I say that world of warcraft is good value for money, and i also think that if blizzard put down the monthly cost to £3 they would lose money.

With 9.3million subscribers that means they have a monthly income of around £83 million that is over £1billion each year. I know it doesn’t cost them that much to run the servers. I have a web server that costs me £2.50 per month which has 600Gb of space and 6000Gb of bandwidth to use each month, enough for atleast a couple hundred WOW accounts. If they got a 100 staff on an average of £40,000 per year that is £4million a year in wages lets tripple that to include insurance’s and benefits that makes staff cost £12million per year.

I said my server could handle a couple hundred WOW accounts but lets just say that it is only enough for 10 users. Total cost for servers each month is 2.325million or 27.9million per year. Office space about £1million a year including utilities do I need to go on because right now Blizzard are now only making £974.4million each year in profit. And I haven’t included income from game sales This is not full and comprehensive financial break down but these are some of the biggest costs. Game development costs are sucked up in staff wages so that is already included.

Income (Monthly fees)
Users=9,300,000 * 8.99 = £83,607,000 * 12months = £1,003,284,000

Outgoings

Wages=£999,999.99 * 12months = £12,000,000
Servers=(£2.50 per 10 users) * 930,000 =£2,325,000 * 12months £27,900,000
Building Costs £1,000,000
Total £40,900,000

Profit £970,384,000

Even if they dropped the monthly costs down to £3 per month they would be making £301.9million proffit and they would be able to sustain this income for longer. Now tell me this game is worth £8.99 per month + £9.99 to purchase + £9.99 per expansion pack.

You Must Try It. If you Havnt Already

There’s no such thing as a free MMO. Every MMO in existence supports itself with either monthly fees or microtransactions. Guild Wars is the notable exception, except it’s not an MMO in the traditional sense of the word. It’s an MMO in town, where you can interface with the community, but you’ll never see another player who’s not in your party outside of town, since it’s all instanced to keep the cost of servers to the absolute minimum.

In this genre, you definitely get what you pay for, at least in terms of the MMO experience. I’m not saying Guild Wars is bad, because I enjoyed it and other NCSoft titles. It’s just not an MMO in the way that WoW or LoTRO is.

Me and my CSE buddy almost did it but we got banned

It disappoints me that Blizzard has exhausted its ambition to own the world of video gaming with World of Warcraft. I admit it is the best of all time, but if Blizzard becomes complacent with themselves they won’t champion a world class game for long.

Think about it Blizzard. You come out with WarIII. Its awesome because you get to build stuff destroy stuff and sport a hero you strengthened. Next WoW comes out where you put the gamer in the action. Awesome. Now the next step. Allow the gamer to be part of the action and still control an awesome force of units. Combine the two things that have proven success thus far. Of course I’m sure I don’t have to remind not to forgot to continue the elaborate history forged in WarIII.

I suggest Blizzard hire some young people soon to begin to push a new frontier and stay ahead of the game.

Heck hire me. I’m 19, I’ve run my own business twice already and I love video games. While your game developers have exhausted their creativity, I am still young and full of spunk. It’s the cycle of life.

hire.me.blizzard@gmail.com

I would prefer that they would expand on the Warcraft universe in Warcraft 5 (since WoW is supposedly number 4, well thats what I heard anyway). I want to know what happened to the world after Arthas took the Frozen Throne in a storyline, not quests.