blizzard got so rich off of WoW

[foolish501]

Most developers get between $5 and $10 per $50 game,

So they've made between $17-$35 million from the sale of the retail box

 

[HardcoreRobot]

if you dont agree with their business practices dont play. if you are a subscriber, then you are just supporting their system and really have no claim to say what they charge is unreasonable. not to mention you clearly have no clue as to the maintenance fees. and dont forget, with most game the development is done when the game gets released, not the case with a MMORPG, especially one as buggy as WoW. also, 3.5 million copies sold != 3.5 milliion active subscriptions.

 

[Hammerhead]

How much of it does Leroy Jenkins get?

 

[BigJ]

Originally posted by: chuckywang
Nobody who told the OP he was dead wrong provided a figure for how much it costs blizzard to maintain the game per month.

That's because we're not the book-keepers for a multi-million dollar organization.

I'm pretty sure Blizzard has at the very least 100 servers running right now. They essentially had 70 running within the first week. Figure that those servers cost anywhere from $5,000 - $15,000. Not to mention backing up the servers, redundancy, all that crap. Then you have the bandwidth, people just maintaining the servers hardware on call 24/7, software people, software licenses (actual software and licenses for using technology), and on top of that all sorts of expenses just to maintain these servers. Add in the cost of electricity, air conditioning, all that crap. And I haven't even probably covered half the expenses that go into maintaining just the servers.

See why it's so hard to get an actual figure?

Not to mention, the OP's original figures aren't exactly accurate.

 

[733SHiFTY]

Originally posted by: Hammerhead
How much of it does Leroy Jenkins get?

lmao, I should say about 1/3 of net profit, based on his renown... :laugh:

 

[HardcoreRobot]

Originally posted by: dabuddha

Originally posted by: BigJ

Originally posted by: ussfletcher

i dont think it costs that much for development and running the servers or am i dead wrong?

You're pretty much dead wrong. Don't forget you have to take into account marketing, promotions, all that garbage.

Considering you can still play starcraft and Diablo 2 free on battle.net, I don't think he's too wrong. At least about the cost of running the servers.

all battle.net is is a chat room to set up games, the games themselves run on the players computers. WoW server are used MUCH more intensely, and they are responsible for constantly storing game and character state. comparing bnet to WoW is stupid

 

[dabuddha]

Originally posted by: HardcoreRobot

Originally posted by: dabuddha

Originally posted by: BigJ

Originally posted by: ussfletcher

i dont think it costs that much for development and running the servers or am i dead wrong?

You're pretty much dead wrong. Don't forget you have to take into account marketing, promotions, all that garbage.

Considering you can still play starcraft and Diablo 2 free on battle.net, I don't think he's too wrong. At least about the cost of running the servers.

all battle.net is is a chat room to set up games, the games themselves run on the players computers. WoW server are used MUCH more intensely, and they are responsible for constantly storing game and character state. comparing bnet to WoW is stupid

Are you 100% sure that battle.net games are played on the user's computers?
BTW Guild wars is a semi MMORPG and there is no monthly cost for it at all.

 

[BigJ]

Originally posted by: dabuddha

Are you 100% sure that battle.net games are played on the user's computers?
BTW Guild wars is a semi MMORPG and there is no monthly cost for it at all.

From what I heard, Guild Wars is tryiing to soften the impact of no monthly fee by charging a fair amount and having often releases of their expansion packs.

 

[CVSiN]

Originally posted by: dabuddha

Originally posted by: HardcoreRobot

Originally posted by: dabuddha

Originally posted by: BigJ

Originally posted by: ussfletcher

i dont think it costs that much for development and running the servers or am i dead wrong?

You're pretty much dead wrong. Don't forget you have to take into account marketing, promotions, all that garbage.

Considering you can still play starcraft and Diablo 2 free on battle.net, I don't think he's too wrong. At least about the cost of running the servers.

all battle.net is is a chat room to set up games, the games themselves run on the players computers. WoW server are used MUCH more intensely, and they are responsible for constantly storing game and character state. comparing bnet to WoW is stupid

Are you 100% sure that battle.net games are played on the user's computers?
BTW Guild wars is a semi MMORPG and there is no monthly cost for it at all.

yes Battlenet games are 100% reliant on the users PC.. battlenet only enforces the rules of the game (ie hardcore etc) but its still the users PCs and network connections doing all the work..


GW is not even in the same league as EQ or WoW or even COH.. its like MMO light... almost like Diablo 2 with battlenet.. in fact it works very similar.. not surprising as half of Blizzards Diablo 2 team/battlnet team made guild wars..

most of the data is on the client rather than the server... where for the real MMOs its the opposite.

 

[0roo0roo]

its no small task. and successful software pc gaming companies are far and few between. there are countless companies that have gone out of business. its a way harsh industry..you get a month or two on the shelf before you are eclipsed by a new game..and the pc gaming market is small compared to consoles, and then the piracy...

 

[Argo]

Your math is very wrong. First of all out of $50 sale probably only around $30 is pure income, the rest goes towards production costs, reseller margins etc. Then in your calculation you're assuming that everybody who bought the game had the subscription for the entire year - that isn't true. Some people cancelled after 1 month, others bought the game just a month ago.

Lastly, you're underestimating how much it costs to run that many servers. Each realm is either a very expensive server (with prices nearing a million dollars per server) or more likely a large number of less expensive servers. Add up all the realms together and you'll come up with a pretty significant maintainance cost. Lastly, there's constant development going on for the game as the new content is being added, so you have to count R&D costs as well.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: dabuddha

Originally posted by: HardcoreRobot

Are you 100% sure that battle.net games are played on the user's computers?
BTW Guild wars is a semi MMORPG and there is no monthly cost for it at all.

Yes they are.
Read my post above, there just aren't very many servers handling b.net.

 

[SupaDupaPan]

Don't forget the current staff they have to have around while they have the game going. Customer service, GM's, QA staff, and then there's the engineers / developers that work on the patches, and other game content as well.

Remember when WoW was released? They had to have teams on 24/7 there and working due to all the server crashes and problems that arose because they got too big too fast and they just didn't forsee that it would be a problem.

And there's also rent spaces etc etc and other costs that they have.

But all in all, they're a corporation/company ... they're in the business to make money

 

[skace]

Some terrible math in this thread and it is one of the reasons I hate people who go "wow by my calculations xyz company should be making blah". The fact is no one here knows exactly how many servers Blizzard has, how redundant they are, what they cost in support, how much their bandwidth fees are, whether they have a fully redundant network, how many people they staff and how much they pay them, etc. Until you know THESE THINGS, you simply cannot comment.

Oh, and SC was a Peer to Peer game, as well as the rest of the battle.net games. All battle.net does is make the innitial connection and record the stats in some cases. This is why you could lose your connection to battle.net in the middle of the game and not know about it until afterwards.

 

[codeyf]

Originally posted by: Hammerhead
How much of it does Leroy Jenkins get?

LEEEEROY!!!

 

[GasX]

Making a profit is neither a crime nor a bad thing.

If you are willing to pay the fee and get what you want from the game then you should be a happy consumer. If you aren't willing to pay the fee or don't get what you want from the game, then you should not be playing the game.

How much money the company makes from you is not your concern and if it is a lot of money, then it is good incentive to go out and make another great game for you to enjoy next...

 

[CVSiN]

Also remeber that game companies use this money to invest in the deveopment of the next title..
when things are good at a game company and you have a hit everyone gets paid..
but when things are lean and you dont have a hit title making money things get very tight...

remeber that these games now cost MILLIONS to just develop...
I beleive they said WoW cost 20 mil to develop....

 

[Pepsei]

if you don't like it, go play on a free private server (which isn't as good, still a lot of bugs)

 

[gsaldivar]

Originally posted by: Mwilding
Making a profit is neither a crime nor a bad thing.

If you are willing to pay the fee and get what you want from the game then you should be a happy consumer. If you aren't willing to pay the fee or don't get what you want from the game, then you should not be playing the game.

How much money the company makes from you is not your concern and if it is a lot of money, then it is good incentive to go out and make another great game for you to enjoy next...

QFT. :thumbsup:

 

[fLum0x]

who here actually plays wow consistently and has seen end game content?

 

[gsaldivar]

Originally posted by: fLum0x
who here actually plays wow consistently and has seen end game content?

 

[skace]

Originally posted by: fLum0x
who here actually plays wow consistently and has seen end game content?

30 days played stopped after being part of the first guild on Sargeras to spawn Ragnaros. Why does it matter?

 

[SVT Cobra]

its like crack.thats why

 

[CVSiN]

Originally posted by: fLum0x
who here actually plays wow consistently and has seen end game content?

I did every day till the reputation patch
was pretty addicted.
then my girlfriend basically "said it or me..."

pussy wins over vid games.
deltree h:\wow\

 

[Vic]

I do not understand why people ignorantly bitch about (what they think is) corporate profits while they happily pay for and use the products. Do you not like the product? Did you not purchase it and do you not pay the subscription fees? Do you not use and enjoy the product? Do you not think it to be an acceptable value? What the fsck then are you bitching about?

Nothing. So STFU.