World of Warcraft Sales Figures Soar in Europe

GamesIndustry.biz has the word that the sales figures on release day for World of Warcraft here in the states have been exceeded by the game's European launch. Slagged servers crumpled and the account creation site on the Blizzard Europe homepage was taken down for a few hours on release day. From the article: "According to figures released by the developer, the subscription-based MMORPG sold more than 280,000 units on day one - more than it sold on its first day in the States - before sales rose to 380,000 by the end of its first weekend on sale."

Comments

Overcharging Gamers???

[ZephyrXero]

Has Blizzard or any of the other MMORPG guys ever posted the actual cost of running such a service vs. how much money they are taking in on it? The gamers have to pay $50 ($80 for the "special edition") and then a $13 monthly fee, not to mention the expansion packs when they come out. With hundreds of thousands of people playing this game they are making hundreds of millions each year...and I seriously doubt it costs that much to run one of these games properly.

Maybe games like Guildwars can prove you don't have to rip your customers off to be successful?

Re:Overcharging Gamers???

[yotto]

Not to sound like an economist or, worse, a republican, but the cost of doing business is only one piece of the pie when it comes to charging for what you sell. If they are making the most money possible, then they are charging the correct amount. If they are not, they are not (And the correct amount, if they are not charging it, is something else).

If you don't think it is a fair amount, don't pay it. If enough people agree with you, they'll have to lower (or, strangely, sometimes raise) the price eventually or fold. It's the way the (capitalist) world works.

Re:Overcharging Gamers???

[snuf23]

If you have played Guild Wars and you have played a more traditional MMO, you would realize that Guild Wars is more like Diablo with a 3D interface. Diablo as well did not have a monthly fee, so I hardly see why Guild Wars model is considered so ground breaking. Smaller instanced zones, not much for towns, limited economy, small party size, limited crafting, no player buildings etc. Guild Wars will also charge extra for expansions featuring new zones or new character classes.
Most MMOs develop additional content that is included with your monthly subsription. I find that when I am into an MMO I usually spend less a month on gaming. Since a new game can run upwards of $50, paying $12 or $15 a month is cheaper than purchasing even one new game. Considering I probably purchase 2-4 games a month when not heavily into an MMO.

Re:Overcharging Gamers???

[UDGags]

I doubt they are overcharging gamers. The game sells for $50/$80 but that is not what Blizzard gets back. There are a few middle men/businesses in between that get a good portion of that revenue. I would say that the money they made from the buying of the game covers developement costs or close to it. Let's assume they have 500,000 active accounts per month at $15 a month. That is a total of $7.5 million dollars monthly. They have probably around 200 servers. Their bandwidth I would assume would be extremely large including the game and websites. Buying the servers and maintaining the bandwidth is not cheap. Along with the people running the servers, making patches, secretaries, artists, etc...If you think for a moment at how much each person makes it adds up quickly. They also need to invest in their future so they have money at downtimes. Also as new hardware comes out and games advance servers need to be upgraded. I would agree they are making some money but I do not think it is a huge amount. Plus at $15 a month say you play 1 hr a night that is $0.50 an hour. Most people play more then this. It is not like they are ripping you off.

Re:Overcharging Gamers???

[Dachannien]

What's more, the "correct price" is almost always higher than the minimum price necessary to get everyone to buy the product. For example, a company could give away their product for free, and pretty much everyone who was offered it would take it, but the company would still make more money if they charged a million dollars for it and only one person bought one.

Re:Overcharging Gamers???

[VisualStim]

They have probably around 200 servers.

Where did you pull that number from? Just in the US, there are around 100 game worlds, usually mistakenly called "servers". Each game world is serviced by a cluster of actual server machines. Additionally, several game worlds share access to one of several database servers. I would estimate the actual number of server machines in the 1000+ range.

Re:Overcharging Gamers???

[njfuzzy]

I think you are confused. Businesses are allowed to make a profit. Taking in more than you spend isn't a crime, it's the *point*. You are confusing capitalism with overcharging.

Re:Overcharging Gamers???

[rmccann]

Or the cedega licence. Friend of mine used to dual boot. Cedega plays WoW for him, so he's ditching windows.

Re:Overcharging Gamers???

[generalleoff]

Yea I didn't agree with the double ended dildo Blizzard wants to screw people with (Pay a high price for the game and then pay a fee to play) so I didnt buy the game. I dont much care that the games expensive or that it has a monthly fee. It's that it has both that pissed me off. If there going to charge me a monthly fee to play the game should have been free or more (in real world logic) $25 - $35. If there going to charge me $55 then I dont want to pay a monthly fee to play. The games a hit though so my opinion is deffinitly in the minority.

Re:Overcharging Gamers???

[ZephyrXero]

That's interesting... I wasn't aware that it was so stripped down, if what you are saying is correct. It claims to be a MMORPG from what I've seen...but Diablo definitely was not one.

Re:Overcharging Gamers???

[Psychochild]

Has Blizzard or any of the other MMORPG guys ever posted the actual cost of running such a service vs. how much money they are taking in on it?

FWIW, I run a smaller online game called Meridian 59. My costs are a bit different since we're a smaller company. I'll talk about that later.

Anyway, you can find a discussion on this topic at http://www.legendmud.org/raph/gaming/busmodels.htm l which was written by Raph Koster of UO and SWG fame.

To summarize: Development costs are high, especially for more recent games. WoW and SWG each cost tens of millions of dollars to develop, which is a lot of money in game development. They employed large teams of people, much larger than your typical standalone game charges.

Now, running the game is an ongoing cost. The biggest expenses are bandwidth, network support, and customer service. People get very cranky when they can't log onto the game, and will post mean things if they cannot. (See other posts in this very thread for examples.) Network administrators don't come cheap, and when you're talking about hundreds of machines running these games, you're going to need a large number of these administrators. And for those times when your service is unavailable, you need CS representatives to handle the crushing wave of calls you will undoubtedly get. All this doesn't come cheap. Now figure in the cost of things like development of bug fixes and expanded content (including content you can't just charge for in an expansion), and you have a lot of expenses.

In all honesty, the price paid is probably too low. As someone pointed out, playing 1 hour per day means you're only spending about $.50 per hour to play the game. Compare this to watching a Pay-per-view movie where you'll probably pay $2-3 per hour for that entertainment.

Further, low subscription rates hurt the smaller developers. Meridian 59 is significantly cheaper that other games (only $10.95 per month instead of $15 like other large games) and doesn't charge for expansions. However, we make much, MUCH less money than a large company does and it is harder to maintain and expand the game on that much smaller of a budget. We mostly run M59 as a labor of love, though, so this isn't as big an issue for us. But it's unrealistic to expect an online RPG that is run on centralized servers with as much uptime as possible and that is expanded on a regular basis to be free or even significantly cheaper that current rates.

Some information for you.

Have fun,

Re:Overcharging Gamers???

[snuf23]

I played in the beta weekend events. Guild Wars is definately an interesting game, but the feel really is more Diablo. For example the starter town is very samll and even has a bunch of guys standing around that serve the same sort of functions as in Diablo. The weaponsmith, the crafter who can combine items, the level up trainer etc.
As far as I could tell, the quest party size maxes out at 4. You can also get NPCs to join you in your party if you can't find live players which was a neat feature.
The one element I really didn't like was that you can only take a limited number of skills with you on a quest. You have sort of a skill load out. If I recall correctly, you get to take 4 skills from your primary class and 2 from your secondary (all characters are dual classed, such as fighter/necromancer etc.). You can change your buildout for each quest.
The game engine is very nice looking but suffers from some odd limitations. You can't jump, so any difference in terrain level acts as a barrier. You may need to wind your way down a path rather than slide down a hill for example.
If directly compared to World of Warcraft, it feels much more limited and sort of restrictive (I'm not a huge WoW fan, but I did play the open beta).

Re:Overcharging Gamers???

[AvitarX]

How could it possibly be construed as over charging?

They sold over a quarter of a million copies in a day. Things are worth what people will pay for them.

The only way the customers are ripped off is if a monopoly is being abused, or they are fooled.

Blizzard doesn't have exclusive MMORPG rights, and they are being upfront about the costs.

It is not like EA selling shitty football or Sony using their past reputation to trick people.

Re:Overcharging Gamers???

[MayonakaHa]

*Applause*

Very well put. People buy what they want, when they want, at a price they think is fair. If Blizzard was overcharging for WoW I don't think over half a million people would have bought it. I've played many an MMO and I can honestly say WoW is one of the best and well worth the price. Especially considering a new game is $50 and I used to buy one every month or so. The first month of WoW was $50 which is normal for a game in my case (I usually don't play them more than a month). After that it's $15 a month to play. Think about it. If WoW is good enough that you want to keep playing it instead of buying a new game, then you can stretch that $50 you would have spent on a new game of the month into three months of enjoyment.

And it's definitely not like paying EA for the same football game on the same console using the same engine just with a few numbers and names changed or Sony selling you a television for $700 when nearly the same exact TV from Toshiba or Panasonic would cost you $400.

Re:Overcharging Gamers???

[C0rinthian]

There are 88 realms in the US. That's a hell of a lot of hardware. I don't know how many they have in Europe or Asia, but it will probably be comparable.

Re:Overcharging Gamers???

[DerWulf]

From my personal value standpoint, I have to say this: seeing as no game guarantees a month worths fun and indeed, many 50 games I bought didn't even last 2 weeks for me, I'd say that WoW is a pretty good deal, considering that the first month of online play is free. I just know (and have known from the beta) that I'd certainly enjoy this game longer than 4 weeks. But of course there is no argueing about such things, if the price is to high for you, you're right with not buying it.

Re:Overcharging Gamers???

[mcbevin]

How do you figure they are ripping you off exactly? If a million people are prepared to pay for it using the current pricing scheme, it makes no sense for them to lower the price to appeal to say a few thousand people who take your stance or simply can't afford it, as the total income they'd get would be less, and they're not a charity.

So accepting they're not a charity, and that their sales figures justify the price, you should accept that the overall price they're demanding is reasonable. Regarding how they balance this price between the monthly fee + initial price, they could of course drop the initial price, but they would then have to raise the monthly fee correspondingly. Or vice versa. But neither option would neccessarily make you any better off. Based on their sales figures, I'd say they've probably found a good balance. Even if the balance could be better, thats just a problem for them and their business model - if they get the balance wrong then less people will purchase the product, however it doesn't equate to them 'ripping' you off.

For example, I buy very few CDs any more, and won't until the music companies find a more sensible business model (i.e. charging me a monthly fee for unlimited or a large number of album downloads - a business model which makes use of the possibilities the internet provides, and doesn't force me to pay for the unneccessary distribution network and associated costs associated with CDs). However I don't say they're ripping me off by sticking with their old distribution model - rather if anything they're ripping themselves off, as rather than receiving a potentially large monthly fee from me they receive next to nothing.

By 'refusing to be ripped off' however you're only hurting yourself (presuming you really do like the game and think the total price is worth it for you), as a million other users have already declared that blizzard isn't ripping them off with the prices by purchasing the game so blizzard isn't going to care if you don't buy it.

Re:Overcharging Gamers???

[JavaLord]

It's that it has both that pissed me off. If there going to charge me a monthly fee to play the game should have been free or more (in real world logic) $25 - $35. If there going to charge me $55 then I dont want to pay a monthly fee to play. The games a hit though so my opinion is deffinitly in the minority.

So which do you think should be free, the development of the software, or the updates and maintainence of the servers/game? I agree that it would be nice if there was a digital distribution system ala steam and the software price got knocked down a bit, but the fact remains you must pay for the software development (this game probably was in development for like 3 years) and for the server mantainence and patches. So you pay $15 a month. If you play just 15 hours a month, you are paying a dollar an hour. That is cheaper than a movie, a trip to the arcade, going out to eat in a decent resturant, etc. I don't think the fee is unreasonable.

Plus, how many players play a lot more than 15 hours a month? I'd bet most people are paying as little as 50 cents an hour to play. Compare that to any arcade you've ever been to.

Re:Overcharging Gamers???

[generalleoff]

There is that point also yer right. But from what i have herd regarding the servers... wow...

My buddy Bob got cought in a few roll backs in a row cuz of there server problems. He was very pissed and it was very funny. His opinion on the game is it's good and he is a little bent on the high price but decided he would rather play the game then not play it so he paid but he also feels they ended the beta teast to early and that the game didnt feel complete and they did NOT have the servers ready at all.

I just think charging like this is no diffrent then if AOL had charged you for there software and then a monthly fee to use it. I would think blizzard could do better if they treated the game in the way most Linux distros work. You can buy a pre burned CD for a small fee or you can download the ISO free and burn it yerself. This combined with a free trial like they already have would put the game into ALOT of peoples hands that cant afford the $50 price in one lump sum but might be able to float the monthly fee.

I understand what you mean tohugh and can see the flaws in my opinion on the one side but I can see the possible binifits on the other as well.

Re:Overcharging Gamers???

[ZephyrXero]

You really think b/c a few million people agree on something it's right? Have you seen the billboard music charts? More sales do not equal better. If you thought like that, then Madden football is the greatest game ever made (Definitely not!) and Bush actually deserved to stay president....

"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity"...

Re:Overcharging Gamers???

[osgeek]

Not to sound like an economist or, worse, a republican,

That wasn't so hard, now was it?

Now, repeat after me:

"Sean Hannity rocks!"
"Get your hands off my hard-earned tax dollars, commie!"
"James Carville is an incarnation of Satan"


For further reading: Pudge's Journal

Re:Overcharging Gamers???

[YOU LIKEWISE FAIL IT]

Unfortunately, in economic terms, the grandparent is absolutely correct. Blizzard isn't marketing some grand eternal truth here, they're marketing a product.

Re:Overcharging Gamers???

[will_die]

SOE posted some round about numbers for EQ1. They said it was costing around $30 million a year for all costs(servers, new dev, people,etc). And they were bringing in close to $45 million(subscription, expansion packs, marketing of license,etc).
Some smaller MMORPG said they needed around 70,000 subscribers to make a profit and stick around. So it really depends on what how profitable they are.
As for box costs, you can figure that only around $15 of the $50 box(expansion pack they get less) goes to the development company(the reseller, manufacturer and distributer get the rest) so profit wise it is as if they released a new game every 3-4 months.
However sales of MMORPGs suck, during the same time the WoW has sold less then 1 million world wide, warcraft III had sold close to 8 million.

Re:Overcharging Gamers???

[Knightking]

My buddy Bob got cought in a few roll backs in a row cuz of there server problems.

Significant rollbacks (over 5 minutes) is about the only problem that WoW has not had server related. There have been a few, but well under one per server.

You can buy a pre burned CD for a small fee or you can download the ISO free and burn it yerself.

I'd sure Blizzard would have loved to do that, but Valve barely managed to even sell thier game online. Do you think Vivendi would ever allow Blizz to give a game away free, completly cutting them out of the money?

Re:Overcharging Gamers???

[JVert]

I wish they made it a bit clearer of what you were playing. It was a preview event, call it the first level of quake, not the first episode of doom.

Nah, it's a bargain, in the long run.

[deanj]

I can't speak about WoW, but in Everquest, there are a lot of things that go into the game beyond what's there at the initial launch. (I don't count bug fixes, or game mechanic adjustments).

In Everquest, a lot of things go in. New quests, new gear, new tradeskill items, new spells, new zones open up, etc.

When a LOT of new stuff goes in at once, they do it as an expansion. Expansions were usually $20-$30. There's an upcoming "expansion" (although it's hard for me to call it that), that will be about $5. It's a very small, targeted sort of thing.

People that aren't into MMORPG usually see the monthly charge and recoil in horror. I played EQ1 just about exclusively for 5 years. I played nearly no other game during that time. Before that, I'd buy a $50 game every month or so. I spent a lot more on games before EQ, that's for sure.

Re:Nah, it's a bargain, in the long run.

[ZiakII]

Its sad but its true I've been playing EQ1 for about 3-4 years now and it got me from playing both Consoles and PCs just to PCs... granted i'm sure I grew older and got more mature but it was probally EQ....

I'm not surprised.

[Surye]

This is the first game I bought since Diablo 1. And I have no regrets. The monthly cost is more then worth the entertainment I get out of it.

Re:I'm not surprised.

[Kris_J]

Oy, it's a time sink. My initial subscription ran out almost a month ago and I seriously have not had the time to play since. Since it absorbed about 47 days from about day three after retail release (10-day guest pass, 30-day initial subscription and 7-odd days of "free" time due to problems), it's like I'm having to catch up with a month's worth of stuff while the next month's stuff happens at the same time.

It's great fun and I've even got one of those fancy WoW keyboards and the limited edition strategy guide on their way to me, but at the moment I'm not even sure I'll ever have time to play again...

Re:I'm not surprised.

[Surye]

I sleep about 3 fewer hours a night then before. This seems to have worked.

One MEELION players

[white1827]

This means that they have sold over 1,000,000 boxes in North America and European releases so far. World of Warcraft has single handedly proved that the MMO market is by no means saturated.

Re:One MEELION players

[tillerman35]

Saturated? Hmmmph! I'm still stuck playing EQ2 because I can't buy a copy of Wow. I had one literally taken out of my hands by a mom at Target the other day with nothing more than a "if you're not going to buy that, my son wants it for his birthday." I seriously considered summoning a L23 Security Wight. The only thing that stopped me was the fact that I knew they're not accepting new subscribers until they get their hardware issues ironed out. Happy birthday, Junior!

Re:One MEELION players

[ZephyrXero]

So, by that estimate that's $50,000,000 just from game sales (not even taking into account the limited edition $80 ones)...and then that's a steady $13,000,000 a month...or 195 million a year if they're all playing. So, in theory, if they sold a million copies, and everyone played for a year that would be almost 250 million dollars!!! That's a whole lot of money I'd say.... and last time I checked I don't think there's ever been a game that cost over even 10 million to make, and I seriously doubt their servers/bandwidth even costs a million a month...
(see above post*)

Europe underestimated...again

[Anonymous Coward]

Most companies think of Europe being "just some" market after the US and Asia.

However, considering many customers hence feel like "second rate", many don't fall for the products.

Now a good one comes here, not looking like a "cheap" European version of some game (like Mythic -> GOA DAoC), and people are surprised ...

Thinking seems to be harder than I though.

Re:Europe underestimated...again

[AHumbleOpinion]

Most companies think of Europe being "just some" market after the US and Asia.

One would hope that Vivendi, the French owner of Blizzard, would not think that way. ;-)

WoW is facing serious problems in Europe now...

[zyzko]

It's great to see WoW being such a great success also in Europe, however Blizzard should really do something about their servers.

Right now logging in is impossible to many European servers (just check the EU tech support forums...) and people have been experiencing disconnects and signup-problems from day one not to mention the huge queues on some servers.

The ridiciously short beta and the problems they had in the US should have warranted a more thorough analysis about what is required to serve the big audience. For a subscription (time) -based game this is quite unacceptable.

-Kari

Re:WoW is facing serious problems in Europe now...

[Shazow]

I'm sure they'll append additional playtime to all those who suffer from downtime. They did that for the US server users.

But yes, they should have learned from their mistake... But I can imagine their thought process.

"Wow, we did amazingly well in North American, it blew our servers out!"
"Yeah... let's hope we do half as well in Europe" ...
"Holy crap, we did even BETTER in Europe... That was unexpected *servers go boom*"

Re:WoW is facing serious problems in Europe now...

[DerWulf]

Not to forget that stupid users bring this on themselves when they absolutly MUST join high population servers. I still remember the hype 'the inwow server is the best'. Well, I am not so sure people still think that way. The sad truth is: There are enough servers. But as in the US, some have almost no population while others are constantly maxed out.

Re:WoW is facing serious problems in Europe now...

[floyd59]

I bought it on 17.Feb, an have not had a single problem with it. Neither with registration, nor with running the game. With most games, i tend to have problems till the first patch is out, but not this one. Nice job!

Apart from that, the game experience is simply amazing, a so i think i'll move away from diablo2 after several years...

Ob. Strongbad

[Anonymous Coward]

According to figures released by the developer, the subscription-based MMORPG sold more than 280,000 units on day one - more than it sold on its first day in the States - before sales rose to 380,000 by the end of its first weekend on sale.

That is not a small number! That is a really big number!

Flagrant premature rollout error
WOW Over = Very Yes.

Sounds like they are making too much money

[tod_miller]

I am glad I didn't buy this only to find I couldn't log in.

I do see these are historical games... in the future such server issues will go, so enjoy the stories of server outtages and record sales, before this becomes just another command and conquer or doom gaming fad, and becomes old news.

I personally like the genre, but do not play games. I think it is important to keep up with the field though, so I regularly read up on them.

Re:It won't last for long...

[kendoka]

lol, dude, chill out - all I'm saying is I think it's a really great game. I guess I'm just a coder/unix nerd because I don't play games often and I don't run with the I need the latest graphics card crowd. All I'm saying is, it's a great game 'cause even old Apple II farts like me are playing it.

It sounds like you're really familiar with this game, 'cause I don't even understand what in the hell you're talking about.

Are most /.tters these days gamers?

Population

[Anonymous Coward]

Well. A lot more people live in Europe than in the USA, so that it sells more in absolute numbers doesn't seem very surprising.

Re:WoW experiences

[shepuk]

> Were Blizzard worried that people were going to
> buy dozens of copies of the game and make automated
> scripts to register them all? Oh, the horror, the horror.

More likely they were worried that people would make automated scripts to brute-force themselves a valid retail code... in which case, smart move by blizzard, imho.