Just for interests sake more than anything but,
how much money do Blizzard actually make from this game? It must be a staggering amount of money.
Just for interests sake more than anything but,
how much money do Blizzard actually make from this game? It must be a staggering amount of money.
Last edited by Raz316; 31-12-2007 at 02:23 PM.
7 Million users x £8 a month = £56 million quid a month?!
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less costs of maintaining hardware/paying staff/other expenses = £still a lot of millions per month I'd expect!
"If you're not on the edge, you're taking up too much room!"
- me, 2005
Think its the biggest money earning game in hostory, there was a news report on it the other day, profits margins were huge. Heres a quote from a bbc news article
According to statistics gathered by Nielsen the average WoW player racks up 17 hours of play per week
17 hrs per week is a lot of time, cant see any single player or console games getting anywhere near that.
I've just been reading about it on wikipedia and you can even buy it in 5 hour stints in korea, thats nuts!
Blackdwarf: the 7mill, is that active subscribers or user accounts?
MMORPG's are kind of designed to keep you in your chair playing it. 17 hours a week isn't all that much in a way. If you play just 3-4 hours a night, you'll reach 17 hours before the weekend even started. Most people watch the telly for that much or more, so most people prefer to play a good game than watch the telly, so it's not really much different. Unfortunately, these games tend to keep you there by providing really repetitive gameplay. Usually it is kind of addictive though, so it sucks a lot of people in and you rarely see them again.
It's no surprise that this is the biggest money earning game ever though. I read that it might be as high as 10 million subscriptions, and I think its about £8.50 a month to play. The server costs aren't really that high. It's not cheap because they have thousands of players simultaneously on one server, but it's still not that high. I think their staff costs are probably the most, but even that is easily covered with how much they make. It is just mind boggling how much money they are making. I think it's safe to say that it it is a gaming phenomenon. I feel weird for not really liking it, although that was maybe because I was burned out by Everquest which is like it's older brother.
ive been playing it for 2years+ really, various characters etc. sometimes i wonder why i still play
The WoW and other pay-to-play subscription MMO accounts figures are always for current paid accounts. This figure is a reasonable estimate of the number of currently active players, as those who pay are likely to want something for their money.
The difference between paid accounts, active accounts and total accounts becomes very important when considering free-to-play MMOs.
I think the latest I read from Blizz recorded over 10m accounts worldwide, though I'm not sure if that's active or not. Also, it won't take into account the people who have 2 or more accounts and also gold farmer accounts.
In UK it's £8.99 a month, so I would imagine that the EU, America and Korea pay rougly the same, which would mean they roughly get ~£90m per month. I can't imagine their staffing and server costs amount to that much per month which is why people are constantly saying that they (the fat cats obviously, not normal employees) must be raking it in.
I too have been playing since launch, various characters, done lots and made lots of friends in-game, but have recently decided to call it quits. My subs run out on the 8th Jan. Will be a sad day for sure considering the amount of hours put in (quite scary when I think about it).
Well, it's £8.99 for a monthly payment using the Blizzard website. A prepaid card works out at £9 a month. I have a 6 month subscription so it's around £7 a month (not sure exactly) so for me it's worth the discount.
Blizzard are very smart when it comes to game extension too.
before the Burning crusade was released they added a touch of the content into the original content to keep people striving to progress before TBC was released, which was Naxxaramus (sp).
as soon as the first guild downed Illidan, Nilheim (TBC final boss) Blizz announced its next expansion to be released, early 2008 (wrath of the litch king).
basically i see it as a very strong marketing angle where they have the next piece of content available for when people come to the end of the prior content - they then advertise the next expansion to keep them ingame.
it was rumoured that in an encrypted file installed from the main disks it has a list of all the upcoming expansion names and level caps to come, it can be searched by a code which i cant remember from the top of my head but will find it soon.
as for the game addiction to it, i played the game since its beta release over 2 years ago and decided to finally quit in november, its so much better to join the real world again
Prime
XBOX: BauerPrime
Incredible game, my first mmorpg. Played virtually nothing else for 18 months. Quit about March last year so beat the addiction, but I still take it one day a time and I'm tempted now and again to see if all my stuff, 4 chars and 1000+ gold is all still there. Exploring the worlds and characters are great, but it's repetitive and the ever levelling, grinding and bigger and better upgrades/armour/toys you feel that you aren't actually achieving things even though you're in a great guild doing well having fun. Infact the fun factor is very high especially on a good raid where everyone knows each other and you're having a great laugh sometimes with a few beers added in.
I got sick of whack-a-mole health bars for raids and finally burnt out, then just before TBC came out druids got the shaft and the druid community went ape then they fixed us and TBC was something new, although I had a month off to re-energise. Once TBC came out druids were flavour of the month and considered overpowered (which we were a bit) so the old nerfbat was swung. Whilst levelling I wondered what I was actually doing hour after hour and finally thought sod it and didn't renew my subscription. The social side of things makes it very, very hard to walk away from but I'm glad I did.
I look at 17 hours average and automatically think, boy are there some people slacking on their hours, that's only 3 raids and a bit of mucking about!
I don't know how Blizz did it but they must have had a few psychologists onboard during the game design phase cos it can really put the hook in you Nat Pagle styleThey were clever to make you level up on a non linear scale, fast levelling start, easy to play, always something to do or find out.
How much do they make? Dunno, it's gotta be alot. acrobat is right when he describes it as a gaming phenomenon. South Park did an episode based on it and the Simpsons did a similar thing.
"Reality is what it is, not what you want it to be." Frank Zappa. ----------- "The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." Huang Po.----------- "A drowsy line of wasted time bathes my open mind", - Ride.
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