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WoW, your Money, and how they use it???
Mounara
Member UncommonPosts: 10
A usual wow sub costs £7.99 a month, multiplied by 10 million people paying around that a month = £79.000 000 monthly, or 120 000 000 dollars... multiplied by 12 months for a year... 1.440.000 000....
Yeah you read right....1.4 billion dollars.....a year....
And that is on SUBSCRIPTIONS ALONE!!!!!!! I am not counting Box Sales, or their item shop....
And the corporate swine at Blizzard, cant hire a forum moderation team like some F2P MMMO's to clean up the forums???
Or Community managers for their servers like some F2P MMO's???
But I guess a single post on a forum for MMO fans wont really make any ripples, or those that are sheepishly paying Activision Blizzard ask if they are getting their moneys worth....and make some noise so they accept their role in helping make wow a better experience for all, in game and outside it....
I mean, I dunno, for 1.4 Billlion, i'd expect more from a computer game and it's role in the community it's created...Wouldnt you??
Comments
yawn....
How about they put that money to use and try to make some real combat in the game and stop the shity clicky combat?
How people play this game is beyond me.
Try Darkfall and Mortal online to see how the future of MMOs is going to be.
Lol I was actually expecting a detailed list on how the money is spend, instead we got this topic........silly me........
Hmm, yes. I also expected a little more from this thread.
To be quite honest, you can't come to any conclusions without more information. Sure alot of money is being poured into their company, but you have no information on any of their costs, so just giving a very-approximate value for the amount they're recieving tells us nothing about how much of that money they are, or are not, spending.
Server operation and maintenance, customer hotlines, a slew of production teams and Several hundred realms, each having to house thousands of players...that can't be cheap. And there's much much more than that i bet.
Also remember that more money from wow doesn't necessarily mean they have to feed it back into wow itself. Or did you forget they're busy working on at least 3 other titles apart from the wow expansion. (Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, their Next-gen mmo).
meh...
from what i remember from an article on Blizzards income/outgoings for WoW, upkeep (servers, staff etc...) comes to about 200 million a year...
Still a nice tidy profit for them lol
Fair enough, maybe they are rolling in it, though that figure doesn't include their other projects.
Regardless, the original poster appeared to have just multiplied the subscription cost by the estimated amount of players. His conclusion was hardly justified by just that.
According to Wikipedia, Lady Gaga has sold at least 9.6 million albums. At $17 per album, that's $163 million. I demand that she start providing me with $163 million worth of entertainment immediately, or else I'm going to post a whiny post on a forum.
It's quite a bit more than that, as I discovered a few years ago when I checked Vivendi's financial statements. These days it would be a bit more difficult to assess the earnings directly due to WoW, as Activision's assets have been brought in. But if you google around a bit, it seems ActiBlizz is routinely turning about a billion dollars in profits... per quarter.
So, yeah, these guys could afford a few more moderators.
+1
Most subscribers are in asia, and chinese people eg pay almost nothing. They're subscribers just for the numbers (11mio!!!!).
75% of the income goes into advertising, 24,9% into new games and hyping and the rest in wow itself.
Lol, that made me laugh.
But seriously though, Blizzard should hire more Forum moderators, managing a community is as important as the quality of the game itself.
I was shocked about their decision to introduce Real ID just because they are not able to manage their forums (I was expecting something like this from SoE), to me that was just ridicoulus and the OP had a point.
Once I give money to a company in return for a service or good that same money becomes their money. What they do with it is their business not mine. At least as long as what they do is not illegal.
If they spend it in a way I dislike then it is up to me to not give them any more money.
Sub date 9/29/10, 2 posts both WoW....send WoW a note if it bothers you that much.
WAIT.. 7.99 a month is equal to $10.10 USD.. WTF? Why am I paying so much more to play the same game.. But then, why should I bitch.. People in China are paying an average of a few dollars a month for their pay structure.. Anyone else see that the US playerbase is the BULK of the revenure Blizzard/Activision makes?
I just see that the dollar isn't worth what it used to be.
I REALLY hope that you're not being serious.
Top 10 Most Misused Words in MMO's
I love how people forget about employee costs as well as insurance, facility costs, etc. That knocks off a good chunk of that 1.4 million. Granted they still make a very nice profit, but without actual numbers, this conjecture is pointless and just plain inane.
I agree with the post above.
.
Equipment, weapons, ships, tanks are a small part of the US defense budget. Salaries make up the lion's share.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
Want numbers? Revenue for Vivendi Games 2004-2007, from the official financial reports (see edit):
2004: $475m, 2005: $641m, 2006: $804m, 2007: $1018m
Revenue attributable to WoW (given as "Online and other" in %):
2005: $320m, 2006: $490m 2007: ?
I assume there is a steady trickle of income from their earlier WC/SC/Diablo titles in there, but other than that Vivendi Games didn't release any other games of particular note during this time (as I know of anyway). Those figures are very much all down to WoW.
BlizziVision does even better, although there's no telling which money comes from what games anymore:
http://investor.activision.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=444224
Edit: These numbers are a couple years old. I remember I had to do something to dig them up, but not sure what it was anymore. If anyone who knows more about finances than me wants to correct them, I'd be very interested in seeing the results.
Wow and to think that some people can get even more dense! Look, Blizzard's revenue is trickled in. I hope you didn't think they get a fat check for 1.4 billion dollars at one time. Also your numbers are so off that this information alone would shoot a basketball size holes in your arguement.
Blizzard gets it's revenue on a monthly bases and that money is spilt up for thousands of expenses. And what I have below is an example of a SOME of a small business's expenses. So take these numbers and times them by 31:
Sample Company
Budget
January 1, xxxx to Feburary 1, xxxx
Category
Actual
Budget
x31
Inflows
Net Sales
385,400
300,000
11,947,400
Cost of Goods
Merchandise Inventory, January 1
160,000
160,000
4,960,000
Purchases
120,000
90,000
3,720,000
Freight Charges
2,500
2,000
77,500
Total Merchandise Handled
282,500
252,000
8,757,500
Less Inventory, Feburary 1
100,000
120,000
3,100,000)
Cost of Goods Sold
182,500
132,000
5,657,500
Gross Profit
202,900
168,000
6,289,900
Interest Income
500
700
(15,500)
Total Income
202,500
168,700
6,277,500
Expenses
Salaries
68,250
45,000
2,115,750
Utilities
5,800
4,500
179,800
Rent
23,000
23,000
713,000
Office Supplies
2,250
3,000
(69,750)
Insurance
3,900
3,900
120,900
Advertising
8,650
9,000
(268,150)
Telephone
2,700
2,300
83,700
Travel and Entertainment
2,550
2,000
79,050
Dues & Subscriptions
1,100
1,000
34,100
Interest Paid
2,140
2,500
(66,340)
Repairs & Maintenance
1,250
1,000
38,750
Taxes & Licenses
11,700
10,000
362,700
Total Expenses
133,290
106,850
4,131,990
Net Income
$69,210
$61,850
$2,145,510
Now check the numbers to the far right. It leaves them with about 2 million net income and we haven't even got to the part where Vivendi and Activision take their cuts of Blizzard's pie. And don't be so naive to think they won't. And I didn't even count cost for Legal issues or additional projects.
All I'm saying is I see a lot of chatter from people that know nothing of the inner workings of running a multi-million dollar company. All you seem to see is raw numbers and demand changes based on those raw numbers alone. And that logic is so flawed it's funny.
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
Blizzard is wasting its time. Its message boards refect the type of people who play that game. Trying to change that would be like Darkfall wanting a community of peace activists. You dance with who brought you.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
I love how people always get the math wrong while trying to figure this out. A huge portion of Blizzards "subscribers" don't pay monthly fees, they pay hourly.
*Sigh* The wonder of digital entertainment is that costs do not scale that way. Each new customer represents very little in actual costs, so once you hit the break-even point it's (mostly) all gold from there on in.
Actually no the average WoW players are generally helpful/casual players. The trolls you find on the forums are the minority.
You mean like the shit spewing trolls on this site, that keep jumping from game to game, yet try to convince eevryone they are the vocal majority.