WoW made 213 million dollars in 2013 from microtransactions!

[Pann]

Of course it does. How much do you think designing a raid instance actually costs? I don't know either, but nowhere near 213 million dollars. Add to that the money they make from subscriptions every month - Blizzard makes more money than god.



Part of the hard end game charge is contained within the 15 dollars a month we pay.

It would appear that you have mistaken this thread about micro transactions for one about raiding.

[Melchior]

There was a point in time when I used to think this was a good argument. It's still $180 a year for a single game. If you've been playing since release, you've dropped over $1,600 (which doesn't include the $200 for buying the game and each expansion on release, non-collector's editions of course)...

Seeing it in terms of a monthly fee is only half the story. I found it pretty depressing when I realized I had downed over $1,300 to play WoW. Just something to consider when you try to rationalize your spending .

You're just playing with numbers by not taking into account what someone made over that whole time period, which is probably like $380,000.

Assuming your pay remains the same, $15/month is going to be the same percentage of your income over one month's period whether you calculate it monthly, yearly, or over WoW's lifespan.

If $15 is good value for a month, then $180 is good value for a year, no matter how you spin it.

[Thagrynor]

It truly baffles me how delusional some folks can be.

People talk about how "exploitative" and "greedy" Blizzard is, yet then refer to what they offer in microtransactions in a way that shows just how entitled these people really are. Guess what folks, they aren't being greedy by expecting you to pay for something that are under NO OBLIGATION to even offer. You know what happens when enough people bitch about paying $25 to realm transfer and refuse to pay it? Blizzard says, "That's cool. Then create a new toon and start from scratch. Don't want to do that? Then pay the fee." Honestly, the alternative is that Blizzard could simply say, "Fine, then fuck you. Realm transfers are no longer available at all, ever, for any amount of money." Realm transfer, faction transfers, character recustomizations, race changes. These are things that are simply not necessary to be offered in game at all. The game seemed to function just fine the first 5 or so years before any of these services were available. So, no, they aren't being greedy. In fact, as was mentioned by someone in this thread previously, those fees are there to ensure people don't abuse the system. They WANT there to be some thought of choice in this game (not that there really is a whole lot left at all anymore) in creating your character.

I am also loving all the people saying, "Oh yes. We go F2P and we will totally jump to 20M players." Where is this number coming from, aside from peoples asses? Seriously, there isn't even a HINT that player population would jump to those numbers. And people need to also realize that most of the sub losses over the previous year or so were mostly in the Asian markets, where sub fees end up so much higher for the equivalent time played, due to their payment structure. So no, the game isn't "dying" as people seem to think. And no, CRZ/Connected Realms imply the OPPOSITE of going to F2P. They would not be effectively merging realms if they were going to go F2P and suddenly boom to 20M players.

The thing you people crying out with your deluded "facts" about going F2P seem to forget is that the only way to make a cash shop in a F2P game more profitable for a game as big as WoW is to sell metric shit tons of consumables that are nearly required for play. You cannot rely on things like XP boosts because people like myself and so many others have a realm completely full of max level characters. Even in WoD, I cannot imagine it taking more than about 6 months for most of my toons to ding 100. So XP boosts alone would not handle it. What else would they sell? Mounts? After you buy it once, you'll never spend money on it again, so how many MORE mounts (same goes for pets) would they have to add to keep up enough income flowing in to make up for the sub losses? Couple with the fact that the whole "sub with premium bonuses" model doesn't work in a game like WoW that doesn't center itself around a cash shop without completely changing how the game functions. So what else would you sell in the cash shop? Gear? Why bother playing then? Transmog gear? How many different outfits can you have for your toon that can only wear 1 at a time that you would be willing to fork over cash on a regular basis? Services like they already are? Sure, but they are already offering them with subs, so why change that? The point is, without substantially altering how WoW functions in terms of gameplay (ie, requiring certain boosts and such to be "competitive"), a cash shop cannot support the overwhelming consistent income of subscriptions.

As for the people who are also questioning why F2P would lead to poor quality, the answer is simple really. Generally speaking, if you aren't playing WoW now, it is because you either don't want to play anymore (for whatever reason), cannot play anymore (for whatever reason) or cannot afford to play anymore. Going F2P doesn't change the first 2 groups as they are choosing (or life is choosing for them) to not play anymore and the last group cannot afford $15 a month (assuming western sub fees). The only group that would start playing is the last group and they cannot afford $15, what makes you think they would suddenly be buying things from the cash shop? What this means is that the current realms, most of which would be connected, would gain an influx of players who cannot afford (or refuse to pay for) anything from the cash shop. This means more players, less income relative to player base. That means that more realms get more and more crowded to the point that there is latency issues and queue times. What does this mean? A poor overall quality of play for everyone.

People need to stop thinking that WoW will "definitely" go F2P. More than likely, by the time WoW "needs" to go F2P, Blizzard will be working on a new MMO that is built around a F2P model. THAT is what I see as more likely to happen.

[FluFF]

Your logic about the realm change price is flawed, it existed cause back then RAF didn't existed and it was a means to be able to play with your friends.

Nowadays Blizzard use it for poor chumps stuck on dead realms, or why do you think that almost 5 months after 5.4 we still only got like 5 connected PvE realms in EU ? it's not cause they are technical limited , they connect PvP realms and US realms all the time in bucketloads.

I've been waiting ever since 5.4 for my dead piece of shit to get connected and now 5 months later I look and all I see is like 4 connected EU PvE realms, like really 4 English PvE connected realms in 5.5 months time ?

I pay 15 a month to be able to do what the game offers and I am unable to cause my realm has no living AH and no living raiding guild , so why should I pay up 25 Euro's to fix that ? if anything they should ensure my realm has people to play with and a working AH , or close the piece of shit down and give me a FCM.

If anything they should speed up the connected realm thing and sort all the dead PvE realms with no AH , no tradechat except for 5 sentences between 8pm and 11pm and no raiding guild apart from 1 10 man guild, and stop making sparkling dragons and shuff them in the store for 20 Euro a piece.

[Allatar]

Seeing it in terms of a monthly fee is only half the story. I found it pretty depressing when I realized I had downed over $1,300 to play WoW. Just something to consider when you try to rationalize your spending .

How much did you spend on alcohol during the same period, or on books or on films or on confectionary? if you start to look at your expenditure in that way then everything starts to get depressing.

At the end of the day if the sub fee is small change to you, you don't miss it every month. Hell, I spend probably 4x the UK equivalent of my sub every Friday night on a single bottle of wine. Simply because I can. Personally, I think that if you have to even consider whether spending £8.99 on anything a month is good use of that money, you have bigger problems than WoW and it's payment model.

[Doktor Faustus]

China has the largest number of players, and they don't pay a subsciption fee (I think?).

Also, all these doing the napkin math are not factoring the costs (salaries/property rent/server hardware rent/taxes/debt servicing/etc etc etc), many of which we do not know.

A company always requires a minimum turnover/profit margin to survive, and these figures scale the larger you get the larger these figures are.

The problem is when your costs are skewed Vs your profit margin.

If you cannot sustain the growth, streamlining will be required.

The debate that has already happened at Blizzard behind closed doors, is how long can we keep generating huge profit margin income with new store items, how can we keep justifying the monthly subscription, and when will we have to go F2P?

- - - Updated - - -

How much did you spend on alcohol during the same period, or on books or on films or on confectionary? if you start to look at your expenditure in that way then everything starts to get depressing.

At the end of the day if the sub fee is small change to you, you don't miss it every month. Hell, I spend probably 4x the UK equivalent of my sub every Friday night on a single bottle of wine. Simply because I can. Personally, I think that if you have to even consider whether spending £8.99 on anything a month is good use of that money, you have bigger problems than WoW and it's payment model.

I'd go find a better wine merchant if I were you.

The only wine worth paying over £10 for is some super-expensive vintage

[Deleted]

Poor blizzard, still cannot hire more devs of fix bugs.

[corebit]

China has the largest number of players, and they don't pay a subsciption fee (I think?).

They pay for Time cards. For example 4000 minutes (about 60 hours) for 30 RMB (about 5 USD).
It's actually a heck lot more expensive to play WoW in China than in the US. Especially when you consider the per capita income of the average Chinese.

In China, WoW is played by more affluent people.

[Doktor Faustus]

They pay for Time cards. For example 4000 minutes (about 60 hours) for 30 RMB (about 5 USD).
It's actually a heck lot more expensive to play WoW in China than in the US. Especially when you consider the per capita income of the average Chinese.

In China, WoW is played by more affluent people.

Ah cool, thanks for that information.

I'd be curious how much Blizzard gets from each card, after production costs, Communist tax and fees to the company making them.

[Allatar]

I'd go find a better wine merchant if I were you.

The only wine worth paying over £10 for is some super-expensive vintage

1991 Amarone della Valpolicella, worth every penny

[Ryme]

WoW has no microtransactions in the west... almost everything you can buy costs more than a months subscription.

[Masoner]

There's no reason for WoW to go F2P because people are still willing to pay the sub fee (and really $15 a month is chump-change anyway).

I'm glad to see the store doing so well, hopefully it bodes well for it's future.

^this

15 bucks a month makes the MMORPG crowd (myself) happy.


the online store makes them happy + the people that like to buy unique artsy mounts happy (I've bought 2 mounts and both were on sale for 12 bucks each).

[rda]

213 million in a single year is quite a lot.

That's something like 1/4 of the subs, so, pretty significant.

It'd help if we had data on how much of these 213 million came from Asia vs the West.

[Pann]

Ah cool, thanks for that information.

I'd be curious how much Blizzard gets from each card, after production costs, Communist tax and fees to the company making them.

Blizzard receive a licensing fee from Netease, who run WOW in China, if I remember correctly it was worked out (this was a few years ago) that Blizzard received around $2-3 per month per Chinese account, although I do not know if this is or ever was accurate. As far as I am aware the time cards are produced and sold by Netease and they can be used to play any of their games.

- - - Updated - - -

213 million in a single year is quite a lot.

That's something like 1/4 of the subs, so, pretty significant.

It'd help if we had data on how much of these 213 million came from Asia vs the West.

Although it is believable that micro-transactions could account for such a huge figure it is worth noting that Blizzard have never revealed how much they earn from added services and that this figure is for 2013 yet we are still a few weeks from Blizzard announcing year end figures. In other words treat the $213 million figure with a healthy does of scepticism.

[rda]

Yet nobody seems to complain about how lackluster the rate of release of new content is...

Seriously, there are and were MMOs that had content-updates much more often than WoW and they didn't even nearly make the amount of cash Blizzard pulls in. Not even 1% of the profits Blizzard made in most cases. I guess the new casual gaming generation of today just has much more different games to keep them busy when they get bored.

I complained about that. I agree with you. A patch comes, two weeks later you have nothing to do again.

[Wicari]

Amazingly, they are not even trying to cash in on the micro-transaction market yet and have broken in to the top ten? Can you imagine where they would be if they really put their mind to it? Which, based on the past year or so, they are working towards.

[Doktor Faustus]

I complained about that. I agree with you. A patch comes, two weeks later you have nothing to do again.

Exactly why I didn't grind Shahao rep to fast, lol.

To be honest, not having many guildies around means there are many things I have not done - no normal/hc raiding of ToT/SoO.

I really would like to do the Challenge Modes, did a few early on in MoP before the last raiders departed the guild, but think I am competent enough to get Gold and the shiny armour.

One day, sob.

[MuLLvaD3n]

That is so much more then i ever thought, do people actually buy mounts and pets then? I see why Blizzard is moving away from sub and going towards microtransactions. I always liked the idé "pay once get all" more then "pay a little bit here and there for stuff that you don't really need", (which to be honest usually ends up being more expensive).

Ah well, funny to see how the game industry is changing.

Edit: Just remebered, (and read), that it's server transfer and stuff aswell, still a lot of money on "stuff that you don't really need".

[DeadmanWalking]

I don’t care how much money Blizzard makes. As long as they are not placing bullets in peoples mailboxes so they can continue to addict children with cartoon mascots to cigarettes or pouring oil into our oceans then I really don’t care hwo much they make. They create a video game that I enjoy playing and so long as I enjoy playing it then I will continue paying them what ever I feel is worth the service.

Its not my job to police their profits. Too many people here seem to think that all corporations are a den of evil and greed and yet day in and day out they enjoy the benefits of a society where corporations are responcible for every single good thing they enjoy from the coffee they sip to the computer they use to bitch about corporate greed on the internet.

If you don’t like corporations then stop driving cars and build yourself a mud hut and farm for your own meals.

[Exoblade]

I expected more tbh, with the idiots in my guild constantly changing their names for a laugh. For instance our raider raid got changed to skittles , so 1/2 of our raiders changed their name to a fruit.