World of Warcraft

I dont know where this money goes, but i'll tell you where I want this money to go:

My Pocket

thanks for reading.

They have 9 million subscribers, they're not the least bit worried about where you "think" the monies going, or if  "enough" of it goes into into expansions. PuhLease. They made a killing and are, of coarse, looking at future projects.

Basy

My mistake...I just thought you wanted to give me all sorts of gold....I dont know...maybe we can read a latenight story to each other....just sayin...

Couple things to keep in mind.

First, I think  WoW took something like 6 years to make.  That might be an exaggeration, but I don't think it's a real bad one.  And don't tell me when they announced it, because it was already a couple years in the making when they announced it.  How was Blizzard able to make WoW in the first place?  The answer is simple, Starcraft, Warcraft III, Diablo II etc.  The money they made off those games went into developing WoW.  So a large part of the money they make off of WoW now goes into developing Starcraft II and the as of yet unanamed MMO project Blizz is working on and so on.

Secondly, the money WoW is making is not quite as much as people think.  Quite a few of those 10 million subs are in Asia, where they have a licensing deal with The9.  I'm sure that Blizzard gets a nice chunk of change for the licensing, but I doubt it comes anywhere close to what Blizzard brings in in the US and EU markets despite the fact that there are more subs in Asia.  So be careful when claiming 10 million subs, it's only about 4.5 in the US and EU and I bet that's where most of the money comes from.

And don't just discount the costs of doing business either.  Blizzard has a lot more servers than your average game.  Along with that comes the software that runs on the servers, the buildings required to house the equipment, the maintenance/electricity/staff to support the server and so on and so forth.  Blizzard also has a much larger payroll than most development companies, it's not cheap to keep all those people employed.

Now, having said all that, I'm in no way trying to say that Blizzard isn't ranking it in.  They are.  But I can assure you that they are not simply lining their pockets with cash.  I'm sure that all the top brass live very comfortably financially, but aren't they worth every penny?  You get what you pay for and Blizzard has a long history of making great games.  They have taken the money from each game and used it to produce the next great game and each one has become a bit more ambitious then the last one.  Battle.net didn't just happen into existance, it was bought and paid for by all of us customers.  The hardware and software that allows WoW to function was bought and paid for by all of us.  In my opinion they have a done a pretty good job of spending the money they have brought in thus far,  I'm not gonna start questioning them now.

the money goes to the:

-electric bill (its a computer infested building)

-water bill (they need to shower )

-employee paychecks (yes, theyre not cheap bastards)

-advertising (9 million players means theyre good at this)

-wow movie (only a rumor though)

-me (yea dats wussup)

They arnt paying for 10million people...

That is their fantasy number used to atract more MMO noobs.

There servers cant even hold 3million....

They count by anyone who ever made an account as a subscription, so all those free trials that they give out like candy are their numbers.

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Originally posted by CDCosta
They arnt paying for 10million people...
 
That is their fantasy number used to atract more MMO noobs.
There servers cant even hold 3million....
They count by anyone who ever made an account as a subscription, so all those free trials that they give out like candy are their numbers.

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I think you're thinking of SOE here....

i would say it goes to the CEOs and HOEs....haha... but yeah i think the money goes to research and development ...

If you think about it, if the numbers of players continues to grow and the amount of time being played by each player continues to steady, then there's no reason for the company to spend millions of dollars fixing the game.

Its all about economics.... so that 9 mil is paying for a lambo, maybe a 7 series, and possibly a McClaren...

A lot of the money they make is probably sucked up by Blizzards owners, Activision and Vivendi. Thats why I don't believe in this "the mer