ActiBlizzard making more money than ever from Wow?

[Tanro]

I've literally never bought anything from the blizz store, and yes I have bought realm transfers. But only once, and only after years of being tied to a pretty bad realm.

I might buy the digital deluxe edition this time around just because Raven Lord is my default ground mount on all characters, would like to get the flying version...

[Zuben]

Good for them to make money even with the halved sub rate. I was pondering how they can afford to keep expanding their team as sub numbers keep dropping, it never occurred to me the optional side-deals were so profitable. I bought a race change for my main when it was on a -50% sale, otherwise I've only paid for pre-paid cards, subscription and expansions.

[Deleted]

it's a shame, but from now on, most money will be made on the in-game store, on a lot of games.

That's why they probably figured it doesn't matter that much if people quit over a 1-year content drought. Doesn't matter when revenues are still up because people buy helmets, pets, mounts and freaking level 90 characters. People buying this stuff actually give Blizzard a reason not to produce new content for a long time.

[dools]

That's why they probably figured it doesn't matter that much if people quit over a 1-year content drought. Doesn't matter when revenues are still up because people buy helmets, pets, mounts and freaking level 90 characters. People buying this stuff actually give Blizzard a reason not to produce new content for a long time.

Well not new content that requires a lot of effort anyway. Making pet/mount store items would be a day or two of a graphics artist, modeler and riggers time and would provide a much larger return on investment.

[alucardtnuoc]

Tons of people are transferring to new guilds in preparation for mythic raiding.

[Noctifer616]

Preorders, son.

They got like 1 million copies of WoD paid for in advance at 60-80 USD a pop.

So 6.8 million subs (6.8 * 15$/mon * 4/monts) is 408 million. Add (lets say) 1 million WoD preorders (We'll say $65/each if every 4th person bought a deluxe, which is probably on the high side.) that's an extra 65 mill, then round it out with microtransactions via account services (which has a bit of overhead) and transactions on the ingame store (which has a near-0 overhead) a guesstimate would say roughly another 50 million (based on this research which suggests blizzard made roughly 200 million in mt's over the course of 2013.)

408 + 65 + 50

523 million.

In Q2 WoW revenue was 195 million. Your math is beyond wrong.

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That's why they probably figured it doesn't matter that much if people quit over a 1-year content drought. Doesn't matter when revenues are still up because people buy helmets, pets, mounts and freaking level 90 characters. People buying this stuff actually give Blizzard a reason not to produce new content for a long time.

WoW revenue was actually down. It's 195 million in Q2 down from 201 million in Q1.

[Vankrys]

It's also really hard to compete with WoW's 10+ years of content and polish, especially on a much smaller budget. Wildstar tried to compete and failed miserably in the polish department.

why compete, it's not highlander "there can be only one"

[MyCelar]

This effectively means that the Wow playerbase are paying more money for the game at this time than they ever have done in the past. Considering the fact that the actual sub fee has never gone up does this mean that this extra income is from being taken by the extra services and the online store?

How do people feel about this?

Is everyone happy to pay more for Wow now than in the past?
.

I'm not, and I'm sure that everyone who does pay more now than in the past don't care, else they wouldn't spend money on pets and mounts?

[Vankrys]

I'm not, and I'm sure that everyone who does pay more now than in the past don't care, else they wouldn't spend money on pets and mounts?

pets and mounts are fine, those are cosmetic additions, if people are willing to pay good money for them, that's their prerogative.
in game services however, like server transfer is not fine. Sometimes, you have to change server if you want to progress because your server is beyond dead. And more than often, you'd want to bring all your characters with you. That blizzard profit from this is not fine for me, server transfer should be either free (with a cooldown time) or cost a fraction of what it cost (about $1-2 per character, not more)