REALLY Bad Tom's article...

[Whizzard9992]

Ok obviously your guys dont pay for this and your parents do.
Lets put this into perspective.
Last I saw WOW had something like 1 million subscribers. At $12/month that 12 million a month. 144 million a year, do you really think it takes that kind of money to run some servers and a couple of patches? The developement cost was more than likely taken care of by everyone who bought the game at lets say an average of $35 per game. With 1 million people $35 million dollars to make a game and distribute it.
You cant tell me they are not over charging.

A little condescending, no? I'm 25 and I paid for 3 accounts when I played, but thanks for asking.

You've obviously not done your homework. Wow now has 5.5 million subscribers. A single server easily runs $20,000 - $40,000, NOT including the maintenant cost (Factored as TCO). An interactive game WHOMPS a database with massive transactions per second. A database is VERY expensive, especially with what WoW houses. You're easily talking millions of dollars into thier data warehouse.

Anyway, back to the point. Are they overcharging? No. Why? Because Asherons Call, Anarchy Online, City of Heroes, they all set the standard for MMORPG sub prices, and they're all about the same. Why aren't they making as much as WoW? Because they're not as successful. Blizzard invested a tremendous amount of money into WoW. The greater the risk, the greater the reward. If they were overcharging, no one would pay. There are plenty of alternatives.

 

[slvr_phoenix]

You cant tell me they are not over charging.

I agree. I mean right now I'm paying for FFXI. I don't mind paying a reasonable monthly charge. But I'm definately overpaying for what I'm getting in this case. I know that they're making a fortune off of it. But if I want to play the game, what can I do? That's just life.

 

[mpasternak]

I can't wait to see the Financial statements for blizzard for 2005.

i wanna see how much revenue they make and how much it's costing them

I doubt that they're making the profit you believe them too. although Im sure it's still substancial

 

[parlee]

i dont really know much about server prices because ive never had the need to rent one, no mommy doesnt pay for any of my computer shit, i even pay for the 3 meg charter, all i know is when i played cs1.6 they charged about 70 a month for a 10 man private. thats for 70 people, how many play wow? over 5 million, this is what made me think that it was so expensive, and constant server maintance does cost a lot of money, paying for moderators in the game, also people to read the reports, they probably have over 50 people working behind the scenes so the server is always healthy, and yes the cost of a server, blizzard wont say how many are on each server but considering that the wait to get into bleeding hollow is somtimes close to 500 people, the number of people on that server has to be close if not over 10,000. now from what i know about server prices (70 for 10 people) its 70,000 just for that one server, a month. i know this is not the case, but it probably isnt much less than that, PER MONTH per year that adds up to just over 800k for 1 server.. + 30 or more servers, plus paying the people to keep the servers up and keep people happy with moderators, and there you have a very expensive game to run...

 

[Vascular]

So let me get this straight.
You payed for the game.
You pay for internet.
You pay a monthly subscription.
Then you wait in line to play.

:lol: :lol: :lol: that makes me laugh

 

[Zoron]

No, you wait in line to get into a specific battleground, you dolt. You can still enjoy the rest of the game, but almost always a wait if you want to enter battlegrounds.

When Ultima Online was released... I saw it's price and then saw the fact you had to pay a monthly fee to connect. I said "No way!". Then, EverQuest came along, and with a good chunk of my friends and co-workers playing, I decided to give it a try. Played it for 3 years, and had a lot of fun in that time. Right now I do play WoW, and I enjoy that as well.

Now, you want to spout about $14.99 per month to play a game for as many hours as you like. Highway robbery, you say. Think about this for a moment. How much does one night at the movies cost? Twenty dollars? And after all that, you've only been entertained for a total of about 2 hours... depending on whether or not you liked the movie. I could play WoW 24 / 7 and still only pay that same $14.99 per month.

You seriously need to re-evaluate your perspective.

 

[Zoron]

Oh and you really need to see the costs involved to keep these games up and running for as long as possible between patches. The bandwidth alone is likely thousands of dollars a month.

 

[parlee]

well since this forum was started there have been 2 reviews, i didnt bother to even read them because there on stuff that is too expensive for me anyways... are they any better?

 

[Zoron]

As a matter of fact... it is... you dolt.

😛

😉

 

[k2000k]

Blizzard is a business. i dont see anything wrong with them charging 12 bucks a month for their game. It has allready been established that server care, payroll, and other things of that nature cost money. Blizzard also sunk mad cash into the game while they were developing. Most of what blizzard will earn that does not get eaten up by salaries, maitenanc, and other things of that nature get stashed away for future use. The more money blizzard makes the better because that gives them more money to use when creating new products or expanding into new markets. This is how most business work, and in the end joe shmoe benifiets by newer, cheaper, and better quality products. Simple Econ. Capitalism kicks ass.

 

[Vascular]

No, you wait in line to get into a specific battleground, you dolt. You can still enjoy the rest of the game, but almost always a wait if you want to enter battlegrounds.

LOL you make me laugh also. You call me a dolt then proceed to tell me I am correct. You pay money to wait in line for the battle ground you want to get into. Who's the dolt now. :roll: :roll: :roll:

I also believe capitalism is ideal. Especially when you have suckers, like those who pay that much.

 

[parlee]

i guess youve never played WoW, while ur in line for BG you can be doing anythign else that you want, and when the bg is ready you simply join... but i guess since u seem to have no concept of money or any idea of what a good game is u have fun playing runescape for free.