(in response to Muz's post about paying by the hour) WoW in China does that actually. Personally I would hate it because it would stress me out because I would always have to spend the time doing something "useful" instead of just chilling and having fun
Edited by Phredreeke
- Ok, you must admit that was the most creative cussing this site have ever seen -
How is Valve in business then? Steam is fairly big too (not that big average is about 2 million), and it makes it money from selling titles (and royalties from other games for using the Steam system). I would rather follow this model to be quite frank (NPC or spells do not appeal to me but then again I am not an RPG fan anyway, much happier playing LFD2 or Serious Sam HD ).
I also remember WoW being on sale in PC World ages ago (that could of been a bundle + subscription though).
Put it this way I am sure they are taking a FAR larger than needed profit margin. You mean to tell me it costs them $165 million per annum to do that?
Anyway I am inadvertently hijacking this thread due my dislike of this payment model.
Steam is not an MMO, it's a content delivery platform
Originally Posted by ..::hagar::.. Put it this way I am sure they are taking a FAR larger than needed profit margin. You mean to tell me it costs them $165 million per annum to do that?
That is capitalism for you. Blizzard, as every other commercial game developer, is out to make as much money as humanly possible to please their investors.
- Ok, you must admit that was the most creative cussing this site have ever seen -
Originally Posted by Hayo According to my bro WoW is for nerds and you should play Guild wars all day long instead.
Couldn't agree more with your brother! WoW is rather brainless gameplay. Much like many mmorpgs but Guild Wars makes it so much more fun... brainless gameplay.
@ Phredreeke : yeah I know its a delivery system but I just making a point that companies can make profit even following the buy once model
On another note I also agree on games being dumbed down. Also modern games are so easy. A games not hard enough if you do not chuck the controller down on the floor hard .
Originally Posted by ..::hagar::.. Put it this way I am sure they are taking a FAR larger than needed profit margin. You mean to tell me it costs them $165 million per annum to do that?
WoW operates on 13,250 server blades, 75,000 CPU cores, and 112.5 terabytes of RAM. That's a lot of money spent just on keeping the servers turned on and keeping them cooled. On a patch day (content patch), the servers are pushing out nearly 5 petabytes of data. That's 5,000 terabytes of bandwidth in one day, each quarter of the year. Let's not even mention how much bandwidth is used on a normal day.
That's just for the servers. Worldwide, Blizzard employs 4,600 people. Their Cinematics department (aptly named, as they create all of the cinematics for Blizzard's games) is over 120 strong, with over half of them being artists. Each of their development teams--Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo--are made up of about 90 people (for a total of about 200). QA, handling localization and testing (amongst other things) has 250 people. Meanwhile, those customer support reps I keep mentioning? There are over 2,400 reps.
So, WoW does bring Blizzard some $165mil a month, but their profit margin isn't as large as you might think. Maintaining the WoW servers alone can easily cost tens of millions of dollars. Funding 4 projects (WoW, Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, a new MMO), isn't going to be cheap, either; Games nowadays can cost up to $60 million (over 2-3 years) to develop, so having 4 projects going at once is going to take it's toll. On top of that, each year Blizzard sets up BlizzCon, which they pay for all on their own (BlizzCon has a narrow profit margin).
I just made that post about WoW's revenue, so I won't go into too much detail with this, but:
WoW isn't easy. Leveling is easy, sure. But the raids? Not so easy. Most fights are tests of execution, and it's so easy to have every die if someone does something wrong. Especially true for the hard modes. Also, the PvP is actually pretty engaging too, especially at higher levels of play.
Originally Posted by PhizzyPhan69 That is capitalism for you. Blizzard, as every other commercial game developer, is out to make as much money as humanly possible to please their investors.
- Ok, you must admit that was the most creative cussing this site have ever seen -
WoW is only an addiction if you're prone to that sort of thing. I played the game from the beta, to the release. Then about a year ago I decided the game wasn't fun anymore and I just quit. Blaming Blizzard for people getting addicted is like blaming beer companies for the existance of alcoholics.
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Edited by Phredreeke
but then again I am not an RPG fan anyway, much happier playing LFD2 or Serious Sam HD ).
