WOW subscriptions model

[Deadite]

Did you know that WoW's weekly revenue from subscriptions ...is more than the complete yearly revenue of its closest competitor ?

How did you acquire the financial records of its closest competitors? I assume you must have them to make such an claim. You should give us some figures. Would be interesting to see a financial break down of all these companies. I eagerly await this information.


....signed The Internet

[kingriku]

Asians pay much less then NA/EU/etc. More then half of the "active subscribers" come from Asia. Blizzard used to declare over 1 billion in yearly sub revenue, but now they hide their sales numbers and sub numbers. The game is not doing as good as the fanboys wish it was.

Asia gets separate lockouts and better gear for 25 mans, because they want them to play and pay more... band aid solutions that will fuck up world first races.

You know Asia isn't counted in world first races, thats why they will say Asia first. I understand some HARDCORE asian guilds will play on servers that count for "World" First that play by everyone elses lockout/loot ilvl rules.

[Vankrys]

Reasoning: nothing beats a subscription model. For those dreaming of a free to play WoW.

Not just because something is expensive, that it's a must have.

Everyone find the right value for their enjoyment.
For some people, $15 a month is well worth the enjoyment they get out of it, for other, $15 a month a not worth the the enjoyment, thus choose to spend their money elsewhere.

What exactly was the point of the thread, that wow generate an indecent salary for bobby kotik? we already know that.

[Deleted]

How did you acquire the financial records of its closest competitors? I assume you must have them to make such an claim. You should give us some figures. Would be interesting to see a financial break down of all these companies. I eagerly await this information.


....signed The Internet

After about 10 seconds of a google search.

http://investor.ea.com/secfiling.cfm...-10&CIK=712515

Not sure if you can see the exact amount an MMOrpg is making, but I think it's safe to say that WoW is making a ton more then most mmorpgs. People say gw2 or swtor are the 2 closest to wow, yet would swtor have gone f2p if it was making the 2.3mil euros a week (estimate) that wow is making? doubtful.

PS: the weekly vs yearly thing was a little far-fetched.

[Deleted]

How did you acquire the financial records of its closest competitors? I assume you must have them to make such an claim. You should give us some figures. Would be interesting to see a financial break down of all these companies. I eagerly await this information.
....signed The Internet

If you look it "per week", wow would then have like 2-2.5 million subscribers per week. Lets say the competitor "Rift" for example has 500k subscribers. That would mean they will pay 500k x 12 x 13 $ = 7.2 million $ per year. WoW's numbers only "per week" would be 2.25 million subscribers x 15 $ = 33.75 million. Even if Rift would have 2 million subscribers, it still isnt enough to beat what wow generates in just one week.

[NightZero88]

GW2 didnt have subscription model from the get go because they knew the game isnt as good as wow and people would not buy game time after free month. The character movement, almost everything is just shit. It certainly isnt a game what you would expect from having been in development many years. What the GW2 really tells is there is really only a handful of skilled people in that industry.

You bring nothing to this discussion, please go away. You are welcome to not like GW2 but don't act for a second like what you're stating is anything other than your opinion. Many people greatly enjoy GW2.

[Deleted]

You bring nothing to this discussion, please go away. You are welcome to not like GW2 but don't act for a second like what you're stating is anything other than your opinion. Many people greatly enjoy GW2.

It is just my opinion, but it's clear that if they would have a good game enough - obviously it would be wise move to have subscription model, because they you could more easily hire better people and make the game even better.

[NightZero88]

It is just my opinion, but it's clear that if they would have a good game enough - obviously it would be wise move to have subscription model, because they you could more easily hire better people and make the game even better.

Or they realize you don't need a sub model to be successful and are not money hungry people. GW1 rivaled WoW and was sub less since day 1. Just because it didn't make as much money doesn't mean it wasn't as successful.

And can I live in this magical world you live in where you think the amount of money Blizz rakes in from WoW goes to hiring new/better people? Because that is just funny as all get out. You think they spend upwards of 105 MILLION a MONTH on server upkeep and salaries?

[Deleted]

Or they realize you don't need a sub model to be successful and are not money hungry people. GW1 rivaled WoW and was sub less since day 1. Just because it didn't make as much money doesn't mean it wasn't as successful.

Well if it has less players, it is then less successful right? I think it's delusional to call GW as good as WoW, especially if you look at past releases like initial wow, tbc and wotlk also this newest expansion isnt content wise bad. Also what is exactly bad about being money hungry? It just generates more jobs - for example better customer service.

[Deleted]

Asians pay much less then NA/EU/etc. More then half of the "active subscribers" come from Asia. Blizzard used to declare over 1 billion in yearly sub revenue, but now they hide their sales numbers and sub numbers. The game is not doing as good as the fanboys wish it was.

Asia gets separate lockouts and better gear for 25 mans, because they want them to play and pay more... band aid solutions that will fuck up world first races.

They pay less because the laws don't allow them to set up a subscription like for us. Learn to look up facts before you go spread bullshit on forums.

[BenBos]

Not just because something is expensive, that it's a must have.

Everyone find the right value for their enjoyment.
For some people, $15 a month is well worth the enjoyment they get out of it, for other, $15 a month a not worth the the enjoyment, thus choose to spend their money elsewhere.

What exactly was the point of the thread, that wow generate an indecent salary for bobby kotik? we already know that.

--- > the exact point of this thread is that the ONLY way to keep an mmorpg going in a decent way is to have a subscription based model.

I came to realise that in 2012...

In fact I was insulted by some other dude in here stating 'I didn't know anything about it".

Well dude: here is the performance of Zynga games: you know the ONE that DID enter the official stock trading at Nasdaq this year ... and that is responsible for all those 70, 80 , 90 million players hype in free to play games like Farmville etc ...

http://www.dailyfinance.com/quote/na...nc/znga/charts

Zynga dropped dead on that stock market with a whopping 800% downfall after enclosing their REAL $$$ performances in such "magnitude" free to play games like Farmville. Going from 15.91 dollars in Mar 2012 to ...2.35 today.

ALL 70 million Farmville players and some few dozen other "free to play" games included.

reason: these games underperform not by a factor of 10 or 20% but by a whopping 800% in expected revenue.

As it stands all these other "massively played free to play games" are mostly behind a curtain of untraceable money streams and belong to bigger coorporations, not even traceable on a stock market.

As it stands now, most of these groups are even beginning to include poker games, roulette games and other casino tricks to generate player numbers. We all know where that money comes from.


What more can one say... : free to play is just not valid for long term play.

Your games better have a constant money stream as a long term MMORPG, because F2P is the last resort before becoming extinct.

The attention span of F2P games is just a few more months till the next thing gets launched.

That's why it is important for Blizzard to promote the "CLUB" feeling. Not to get to player numbers but to be sure you get the money to even sustain content demand.

For those stating X or Y game has had enough content upgrades: sure, at launching times, but not after 6 months past the launching period.

---


That's the downfall of MMORPG's: they need constant upgrades to be played. Impossible to achieve this without a steady cash flow of subs.

[NightZero88]

Well if it has less players, it is then less successful right? I think it's delusional to call GW as good as WoW, especially if you look at past releases like initial wow, tbc and wotlk also this newest expansion isnt content wise bad. Also what is exactly bad about being money hungry? It just generates more jobs - for example better customer service.

GW1 beats the hell out of WoW in terms of content releases and at less of a cost to the customer. GW2 beats the hell out of WoW in terms of content released to customers and at /0/ cost to the customer.

In terms of being money hungry, it's good for the company, bad for the customer. No, you can't assume it generates more jobs because it doesn't. Making more money doesn't mean Blizz hires anymore people that Anet. Blizz likely has more people because it has a larger customer base to support but that has nothing to do with the money relating to the number of jobs. You could argue their is a correlation between money made and customers and so money to jobs but it's really accurate because as I said, the amount of money a company makes is not related to the number of people it employs. The number of people it employs is related to the need of the people it supports.

[Deleted]

Or they realize you don't need a sub model to be successful and are not money hungry people. GW1 rivaled WoW and was sub less since day 1. Just because it didn't make as much money doesn't mean it wasn't as successful.

And can I live in this magical world you live in where you think the amount of money Blizz rakes in from WoW goes to hiring new/better people? Because that is just funny as all get out. You think they spend upwards of 105 MILLION a MONTH on server upkeep and salaries?

You are pretty naive if you think there is even 1 company out there that isn't money hungry. They didn't make GW2 for so they could sleep better knowing you had fun that day. And you are even more naive if you think GW2 comes even close to WoW in profits. Almost all MMORPG's are making profit, in the world of MMORPG's you need to make a certain amount of profit to actually call it successful. I'm not saying GW2 doesn't have many players, I'm sure it does. But to put it on the same line as WoW is just a joke.

WoW was lucky it had Blizzard name behind it when it released...they had the name of a good company behind them, they had the money to release a good product and the timing was right on the rise of the MMORPG genre. It is and will remain the leader by far for a while.

[Otimus]

I think WoW is successful because it's WoW, and has WoW players. I think it's really failing at getting non-WoW players anymore. Like, the same core people that have made it succeed the last few years, are the ones making it succeed now. They're not, like, looping in new players, it'd seem. Not many, anyways. Plus, I think if it came out today, for the first time, in 2012, it'd be nowhere near as successful as it is right now.

Frankly, it seems to me, that most people are just done with the MMO genre, and WoW has just sort of been grandfathered in with it's already existing large userbase who's way too invested in it to play other MMOs.

I think, many, many, many, many, many years from now, that's going to be the ultimate downfall of WoW. Not getting new blood.

[NightZero88]

--- > the exact point of this thread is that the ONLY way to keep an mmorpg going in a decent way is to have a subscription based model.
-What more can one say... : free to play is just not valid for long term play.
-Your games better have a constant money stream as a long term MMORPG, because F2P is the last resort before becoming extinct.
-The attention spam of F2P games is just a few more months till the next thing gets launched.
-For those stating X or Y game has had enough content upgrades: sure, at launching times, but not after 6 months past the launching period.

GW1 which was released in 2005 proves every single one of these points wrong. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. Therefore I continue to agree you have no idea what you're talking about.

[Deleted]

the amount of money a company makes is not related to the number of people it employs.

Ye ye, but it's still more easily doable if they have more money. Please stop defending them. Also blizz pays shitload of taxes for US government who in turn help people for example pays for government jobs.

---------- Post added 2013-01-03 at 06:35 PM ----------

GW1 which was released in 2005 proves every single one of these points wrong. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. Therefore I continue to agree you have no idea what you're talking about.

And I continue to argue that it's you who dont got any idea what u talkin bout.

[Vankrys]

i would argue that the amount of content wow get is not proportional to the money it's generating monthly.

A triple A game budget nowadays is around between 50-150 millions. WoW is generating that amount monthly.
Do you feel you are getting monthy triple A gaming experience.

Another angle.

This winter sales, for $15 back, i grabbed deus EX HR, sleeping dogs and assssin creed 2.
I'll wage that this $15 will give more single player fun time than a month of wow subs.

but that is my point of view, obviously, some will share it, some will not, and other will share it only partly.

But again, what is the point of the thread, are you blizzard white knight?

[NightZero88]

You are pretty naive if you think there is even 1 company out there that isn't money hungry. They didn't make GW2 for so they could sleep better knowing you had fun that day. And you are even more naive if you think GW2 comes even close to WoW in profits. Almost all MMORPG's are making profit, in the world of MMORPG's you need to make a certain amount of profit to actually call it successful. I'm not saying GW2 doesn't have many players, I'm sure it does. But to put it on the same line as WoW is just a joke.

WoW was lucky it had Blizzard name behind it when it released...they had the name of a good company behind them, they had the money to release a good product and the timing was right on the rise of the MMORPG genre. It is and will remain the leader by far for a while.

Obviously every company is in business to make money. I'm not arguing that. But Blizz goes to the extreme with the sub fee which is no longer a legit reason for an MMO outside of it makes us way more money.

I also never said GW1 or GW2 made as much in profits as WoW, I even specifically said they didn't. I also never said they had as many players as WoW, I even said they didn't. What I did say is that GW1 was as successful as WoW when it was out in terms of amount of money generated compared to players.

[Deleted]

They pay less because the laws don't allow them to set up a subscription like for us. Learn to look up facts before you go spread bullshit on forums.

There is no way to tell how much money comes from them because even if they paid 1€ once a quarter (or whatever their minimum payment is) it would count as a subscriber in Blizzard's book.

[NightZero88]

And I continue to argue that it's you who dont got any idea what u talkin bout.

So prove me wrong. I'll do it.

--- > the exact point of this thread is that the ONLY way to keep an mmorpg going in a decent way is to have a subscription based model.

Wrong. GW1 was extremely popular until GW2 came out with no sub fee for the entire duration.

-What more can one say... : free to play is just not valid for long term play.

Wrong. GW1 was popular up until the release of GW2 which came 7 years after the release of GW1.

-Your games better have a constant money stream as a long term MMORPG, because F2P is the last resort before becoming extinct.

Partially wrong. GW1 never went extinct. However, they did have a source of money from the cash shop and expansions. Also GW1 was B2P technically and not F2P.

-For those stating X or Y game has had enough content upgrades: sure, at launching times, but not after 6 months past the launching period.

Wrong. GW1 had content patches that rivaled WoW's patches or better. It also had 4 expansions. Many state GW1 released more content than WoW. Additionally GW2 is continuing this trend as they have had a patch with a good amount of stuff almost every month since release.