I’m sure you’ve heard of World of Warcraft; some of you might even have lost a love one to the phenomenon. For those of you who have had your head in the sand for the past three or so years then this is a brief synopsis:
World of Warcraft (commonly known as WoW) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). World of Warcraft takes place within the world of Azeroth, four years after the events at the conclusion of Blizzard’s previous release, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. Blizzard Entertainment announced World of Warcraft on September 2, 2001. The game was released on November 23, 2004, celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Warcraft franchise. It is currently the world’s largest MMORPG in terms of monthly subscribers.
As the description goes, it’s an online role playing game where you choose a character and complete quests while interacting with other gamers from around the world. The amount of players has always been quite staggering and as I mentioned earlier; many people have literally lost their family members to this game. The game has just managed to hit the magic 10 million players per month mark.
Apparently the breakdown of players is as such: Europe is responsible for over two million players, North America over two and a half million and Asia around five and a half million. The financial considerations are mind blowing in this case. If you average out the amount they make per month from subscribers (excluding the amount spent buying the initial game and expansion disks) at roughly $14; the monthly price depends on how many months contract you buy, then times it by 10 million you’re looking at one hundred and forty million dollars per month. That’s a lot of money by any stretch of the imagination especially considering they probably cover their development costs through the sale of the game disks. Servers and bandwidth must cost a maximum of 5 million dollars a month (a figure I feel is probably quite high). This means every month they make an absolute fortune.
The scary thing is that this year they release yet another expansion pack which will net them even more money and users. Good job Blizzard, you’ve created the greatest success in gaming ever
Enjoy this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed.
I WILL NEVER, EVER, try to install this game again.
Great stuff,cool pics, easy navigation, interesting content, really enjoyed going through the material.
Amazing online game, never expected such good results, keep the rocking work going