Tue, Sep 16, 2008 | 14:31 BST

WoW’s cost $200 million since launch, says Acti-Bliz

World of Warcraft has cost $200 million to run since 2004, Activision said at its Analyst Day yesterday, meaning Blizzard has made approximately four planets’ worht of gold from the MMO since it launched.

The game currently has 10.9 million subscribers. You do the math. Because we’re not going to do it for you.

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11 comments

morriss
16/09/08, 2:18 pm

How much is it a month?

ecu
16/09/08, 2:21 pm

Experts have estimated that they’re earning about $100 million per month through subscriptions. Obviously this has been steadily climbing as subscriber numbers increase. It could be more or less though. A large portion of the userbase is from China, and they pay hardly anything to play it.

trav
16/09/08, 2:26 pm

The thing with subscriber numbers, surely that is a complete total and not taking into account people who like me quit after the month trail was up or have cancelled their accounts.

So while 10.9 million signed up, I wouldn’t think that 10.9 million are constantly playing.

No_PUDding
16/09/08, 2:26 pm

Gonna derail a tiny bit here, but is that fan art?

Becuase it’s crap.

WoW usually has art that makes me go wow. Pun totally fucking intended, but not meant to be funny.

patlike
16/09/08, 2:31 pm

You’re right. Have something better.

El_MUERkO
16/09/08, 2:35 pm

photoshop some boobs on it!

ecu
16/09/08, 2:54 pm

So while 10.9 million signed up, I wouldn’t think that 10.9 million are constantly playing.

Nope, it’s 10.9 million currently PAYING every month. It doesn’t mean they’re still actually playing the game, but they still subscribe to it. If it was a total, then the number would never go down, and it has done.

The reason it’s still going up is some good work on Blizzards part. As the popularity in the West has (slightly) reduced, they’ve gained more than they’ve lost in the Chinese market. It currently has 2-2.5 million subscribers over there. Although I don’t think they have a subscription service like we do, but they pay per play. ie. it’s a certain amount per hour, so they pay based on that. I might be totally wrong there though.

trav
16/09/08, 2:59 pm

I asked as I’ve never seen the number dip. It just kept on raising which just seemed like more PR hype than actually accurate figures.

Psychotext
16/09/08, 3:03 pm

Number has never dipped on here either… but that doesn’t necessarily mean much:

http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart1.html
http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart11.html

#10

ginger
16/09/08, 3:44 pm

It’s 10M subs now and has been pretty much linear since start so on average its 5M * 10$*36 = $1800M – not a bad ROI