Buddy asking why we need to pay $40.00 for WoW;BC and NOT free ?

[Seelenlos]

WoW ya guys/gals just dont get I guess...... My whole point is not that anyone cant afford the measily $15.00 per monthly fee of course we all can, it is just asking why is it that much per month, who came up with that fee plan ? The marketing department did because they know that is the limit of what people will play. But do the frigging math, at $15.00 per month times 7 Million subscribers that is approx $105 Million each month they collect from us, x 12months that is over $1 Billion in a single year

No way in cold hell the main game, the expansion, plus all the monthly maintance, cost's to run the game, servers, pay employees, taxes, costs anywhere even close to $1 Billion dollars, not even 20% of that. Blizzard will never release how much the cost's of the game are to run WoW, because they would be scared to death for people to really know how much they are really making, and how much this game is to run. But movies budgets are freely open to the public, or what a sports star makes per year, or a pop star and what they charge for concert tour's and how much they take home is easy to find

My point again is that it just does not need to charge us $15.00, they could easily still make a boat load of cash and still pay for the whole behind the scenes stuff for like $5.00 per month, because if every new game to come out soon starts charging us $15.00 per month to play Hellgate;London this will get out of hand soon, and actually back fire on these greedy businesses

Boy i sure would like to see the source of your information. As has been pointed out by others here, just because there are around 8 million people playing the game that does not equal 15$ times 8 million. Different countires have different billing systems, they don't all use the dollar, shocking i know. Even if you go off the 2 million or so in the states that play it does not equal 15$ times 2 million because not everyone pays that much!

If you have some evidence to what your buddy is saying about cost and the price being charged, post it. You do not know what it cost to run all the systems, pay the devs, pay the investors/owners/whoever else. Right now all i hear is you stating an opinion based on little fact.

 

[CodeX]

Okay Zorachus, lets put an end to this silly argument right now. Pretend that you invent some amazing invention called a widget. Everyone wants one of these widgets because they are so cool. You do some market analysis and determine that at least 7 million people will buy this widget at $15 each. You know that if you go up to $30 dollars each fewer people will buy the widgets. Using standard economic principles you have determine that you will make the most money selling your widgets at $15 each. Now, answer honestly, would you:

A: give your widgets away for free
B: sell your widgets for $5 each
C: sell your widgets for $15 each

Remember, they are your widgets, you invented them and you create each one of them, you are free to sell them at whatever price point you choose. This is because you live in the United States, where we have a free market economy.

 

[MovieMan80]

There are many more fingers that get into the pie when you're dealing with a retail release instead of a web only update. The company that stamps the CD's and makes the boxes will get their cut, the shipping company that distributes the expansion to all the little gaming stores will get their cut. The gaming stores themselves will get a cut.

So after you pay all the people who aren't blizzard you have Blizzards share. This remaining portion is to cover not only development costs for all the new content, but also all the advertising that was done for the game. Oh yes, those Office Space ads you see on tv weren't put there for free.

Then Blizzard also needs to get compensated for all the testing that went into the product. Beta testers may be playing the expansion for free and finding bugs, but there's significant development time put into verifying that every bug reported is actually a bug and if it is then to fix it. Blizzard also has it's own internal test team that they were paying to test the content before they opened it up to all the beta testers.

I'm not justifying $40 as the correct price, I'm just proving that $5 is the wrong price.

 

[FoxhoundOp]

Blizzard is offering you a service for $15 a month. If you don't think it's worth $15 a month, don't pay it. Simple.

 

[uzor]

Blizzard is offering you a service for $15 a month. If you don't think it's worth $15 a month, don't pay it. Simple.

See, that's the thing, though - It isn't. Or at least they are trying to sell it as BOTH a product AND a service. If this were a TRUE service, we wouldn't have to pay $60 up front in addition to the $15/mo - just the monthly. That I would be fine with. Alternately, if they charge me $60 a pop for the "game", I don't think they should be charging $15/mo for access to it - $5 TOPS maybe. If they charged us one or the other, we wouldn't have a problem with it. The thing is that they are doing BOTH, and for whatever reason all the sheeple are just blindly saying "Ok, whatever you say" and taking it.

Whenever someone calls them on their double dipping they just get flamed into oblivion by all the !!!!!!s. Something stinks in the games industry, and it is getting worse.

 

[CodeX]

See, that's the thing, though - It isn't. Or at least they are trying to sell it as BOTH a product AND a service. If this were a TRUE service, we wouldn't have to pay $60 up front in addition to the $15/mo - just the monthly. That I would be fine with. Alternately, if they charge me $60 a pop for the "game", I don't think they should be charging $15/mo for access to it - $5 TOPS maybe. If they charged us one or the other, we wouldn't have a problem with it. The thing is that they are doing BOTH, and for whatever reason all the sheeple are just blindly saying "Ok, whatever you say" and taking it.

Whenever someone calls them on their double dipping they just get flamed into oblivion by all the !!!!!!s. Something stinks in the games industry, and it is getting worse.

It's simply not for you to decide, no one gives a rats ass what you think, its entirely up to blizzard corporation to decide what to charge for their product, and they have. End of discussion. If you don't like it don't buy it.

 

[uzor]

It's simply not for you to decide, no one gives a rats ass what you think, its entirely up to blizzard corporation to decide what to charge for their product, and they have. End of discussion. If you don't like it don't buy it.

I didn't. And I will continue to not support this business model. As insignificant as it it, that is the only definitive method I have of voicing my opinion. I was just trying to explain a little the argument/reasoning behind OP's Friend's questions and issues. Simple as that.

 

[Banyan]

Well unfortunetly this monthly fee thing looks to be a trend of the future we cant escape ?

Now the big hyped up FPS first person shooter RPG from the former Blizzard/Diablo2 team they created named "Helllgate;London" will charge a monthly fee;
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/45282

fuck i held out so much hope for that game. looks like i'll be passing it up now. i'll never pay a sub for an instanced game.

 

[Vorret]

So basicly... all companies making profits are bad....
are you from Cuba or some communist country ? (or socialist whatever you want to call it)

So if I buy a car for 20,000$ I shouldn't have to pay for maintenance, right? That should be free!
What about gas?

Banks are ripping us off too, wal-mart, they're making huge profits.
What's your point? You have no good arguments at all, you keep repeating yourself over and over again with you 105 millions a month (which is just a random # you created because it's far lower than that)

Everyone charges a fee, everyone wants PROFITS.
Maybe at your job, or no your friend's job, he should cut is salary so at the end of the year he pays all his bills and nothing else, no money put in his bank account cause hey, he can still make a good living !

 

[jgoewert]

Blizzard probably could drop their monthly rate to $5 and not do too bad. Actually, they would as I'm sure that the cost of bandwidth alone would eat up most of that. But since you and I don't have a detailed spreadsheet on what is allocated where, it's a mute point.

Blizzard is a publicly traded company. Their goal isn't good will and happiness. Their job is to make money. Make their shareholders money. Make their employees money. If they dropped their income by 2/3rds. There would be hell and SEC lawsuits flying out faster than a pissed off murloc.

 

[uzor]

So basicly... all companies making profits are bad....
are you from Cuba or some communist country ? (or socialist whatever you want to call it)

So if I buy a car for 20,000$ I shouldn't have to pay for maintenance, right? That should be free!
What about gas?

Banks are ripping us off too, wal-mart, they're making huge profits.
What's your point? You have no good arguments at all, you keep repeating yourself over and over again with you 105 millions a month (which is just a random # you created because it's far lower than that)

Everyone charges a fee, everyone wants PROFITS.
Maybe at your job, or no your friend's job, he should cut is salary so at the end of the year he pays all his bills and nothing else, no money put in his bank account cause hey, he can still make a good living !

Thank you for proving my point.

 

[Seelenlos]

I didn't. And I will continue to not support this business model. As insignificant as it it, that is the only definitive method I have of voicing my opinion. I was just trying to explain a little the argument/reasoning behind OP's Friend's questions and issues. Simple as that.

Nothing wrong with that, however people still question such opinions because there doesn't seem to be anything to back up your statement that 50 dollars or a monthly fee will cover the expenses of the game other than your feelings.

 

[uzor]

Nothing wrong with that, however people still question such opinions because there doesn't seem to be anything to back up your statement that 50 dollars or a monthly fee will cover the expenses of the game other than your feelings.

Call me a conspiracy theorist if you choose, but the reason there is nothing to back up my claims on cost is because NO MMO developer has ever publicly shown their books - their actual costs. Why do you think that is?

 

[CodeX]

Call me a conspiracy theorist if you choose, but the reason there is nothing to back up my claims on cost is because NO MMO developer has ever publicly shown their books - their actual costs. Why do you think that is?

Because they don't have to, they have no reason to. It isn't yours or anyone elses business but their own. Go live in China for christ sake. In the US individuals and corporations have the right to profit as much as they can, its called capitolism, and it works pretty damn well. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

 

[MrFace]

Shit...maybe I shouldn't pay my electric, gas, or water bill.....the companies are MAKING MONEY OFF OF ME! I AM A SHEEP! ONLY SHEEPS PAY FOR SERVICES!!!

 

[Draax]

I really wish more people would take a course in economics. Capitalism has it faults, just like any other system. You can see these faults in the ever widening gap between the rich and everyone else. The reason that the gap is continuing to widen, is due to the fact that no capitalist country has a truly free market. In a real free market the prices for products are determined by the labor that went it their creation, and not the highest price point a company can set, and still sell their product.

 

[MrFace]

See, that's the thing, though - It isn't. Or at least they are trying to sell it as BOTH a product AND a service. If this were a TRUE service, we wouldn't have to pay $60 up front in addition to the $15/mo - just the monthly. That I would be fine with. Alternately, if they charge me $60 a pop for the "game", I don't think they should be charging $15/mo for access to it - $5 TOPS maybe. If they charged us one or the other, we wouldn't have a problem with it. The thing is that they are doing BOTH, and for whatever reason all the sheeple are just blindly saying "Ok, whatever you say" and taking it.

Whenever someone calls them on their double dipping they just get flamed into oblivion by all the !!!!!!s. Something stinks in the games industry, and it is getting worse.

I don't remember paying $60 for the game when it game out. The game is also $20 from the store...with a free month of service.

Get your facts straight before you try to mouth off.

 

[MrFace]

I really wish more people would take a course in economics. Capitalism has it faults, just like any other system. You can see these faults in the ever widening gap between the rich and everyone else. The reason that the gap is continuing to widen, is due to the fact that no capitalist country has a truly free market. In a real free market the prices for products are determined by the labor that went it their creation, and not the highest price point a company can set, and still sell their product.

More people need a course in common sense.

 

[CodeX]

I really wish more people would take a course in economics.

I have, macro and micro in college, big deal...

Capitalism has it faults, just like any other system.

I never said it didn't. It is what we have and it works pretty well.

You can see these faults in the ever widening gap between the rich and everyone else. The reason that the gap is continuing to widen, is due to the fact that no capitalist country has a truly free market.

The reason the gap is widening is due to our crappy education system and our priorities as a society, but thats a topic for another thread.

In a real free market the prices for products are determined by the labor that went it their creation, and not the highest price point a company can set, and still sell their product.

The value of labor is subjective. Doctors make 1/10 of what some movie and sports stars make, but who's labor is actually worth more? As a country would we be worse off if we lost all of our doctors or all of our movie stars? (that is a loaded question and I am not implying either answer)

 

[Vildayyan2003]

Ok, my good Buddy who got into WoW kicking and screaming, we had to buy the game for him for Christmas and the monthly pass, because he is philosophically against the principal of paying a monthly fee for a game. He thinks that a company like Blizzard that gets $105 Million per each month off us, and is most likely taking home $30-$50 Million themselves each month after paying taxes, maintenance, employees, etc...... SHould not charge so much for an expansion in his mind we have already paid for, with our monthly fees.

Please explain in your opinion why a game like WoW charges $15.00 each month, my Buddy feels, that at $4.99 would still be more than enough to handle the game cost's. He just disagrees altogether with being forced to pay each month for game, he just sees it as a sorry trend the sheep will not question, and just go ahead and dish out their little monthly payments, while the game maker's reap in Billion's, not just Million's. Since release Blizzard has collected close to $2Billion total from one single game they created = WoW !!!!!!

A game like WoW to him is the classic crack dealer on the side of the street, people are addicting and they will pay with no question's. Or my Buddy wouldnt mind the monthly fee at all, only if the original game was like $9.99 not $60.00, because they earn most their money off the fees not the main game sales ? So the expansion should be like $5.00 at most, x 7million subcribers that is still $35 Million they would get for it, and the monthly fees will more than make up for it, like I am sure they already have by now.

Opinion's

You really think they are making 30 million a month in pure profit? I highly doubt it. Just think about the amount of insane bandwidth they are paying for plus the hundreds and even thousands of servers Blizzard has to pay for, maintain, pay for the space to house them. The costs to keep a huge MMO like WoW running and growing are simply mind boggling. They are making a huge profit but I doubt its 30 million a month.

 

[mket]

My $.02

First, blizzard is part of a large conglomerate, Vivendi Universal S.A. Moneys coming from your monthly and package fees help finance a large operation paying salaries and funding research. The CEO of Vivendi, Mr. Jean-Rene' Fourtou' 2005 salary and bonus was $US 6,448,290. http://www.vivendi.com/corp/en/files/20060711_Annual_Report_20-F.php - Compensation of Directors and Officers.

VUG s earnings from operations were $US14,235,189.44 in Q1'05. However, losses the prior year were $US 62,109,135.37 !
http://www.vivendi.com/corp/en/files/20050519_financial_report%20Q1_2005.pdf

There are literally hundreds of research projects going on at all times. Most completely unrelated to WoW. The world of money is not focused on such a small diameter as Wow. The purpose is to not only operate the day-to-day activities but to fund future ventures and to insure the company’s growth and longevity. Wow will die someday.
Blizzard and Vivendi I’m sure plan to be around long after.

Take if you will two examples, professional sports athletes and pharmaceutical companies. Does any single athlete actually require upwards of 40 million a year? No. They are future-proofing themselves for when the bones go brittle. Does the cost of ingredients for a cholesterol lowing drug, or Viagra actually cost what you pay for it? No. The company is doing two things, recovering research costs and preparing for future research.

So, no, no way in hell does it cost anywhere near the combined monthly fee to actually operate several hundred servers. Anyone that has read facials of any large company knows the multitude of operating costs. Ultimately, they want to build products for you and me to buy today and tomorrow and to make money for the stockholders. You may not be one today, but someday you may wish to.

Ok, more like a buck than $.02 and no, I dont work for anything related to Blizzard nor am I in marketing.

 

[kelbear]

I really wish more people would take a course in economics. Capitalism has it faults, just like any other system. You can see these faults in the ever widening gap between the rich and everyone else. The reason that the gap is continuing to widen, is due to the fact that no capitalist country has a truly free market. In a real free market the prices for products are determined by the labor that went it their creation, and not the highest price point a company can set, and still sell their product.

Majored in economics. The problem with true laissez faire capitalism is that large amounts of market power precludes the benefits wrought by competition due to the anti-competitive powers it can grant, it allows for the large companies to destroy competitors offering higher quality at lower price. A large company has a larger economy of scale and can temporarily undercut the competing startup in a price war that only they will survive. This is nice for consumers at first but the result is that the company that would benefit the consumer was destroyed and the survivor is free to do as they please again. In an ideal world, another competitor would step in to reap the potential market profit that prompted the first competitor, but there are barriers to entry that would preclude this. Note also that market power can be leveraged horizontally by acquiring exclusive agreements with suppliers, lock-in with current users, yadda yadda.

Capitalism is not without it's faults either. The idea that capitalism will solve everythiing is too idealistic. For example, one of the more commonly known benefits of capitalism is that it incites each person to work their hardest on an individual scale rather than riding on the success of the group and becoming deadweight. However, the implication of rewarding the most productive worker is that the less productive workers will receive less. To be clear, capitalism inherently requires that someone else loses for someone else to be the winner.

South Park actually put this plainly when explaining why Kyle's dad could afford to live in a nice house while kenny's dad lives poor. There are Gods and Clods. The rich need poor people to pump their gas and flip their burgers. To have a wealthy class there needs to be a series of successively poorer classes. (Note that wealthy is always a relative term.) Though this system is good because it rewards merit, it also lacks failsafes to prevent the accelerating gap between the successful and well, losers. There is no mechanism in truly free market capitalism to provide for the losers that want to get a shot at joining the winners (for example, basic education is something necessary to do so, but does not come free, and is not provided by the free market). The elderly and infirm simply die since there are no provisions for their survival in the free market. For example, a middle class family with no history of debt can have a loved one struck with an expensive disease, now they're hand to mouth or sunk in debt. No mechanism for recovery means that an otherwise productive citizen is now screwed.

Truly free markets aren't a good thing. But neither is communism/socialism. They're both just theoretical philosophies regarding the system and in reality, they're rarely applied and are primarily conceptual extremes. But extremes in economics often suffer from diminishing returns, and basic economics would point towards a solution in between where the two functions meet rather than venturing down one or the other.
---------------------------

(Bringing it back on topic) Companies don't price at the highest price they can set while stilling selling the product. They set it at the price that yields the highest profits(since lowering costs will generate more sales to yield a higher profit). This price is determined when they adjust their supply curve to meet the market demand curve that shows the resulting change in quantity demanded from a change in price. But see, that market demand curve is how they set their pricing.

To make that a bit more clear, the market demand curve is what the public is willing to pay. Willing to pay.

A perfectly competitive market has zero profit and you'd only pay what it cost to produce, because if you charged more than this, a competitor could enter the market could sell cheaper and take away your sales. This continues until no profit is left and everyone is just selling at their break-even point. However, perfectly competitive markets are rare, and game development is definitely not one of these cases. It takes millions and millions of dollars to not only produce a AAA game, it must also be published and advertised so that people will know about it and be able to buy it. Due to such barriers to entry, you won't find perfect competition since the underselling competitor can't step in. But considering that single purchase games have remained more or less around 50-60 dollars over all this time while game development costs have flown up into the multi-million range, it would appear that the game market is already very competitive.

 

[MrHuk]

TBC is worth paying for, it really is an awesome expansion. Every City and Zone is beautifully designed and you'll be in awe the first times you visit them.

Now if only it was possible to balance the game for PvP and PvE, we can only dream.

 

[Bordak]

For the record, the OP of this thread is the dupe account of the banned user Labrador.

 

[CodeX]

Majored in economics. The problem with true laissez faire capitalism is that large amounts of market power precludes the benefits wrought by competition due to the anti-competitive powers it can grant, it allows for the large companies to destroy competitors offering higher quality at lower price. A large company has a larger economy of scale and can temporarily undercut the competing startup in a price war that only they will survive. This is nice for consumers at first but the result is that the company that would benefit the consumer was destroyed and the survivor is free to do as they please again. In an ideal world, another competitor would step in to reap the potential market profit that prompted the first competitor, but there are barriers to entry that would preclude this. Note also that market power can be leveraged horizontally by acquiring exclusive agreements with suppliers, lock-in with current users, yadda yadda.

Capitalism is not without it's faults either. The idea that capitalism will solve everythiing is too idealistic. For example, one of the more commonly known benefits of capitalism is that it incites each person to work their hardest on an individual scale rather than riding on the success of the group and becoming deadweight. However, the implication of rewarding the most productive worker is that the less productive workers will receive less. To be clear, capitalism inherently requires that someone else loses for someone else to be the winner.

South Park actually put this plainly when explaining why Kyle's dad could afford to live in a nice house while kenny's dad lives poor. There are Gods and Clods. The rich need poor people to pump their gas and flip their burgers. To have a wealthy class there needs to be a series of successively poorer classes. (Note that wealthy is always a relative term.) Though this system is good because it rewards merit, it also lacks failsafes to prevent the accelerating gap between the successful and well, losers. There is no mechanism in truly free market capitalism to provide for the losers that want to get a shot at joining the winners (for example, basic education is something necessary to do so, but does not come free, and is not provided by the free market). The elderly and infirm simply die since there are no provisions for their survival in the free market. For example, a middle class family with no history of debt can have a loved one struck with an expensive disease, now they're hand to mouth or sunk in debt. No mechanism for recovery means that an otherwise productive citizen is now screwed.

Truly free markets aren't a good thing. But neither is communism/socialism. They're both just theoretical philosophies regarding the system and in reality, they're rarely applied and are primarily conceptual extremes. But extremes in economics often suffer from diminishing returns, and basic economics would point towards a solution in between where the two functions meet rather than venturing down one or the other.
---------------------------

(Bringing it back on topic) Companies don't price at the highest price they can set while stilling selling the product. They set it at the price that yields the highest profits(since lowering costs will generate more sales to yield a higher profit). This price is determined when they adjust their supply curve to meet the market demand curve that shows the resulting change in quantity demanded from a change in price. But see, that market demand curve is how they set their pricing.

To make that a bit more clear, the market demand curve is what the public is willing to pay. Willing to pay.

A perfectly competitive market has zero profit and you'd only pay what it cost to produce, because if you charged more than this, a competitor could enter the market could sell cheaper and take away your sales. This continues until no profit is left and everyone is just selling at their break-even point. However, perfectly competitive markets are rare, and game development is definitely not one of these cases. It takes millions and millions of dollars to not only produce a AAA game, it must also be published and advertised so that people will know about it and be able to buy it. Due to such barriers to entry, you won't find perfect competition since the underselling competitor can't step in.

+1

But considering that single purchase games have remained more or less around 50-60 dollars over all this time while game development costs have flown up into the multi-million range, it would appear that the game market is already very competitive.

or, as Sony is finding out right now, people aren't willing to pay much more for games than they are already.

 

[Zorachus]

See, that's the thing, though - It isn't. Or at least they are trying to sell it as BOTH a product AND a service. If this were a TRUE service, we wouldn't have to pay $60 up front in addition to the $15/mo - just the monthly. That I would be fine with. Alternately, if they charge me $60 a pop for the "game", I don't think they should be charging $15/mo for access to it - $5 TOPS maybe. If they charged us one or the other, we wouldn't have a problem with it. The thing is that they are doing BOTH, and for whatever reason all the sheeple are just blindly saying "Ok, whatever you say" and taking it.

Whenever someone calls them on their double dipping they just get flamed into oblivion by all the !!!!!!s. Something stinks in the games industry, and it is getting worse.

WoW thank's,
I thought I was going crazy trying to explain my Brother's stance on the game, and that it is not the easy $15.00 he doesnt want to pay, just that in his 20yrs of computer gaming he has NEVER paid for play, and doesnt want to, and hopes it is not the new trend the sheep just say "Hey is is the way all game are now, and just accept it"

With World, he says ya dont even OWN the actual game, your renting it. I mean if ya go out to just buy the box and play the game ya cant, you have to subscribe to be able to play. WHy not sell just a single player version of WoW, with LAN CoOp, and no monthly fee ? He doesnt care about 10,000 players on a server, he says who the frak cares about those other players, ya cant talk to 10,000 people on a server all at once anyway's

 

[dotK]

WoW thank's,
I thought I was going crazy trying to explain my Brother's stance on the game, and that it is not the easy $15.00 he doesnt want to pay, just that in his 20yrs of computer gaming he has NEVER paid for play, and doesnt want to, and hopes it is not the new trend the sheep just say "Hey is is the way all game are now, and just accept it"

With World, he says ya dont even OWN the actual game, your renting it. I mean if ya go out to just buy the box and play the game ya cant, you have to subscribe to be able to play. WHy not sell just a single player version of WoW, with LAN CoOp, and no monthly fee ? He doesnt care about 10,000 players on a server, he says who the frak cares about those other players, ya cant talk to 10,000 people on a server all at once anyway's

MMORPGs are not for you or your "friend." Both of you just don't get it.

 

[Digital Cro-Magnon]

Here are some of my unfiltered through OP thoughts:

I understand your points. Yuo feel that $15 is worth it to you. That is totally fine with me. Also, if Blizzard charges 30 bucks a month and nets (not profits) around $2 Billion/year that's ok, they're a company to make a profit, not a charity. They will charge what the market will bear and apparently MMO's found the "sweet spot" of $15/month. All I am saying is that I personally don't want to pay (a subscription) to play. That's how I have always played computer games and I like it that way. Although, it looks like the future may be: Pay to Play or don't Play, for majority of games. If that is the case, I will have a tough decision. Pay the bucks, or sell my gaming computer, and start living in the real world

FYI, here are some informative links about WOW:

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/worldofwarcraft/news.html?sid=6161839

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=21182

 

[Staples]

I believe even if they did charge you $5 a month, they probably still would be able to continue development on it however their profit margins would be very small. It in no way cost them anywhere near $15 a month to keep the game running and continued development. Sure it costs something but nothing near $15 a month per account. I will agree with your buddy that much of that cost is just profit.

 

[kelbear]

Oh, and another thing to consider. I don't like WoW either. I don't pay the fee.

And yet, I'm not up in arms about not liking WoW.

 

[johnked24]

Only Blizzard knows how much it costs to maintain their servers. Like I said earlier, these aren't cheap little servers run by your high school friends for CS or BF. These servers have to simulate a massive, persistent world that thousands of players can play simultaneously 24 hours a day.

The sheer landmass of Wow is enormous, if you take out all of the instances of Wow your still left with two continents that would take hours to walk across. The first expansion is set to double that land mass.

Each server also has to keep track of millions of items and equipment for tens of thousands of player. They have to reliably backup that information and keep track of it so if a dispute comes up they can look it up later. They have to hire people to maintain those servers and can repair them 24 hours a day, a team to oversee the storage of all that information, a team to look through logs of every transaction that thousands of people make every second, 24 hours a day should a dispute arise.

They also have to hire live in game customer representatives for each server that can handle problems 24 hours a day. These are live cm's that roam in game to help people out with problems.

Wow also gave 2 years of free content and patch updates with thousands of items, hundreds of quests, including Maraudon (5 man instance), Dire Maul (5 man instance), Blackwing Lair (40 man instance, tier 2 loot), An'Qhiraj (40 man instance, tier 2.5 loot), Naxxaramus (40 man instance, tier 3 loot), Warsong Gulch (10v10 battleground), Alterac Valley (40v40 battleground), Arathi Basin (15v15 battleground). Most other games would've added those in as expansion packs, but Wow gave them out for free as part of the monthly subscription.

 

[Neurofreeze]

If you bought WoW and thought that was a justified price, then the price for TBC is a no brainer because there is more content packed in Burning Crusade in that one continent (plus Kharazan and Caverns of Time in the mainland) than there is in the entire continents of Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms.

Also, on the monthly fee:

There are hundreds of GMs on each of the continents that have WoW working full time jobs for Blizzard. Their only job is to put up with the insanely stupid crap that players do, more or less. That's right, Blizzard hired hundreds and hundreds of employees around the globe because there are just that many stupid people playing WoW that needs babysitting. There is a quota they need to fill daily. The quota is big enough that they pretty much cannot slack off much. It is definitely not like my office job where I have time to lurk and troll forums. My friend has been a GM for the past year and doesn't even have that much time to chat on IM, let alone browse the web. It is a pretty good job. It provides quite a few benefits. They even get a Christmas bonus. All these people need to be paid. So do the developers and other employees (such as the network engineers). Ever wrote a ticket about someone camping you? Yeah, I'm talking about you buddy. You just justified paying your monthly fee.

Back beginning of last year, when Blizzard started upgrading N. American realms, they ordered 1500 Opteron servers. Not 50, not 500, but 1500. That was for N. America alone, and that was only their first purchase for N. America last year. Even with all these new servers put into place, some places can still get overloaded. Generally between 9pm and 10pm I still get queues for my realm and the last Alliance raid on Orgrimmar actually crashed the server. Our realm was one of the latest to be upgraded and thus on the newest hardware.

All that hardware was not going to be paid from the initial box purchases.

 

[Zorachus]

but Wow gave them out for free as part of the monthly subscription.

That is a funny sentence there They gave it out FREE, but it is part of the monthly fee I paid them already ? SO again how is it free to me, after paying them like $150 worth of monthly fees over a year times 7 million players equal's approx $1 Billion dollars, I am sure that helped creat those instance and new maps, while also being more than enough to buy new computers, play the cleaning lady, file for txes, run a war in small third world country, and still maybe have enougn to drive home in a Yugo

 

[johnked24]

That is a funny sentence there They gave it out FREE, but it is part of the monthly fee I paid them already ? SO again how is it free to me, after paying them like $150 worth of monthly fees over a year times 7 million players equal's approx $1 Billion dollars, I am sure that helped creat those instance and new maps, while also being more than enough to buy new computers, play the cleaning lady, file for txes, run a war in small third world country, and still maybe have enougn to drive home in a Yugo

It's a matter of semantics, free in that they could've released that content in an expansion pack for $30, but gave it out for free instead.

Another thing to consider, because these servers are secure I dont have to worry about little kiddie script hackers cheating in the game ruining my experience. I'd pay $15 just to weed them out, there are some exploits in the game but nothing like the wallhacking, aimbotting cheaters that use to infest CS.

 

[Nidhogg]

Blizzard is a company. Companies exist to make money. They can and will charge what people will pay.

they want to charge atleast enuff to cover costs, and then anything after that is profit.

if they charge $10 a month they wouldnt make as much money, if they charged $20 a month they probably think less people would play and they wouldnt make as much money.

the reason they charge $15 a month is because they belive thats the best price to maximize profits.

it wont stay $15 forever, every few years this 'magic' number goes up for various reasons.

 

[AshTrai]

I agree, the monthly fee's are way to expensive, besides why don't they let us play free after purchasing the game. I wouldn't mind paying about $10 additional fees but after that it should be 100% no hassle + no cost.

 

[CodeX]

I think I see what your "friend" is saying. He doesn't want to have to pay for a game more than once. Fine, but consider this. The longest I have played any non-online game was about 180 hours in Oblivion. That is WAY more than most single player games, most give you around 20 hours of entertainment on average. I play WoW and haven't even reached lvl 60 yet on my main, I am at lvl 57 right now. I have already put in an astonishing 650 hours into the game. MANY people who play the game are over 1000 hours of in game time. So, take an average single player game at 50 bucks for 20 hours of entertainment. You get 2.5 dollars per hour. Now, take WoW, which I paid 30 bucks for plus 15 a month for 6 months and you get 120 dollars for 650 hours of entertainment. This gives you 18 cents per hour of entertainment.. $2.50 per hour for any normal singler player game versus $0.18 per hour for WoW. I can't make it any clearer than that.

Even if you calculate this for Oblivion you still come up with $0.33 per hour, almost double the price of WoW

 

[dotK]

I agree, the monthly fee's are way to expensive, besides why don't they let us play free after purchasing the game. I wouldn't mind paying about $10 additional fees but after that it should be 100% no hassle + no cost.

And that's why there are games like Guild Wars.

 

[Seelenlos]

That is a funny sentence there They gave it out FREE, but it is part of the monthly fee I paid them already ? SO again how is it free to me, after paying them like $150 worth of monthly fees over a year times 7 million players equal's approx $1 Billion dollars, I am sure that helped creat those instance and new maps, while also being more than enough to buy new computers, play the cleaning lady, file for txes, run a war in small third world country, and still maybe have enougn to drive home in a Yugo

Since you missed it the first time someone posted it here it is again.
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/worldofwarcraft/news.html?sid=6161839

"And life's pretty rosy for WOW publisher Vivendi Games, too. For the three months ending September 30, its profits were 24 million euros ($31 million) compared with 11 million euros ($14 million) for the same three months in 2005. In the first nine months of its current fiscal year, the company boasted an even bigger spike in earnings: 86 million euros ($110 million) compared to 30 million euros ($38 million)--a 186.7 percent increase."

 

[HaMMerHeD]

That is a funny sentence there They gave it out FREE, but it is part of the monthly fee I paid them already ? SO again how is it free to me, after paying them like $150 worth of monthly fees over a year times 7 million players equal's approx $1 Billion dollars, I am sure that helped creat those instance and new maps, while also being more than enough to buy new computers, play the cleaning lady, file for txes, run a war in small third world country, and still maybe have enougn to drive home in a Yugo

Quit your crying about it and quit playing the fucking game if it bothers you so damned much. Jeebus.