cant Warez MMO's)

 

[Cole]

My figure was in £ Way stronger than your $.

In $ it's, $22.5 million.

For retail I believe Vivendi did infact publish this game. So you have to take at least 50% - 70% out of that cash.

You also must remember. This may cause blizzard to expand a little.
It would give Blizzard North(Diablo 3) more money, Blizzard HQ could expand there team a little(Sc2 and WoW:Expansion).

(Blizzard is only making Out-Of-Game cinamatics and annoucments and a few other things. Nihistlic was doing the rest but blizzard kicked them off and gave the project to Swinging Apes. So Blizzard is only making about 5% of Sc:G).

 

[Shadow-warrior]

the first moth is free...... :hmph:

Don't be fooled - the first month was paid for when you bought that box of coasters :E


Considering the poor quality of their servers, the lack of regular content updates and the very slow response of the gms, I don't think they do have a huge team of people running it to justify/require the massive profit they are making.

The game is very, very good but it feels like the current team at Blizzard (after some left to do Guild Wars?) are struggling at times to keep the system running smoothly.

 

[Cole]

after some left to do Guild Wars?

Arenanet was started back in 2000.
Key blizzard employs worked there including the architect of battle.net
Alot of them left including one of my all time favorite people.. Bill Roper.

Not everyone went to Arenanet.
Some went to flagship studios.
Flagship Studios has not announced there next games, but Pc:G US said in there next issue(coming this month), they have the scoop on it.
Most of the people at FlagShip Studios came from Blizzard North(Diablo Series). So that is the most likly guess is that it will be a RPG like diablo.(They do not own the rights to the Diablo Franchise though, so this will not be Diablo 3).

 

[Shadow-warrior]

If you've read anything about the game, you're aware of how demand was more than triple their projections (or some figure thereabouts)... think about it for a second - if you were, say, running a concert for 1000 people, and 3000 showed up, you'd have your hands full with logistics and security, and you wouldn't have much time to help some idiot find his missing drink...

We're not talking about something as simple as a 'missing drink' besides any fool knew the demand for Wow was going to be huge many, many months before release.

As an example of the continued Blizzard incompetance - as of today thousands and thousands of paying cutomers can not even play Wow at all because theres currently a serious problem with the checking of account payments (telling people their paid time has run out when it hasn't).
On top of that the webpage which allows customers to manage accounts has gone down at the same time, plus those people with this problem can't even post on the forums to tell Blizzard how bad it is!??! and this is just one example of the problems which happen daily.

The game itself is excellent, it just seems the people now running it don't have a clue.

 

[Baal]

The servers have been better lately, compared to a week or so ago, but still, they're not great.

The problem is (well, to me, it appears to be) that since there was so much more demand for the game than Blizzard originally planned, a lot more players are on the servers they have, and many of them are more populated than Blizzard had probably planned for. Not just overall, but invidually. You can see them trying to take the load off of some of the other high population servers by offering to move players off of high population ones (Warsong) to some of the lesser populated ones.

And I guess the problem isn't just fixed by adding more bandwith or power to the server, or if it were, I'm sure it would be fixed.

Mind you I'm not complaining too much, because the last few days have been decent, considering it's the weekend.