World of Warcraft

[Bob]

Giving the example of a hgame that hasnt even been released is NOT evidense that your business modle is viable - get a clue.

Basically, you say that the people running this other game have pulled numbers out of the air? I tihnk not. As the FAQ says, they've worked on the Business model, and hvae found it a viable proposition to run it without charging a monthly fee. Whether it works in practice could be different, but that largely depends on them, not the business model (if they make a good enough game to get good cash for advertising on it, etc.)

But it takes a lot of money to run one of these games.

lest ye forget: they get a lot of money for these games

Sales for D2 & War3 are pretty high. Now, somewhere in that cash they can find the money to run Realm-run Diablo2, Diablo2:LoD, War3, War3:TFT. Oh, and Starcraft, War2:BNE & D1 (yes, those brought in cash of their own, but not any more - they could pay for themselves then, but are leaching from D2 & War3 ATM). Blizz have also released 15 patches for War3, 10 patches for D2, 10 patches for SC, 9 patches for D1 and I don't know how many for War2. That's a lot of after-sales support.

They can afford all of that, running realm-based games that run into the thouands of games every day, 4 servers, loadsa patches. All from the sale price of these games - Without a single bit of non-Blizz advertising on Bnet. Yes, there's a few adverts on the website, but nothing on Bnet itself.

Now, if Blizz can make just 1 million sales in the first year, they'll get at least $20 million (assuming that Blizz makes 40% profit on every sale price). So it'll cost more than $1.5million per month to run servers and support? and that's without extra cash that they could get from selling advertising space... Later on, are they going to continue to support it so much? they have a poor record past the first year or so. Are people going to get bored and stop playing? most likely - so that'll cost less to run then. And by then, it could be leaching from other games.

And I almost forgot, based on what that other guy said - yes he was deluded. He actually thought his ability to run a server for 12 people playing a game had a relation to the running a MMORP.

er... assuming that his maths was correct;
$250 to run a server for 12 for 6 months. $500 per year. or $42 per person per year. Now, I'd have thought that the cost of running the server per person would have gone down as the ammount of people suing it goes up, something to do with economies of scale. So you're telling me that it costs $150 per person, per year to run support, patching & file servers? when the cost of bandwidth and servers over the year is $42...
I think you are mistaken about who is dillusional.


I've already shown that $50 per person is enough to run the current battle.net, with other games leaching for at least a year. You think that they couldn't run a dedicated service with some advertising liberally spread about for the same cost?

Perhaps it's less that they want to pay to run the new online service and more that they need cash to support D2 & War3 realms, which they won't be able to get from leaching off the profits from a new regular Bnet game, because THEY HAVEN'T GOT ONE IN DEVELOPMENT, and have poured so much into WoW.
As a stand alone game, with some advertising, WoW should be able to pay for itself from sales - The probelm is that Blizz has gone and made itself some other costly commitments (d2 & War3) which it now needs to pay for. Since they games aren't selling many now and can't keep supporting themselves and SC, War2 & D1 indefinately.

Blizz needs a cash injection, and believes that people would rather pay to play a game, than have a free, ad-splattered realm.

Take for instance DAOC, they always have one or 2 Developer teams just working on the live server and on free exspansions

er... they spend all the money on making expansions and then release them free? that is their problem. They could release an expansion giving access to a new area, and patch the game so that people without can still see items that someone gets from these areas, and can still see where they are without their game falling over. People will buy these (becaue people always want the latest thing), and that would keep a system working.

You have no idea if its possible and you know it

I doubt that you have any idea that it's not possible either. You've most likely either looked at all the things they need (servers, connections, support, development teams) looked at the cost of the game, and said there's no way they could fit all that into that cost, they'd have to charge a fee or it wouldn't work. Or you've listened to someone who's said that and followed them.

-Bob