Couple things I realized about Blizzard

[Civil War Man]

I was watching Yahtzee's review of Age of Conan (basically sums up to it's an MMO, so it's trying to be WoW. However, it's not WoW), and as the title suggests, I realized a few things about Blizzard.

The monthly fee for World of Warcraft is about $15 (it'll vary depending on region and whatever, and I'm not including base cost for the game, but let's just assume it averages out to $15/month). That comes out to $180 per year. According to wikipedia, it has about 10 million subscribers. That means from World of Warcraft alone, Blizzard is grossing somewhere in the area of $1.8 billion per year from subscriptions. I often hear complaints about how long they take with releasing a lot of their products, like the whole Starcraft 2 deal. However, if I were making over a billion per year from a single product, I probably wouldn't try to rush my other projects out the door, either.

I also realized just how smooth a trick they pulled with the new expansion coming out. I think there was probably a conversation at Blizzard HQ that went something like this:

Developer 1: Let's add Death Knight as a class.
Developer 2: A lot of players feel that the Burning Crusade material is vastly superior to the base game, and will probably be pissed if we force them to slog through Azeroth yet again just so they can get a Death Knight to Outland and Northrend unless we update Azeroth with more interesting stuff.
Developer 3: We'd have to rewrite, like, half the game in order to do that. How about we just have Death Knight start at a high enough level so that by the time they finish with the class's starting area, they'll be ready to enter Outland?
Everyone: Brilliant!

Also, I'm going to put on my prophecising hat and predict that if Demon Hunter is not the first new hero class after Death Knight, it'll be the second.

[Sharp-kun]

Developer 3: We'd have to rewrite, like, half the game in order to do that. How about we just have Death Knight start at a high enough level so that by the time they finish with the class's starting area, they'll be ready to enter Outland?
Everyone: Brilliant!

They've also done that very well.

You don't start with any bonus gold, or stuff like that, but you do get your normal epic mount, 275 first aid and full 12 slot bags. You're not OMG teh ubar, but you've got what you need to make a decent start..

[The Yosemite Bear]

passes Guinness around the developer's suite

[Darth Onasi]

Sounds like a decent plan, even if they are anally violating their own lore for the sake of popularity.
Then again, it's Blizzard.. they always do that.

[Gaidin]

That means from World of Warcraft alone, Blizzard is grossing somewhere in the area of $1.8 billion per year from subscriptions. I often hear complaints about how long they take with releasing a lot of their products, like the whole Starcraft 2 deal. However, if I were making over a billion per year from a single product, I probably wouldn't try to rush my other projects out the door, either.

While I won't deny keeping WoW in the spotlight is a good thing for them, let's not forget that however much money they're making, just throwing more designers at a project is one of the classic mistakes of development.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I'm just worried the new items (The 'eternal' elements, especially) are going to cause a massive depopulation of Outland the same way they emptied out the plaguelands.

[Darmalus]

The 'eternal' elements, especially.

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

[Sharp-kun]

The 'eternal' elements, especially.

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

Replacements for primals.

[Broomstick]

I'm just worried the new items (The 'eternal' elements, especially) are going to cause a massive depopulation of Outland the same way they emptied out the plaguelands.

On the other hand, when I need stuff from the plaguelands the depopulation makes it a heck of a lot easier to farm the stuff.

[Steve]

Just not as easy to get groups for the group quests, though that's probably why they nerfed so many of the world elites.

Who runs Scholo or Strat anymore save those looking to get Warlock/Paladin epic mounts and maybe some Scourgestone farmers who still want to try out Naxx before it goes to Northrend?

[Broomstick]

well, I farmed the plaguelands to get honored with argent dawn for the powerful anti-venom... but only bothered for one alt.

And I run scholo and whatnot despite not needing it, to help out my guild members. And because I'm weird that way.

[Steve]

well, I farmed the plaguelands to get honored with argent dawn for the powerful anti-venom... but only bothered for one alt.

And I run scholo and whatnot despite not needing it, to help out my guild members. And because I'm weird that way.

Well, I imagine the pre-expansion community has fond memories of those instances.

[Mr Bean]

Three things

1. China subscriptions are much lower(Think a dollar a month) and account for nearly 10% off all WaW subscriptions, Korea is also less

2. Even in America the multi-month subscription options are out there to cut the price down to 9.99$ a month and it's fairly popular. The 15$ is the upper limit not a fair average.

3. There exists a best guess out there already saying that Blizzard's take home profit each year is 420 million to-510 million. Not one point eight billion. But five hundred million a year is serious profit off one product, not counting game sales.


*Also on another note
You can just "throw more developers at something like an MMO, if you can take four teams of twenty and assign them to duegon building and testing you can dribble out new instances and content every odd month even as your main team works on a new expansion. Your various world building teams are working from within the framework you already spent three years building meaning they can work quickly and you always have the option to take five people off your primary team to go over their work and polish it for a few weeks before dumping it on the server.

Something like say PVP content you need to keep your primary team on their since changes there can break PVE and vice versa. Balance work you need to keep one team on and rotate people in from time to time, but you can't slice it off and hand it to a brand new stack of people and hope for anything but a mess.

[Minischoles]

Another thing to remember is that a huge amount of all that money they're making is going straight back into WoW. Paying their employees, paying for server maintenance, new servers, keeping said servers with power. Then they've got all the development teams still working on WoW, just because they're working on other games doesn't mean they've stopped working on TBC for WOTLK. Admittedly there are no more major patches, but theres still new stuff coming in on most small patches.

[GuppyShark]

I read 10 million accounts and think, "That's a lot of customer service reps."

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I think Blizzard probably decided that barring something extraordinarily exciting content, knows that their MMORPG subscription will eventually hit a plateau, if it already has. So they need some backup profit drivers in the meantime. Remember that they are now owned by someone else, and that means less freedom to make decisions, and more pressure.

[Jaevric]

I read 10 million accounts and think, "That's a lot of customer service reps."

Blizzard's customer service is why I'm not playing WoW anymore, actually. A buddy of mine and I had a godawful experience when we jumped from Horde side to Alliance and transferred a lot of gold to our new characters. Blizzard's crackdown on gold buyers resulted in my friend getting banned for "buying gold," and when we tried to get ahold of a Customer Service rep and explain "Hey guys, look, the money was transferred from my account to his account and back to my account! This isn't gold buying, it's just transferring the cash between factions using the stupid Booty Bay auction house!" the response was basically "Yeah, whatever, we don't care, he's still banned."

Which is why I won't be buying Diablo 3 or StarCraft 2, despite how much I want to play the former in particular.

Side note: I have no problem with punishing people who buy and sell gold. Hell, I like seeing gold buyers and (moreso) sellers get smacked down. However, in this particular case, a minimum of effort would have shown that the money was being transferred from one account to another account then back to the original account. Both of us had been playing the game for over a year and had multiple level 60-70 characters with no infractions of any sort.

[Mr Bean]

Another thing to remember is that a huge amount of all that money they're making is going straight back into WoW. Paying their employees, paying for server maintenance, new servers, keeping said servers with power. Then they've got all the development teams still working on WoW, just because they're working on other games doesn't mean they've stopped working on TBC for WOTLK. Admittedly there are no more major patches, but theres still new stuff coming in on most small patches.

Note, 85 Customer Service Employee's at 80,000 each only costs 68 million a year. That's why I say 500 milllion in profit IE after paying for the server farms and employee's to work there. I can tell you they don't pay customer service agents 80k a year to work there.

[Broomstick]

The problem is that what you did DOES look like what gold buyers/sellers routinely do - use one character to generate gold that is then shifted to another account in large quantity. In your case you were both innocent of wrong-doing, but couldn't prove it.

(Bliz also doesn't like assets being transferred from one faction to another, but that's a different issue).

This is why I get pissed at people who buy gold - it hurts others not only through inflation but folks like you two. I get pissed at people who use bots to level because they're too fucking lazy to play, or hire leveling services. The impacts of all this spread beyond just the guilty.

[Eulogy]

Too lazy to play? Then why do they even have the game and subscription?

[General Zod]

Too lazy to play? Then why do they even have the game and subscription?

So they can resell the accounts for a drastically marked up price so some idiot can get an epic level character without having to put in the time themselves.

[DesertFly]

Too lazy to play? Then why do they even have the game and subscription?

So they can resell the accounts for a drastically marked up price so some idiot can get an epic level character without having to put in the time themselves.

I've witnessed people selling accounts firsthand. Someone posted an ad for an account with several level 70 players on my company's electronic bulletin board for over $500.

[Stormin]

Too lazy to play? Then why do they even have the game and subscription?

If gathering money isn't fun and what is fun costs money it is worth the (real) money to simply bypass the part you hate.

[Civil War Man]

Three things

1. China subscriptions are much lower(Think a dollar a month) and account for nearly 10% off all WaW subscriptions, Korea is also less

2. Even in America the multi-month subscription options are out there to cut the price down to 9.99$ a month and it's fairly popular. The 15$ is the upper limit not a fair average.

3. There exists a best guess out there already saying that Blizzard's take home profit each year is 420 million to-510 million. Not one point eight billion. But five hundred million a year is serious profit off one product, not counting game sales.

My numbers were definitely off. Still, my 1.8 billion (which obviously is still high, though it still comes in at almost a billion if the average is at least $8/month) was for gross revenue, while your 420-510 million is net earnings.

[Timotheus]

Three things

1. China subscriptions are much lower(Think a dollar a month) and

Personally I want to know why its only $1 or so a month in China. If it is true then it is a load of bullshit and they should be forced to only play on their own specific servers so I dont have to deal with the Chinese Gold farmers.