RE: Enchanting on the AH. Last I heard (and this was a few weeks ago) the items for it were in -- and created by inscription -- but they weren't technically working yet. Again, this was a few weeks ago.
RE: Buying at WalMart vs Preordering. Mark me down as another person who just walked into the neighborhood WalMart, bought my copy, and was at home installing it in less than an hour while my friend who preordered it didn't get it for 2 days.
Pre-Ordering is to get it as soon as possible. Because let's face it. There's little to no chance that you will not walk into a store and be able to buy the World of Warcraft expansion.
Except EBStop because they have this weird thing against selling you a game that you didn't reserve.
And yet, I had it installed and running 2 days before my friend who preordered -- and I paid less
I pre-ordered the collector's edition for this reason. I also hate going to the store because they hassle me to get all this insurances and shit I don't need. Hey why don't you buy the book? No? How about you buy a headset? Already got those? Why don't you buy this new computer, you'll totally need it? What just got one? Uh... Why don't you just give me a grand to leave you alone?
Thank god for Amazon and pre-ordering the collectors edition to save me from that.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
I'm not really impressed with what I've seen of Inscription so far. The intention, I thought, was for the glyphs to augment some classes skills with different effects (knockback or stun on a fireball, health regen on melee, whatever), and instead they're mostly just reductions in ability cooldowns or increases in range/damage. Boo-urns.
Also, does anyone know if they've implemented the 'enchanters being able to sell their enchants' in the beta? I haven't heard anything about it since the beta started.
Blue's said they're going to be equivalent to 1-2 talent points.
So shaman are going to get 1% chance to block out of their glyphs?
It's essentially a legal crack cocaine ring they're running.
Sounds about right to me.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
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HalfmexI mock your value systemYou also appear foolish in the eyes of othersRegistered Userregular
edited September 2008
I'm curious to know what they bring in for pure profit these days. The last I'd read was about 50 million a year or so, and that was at the time that TBC had been announced, and they were still sitting at six or seven million subscribers.
I'm curious to know what they bring in for pure profit these days. The last I'd read was about 50 million a year or so, and that was at the time that TBC had been announced, and they were still sitting at six or seven million subscribers.
I find it hard to believe they're only generating 50 million of pure profit from a 1.08 billion dollar a year income. [if you take 6 million users]
So I just found out about the release date being so ... soon.
Shitty thing is I haven't been able to play in months, so my only 70 now and probably before launch is going to be my Rogue. Shaman is still 65, Warrior 62.
What really sucks is that my laptop doesn't have a DVD drive (it, uh, fell out), so I'll need to buy an external one along with the game. I mean, that's something I would have to do anyway -- laptop without a CD/DVD drive is pretty crunky -- but it's still sort of a hassle.
I'm pretty excited though.
Pretty gosh-darn excited.
Do Achievements in WoW confer any kind of bonus or reward, or are they just for bragging rights? This is the one new feature I've been unable to scare up any more info on.
I'm curious to know what they bring in for pure profit these days. The last I'd read was about 50 million a year or so, and that was at the time that TBC had been announced, and they were still sitting at six or seven million subscribers.
I find it hard to believe they're only generating 50 million of pure profit from a 1.08 billion dollar a year income. [if you take 6 million users]
If it's a worldwide count of subscribers, you can't just take 6 million x $15 a month x 12. Places other than the US have different subscription schemes, etc.
edit: Both of you are ignoring taxes and probably other things they left out as well.
I'm curious to know what they bring in for pure profit these days. The last I'd read was about 50 million a year or so, and that was at the time that TBC had been announced, and they were still sitting at six or seven million subscribers.
I find it hard to believe they're only generating 50 million of pure profit from a 1.08 billion dollar a year income. [if you take 6 million users]
If it's a worldwide count of subscribers, you can't just take 6 million x $15 a month x 12. Places other than the US have different subscription schemes, etc.
edit: Both of you are ignoring taxes and probably other things they left out as well.
Taxes are tacked on top of the subscription cost. For instance the $15 a month would be almost $18 on your bill.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Ok, so the $3 billion is actually $2.7 billion after reduced subscribers and tax rates, or $2.5 billion. Even $2 billion is a 90% profit margin, on a company that does not increase its dev team size, while seeing a steady and quite sizeable increase in the time it takes to release content.
I'm curious to know what they bring in for pure profit these days. The last I'd read was about 50 million a year or so, and that was at the time that TBC had been announced, and they were still sitting at six or seven million subscribers.
I find it hard to believe they're only generating 50 million of pure profit from a 1.08 billion dollar a year income. [if you take 6 million users]
If it's a worldwide count of subscribers, you can't just take 6 million x $15 a month x 12. Places other than the US have different subscription schemes, etc.
edit: Both of you are ignoring taxes and probably other things they left out as well.
Yeah yeah. But 50 million is still around a 4-5 percent profit, which just sounds absurdly low.
I'm curious to know what they bring in for pure profit these days. The last I'd read was about 50 million a year or so, and that was at the time that TBC had been announced, and they were still sitting at six or seven million subscribers.
I find it hard to believe they're only generating 50 million of pure profit from a 1.08 billion dollar a year income. [if you take 6 million users]
If it's a worldwide count of subscribers, you can't just take 6 million x $15 a month x 12. Places other than the US have different subscription schemes, etc.
edit: Both of you are ignoring taxes and probably other things they left out as well.
Well according to the figures in that article that I read (I think it was in PC Gamer, I don't recall) broke everything down seemingly fairly accurately.
It took into account employee wages and benefits, hardware maintenance, development costs and every other basic expense for the company, which all added up to something like 65% of their total gross income. That still left 35% of pure profit, which was (and again I could be remembering incorrectly here) about 50 million. I think this may have been prior to the launch in China (or Korea) as well, so that's something to consider.
Halfmex on
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ThomamelasOnly one man can kill this many Russians. Bring his guitar to me! Registered Userregular
Ok, so the $3 billion is actually $2.7 billion after reduced subscribers and tax rates, or $2.5 billion. Even $2 billion is a 90% profit margin, on a company that does not increase its dev team size, while seeing a steady and quite sizeable increase in the time it takes to release content.
Because there is a point where increasing the size of a programing and development team increases the time to get anything done.
I find it hard to believe that $200 would cover all of their costs, from vast swathes of hardware, to bandwidth, to staff (from developers to coders to designers to artists to voice talent to GM's to CM's, etc), on top of production costs (which they probably spent the first few months or even year digging themselves out of), to production costs involved with making and shipping those millions and millions of games around teh world, localization costs, and a wide variety of other amounts required to do business at a scale that they do. $40 million a year for all of that, along with whatever extra costs that might creep up now and then (like legal fees for that font battle they had with some company a while back).
I'm no financial expert, but I always assumed that their yearly expenditures would've been much, much higher.
Edit; also remember that over half of those players might be on a different pricing scheme. NA and Euro players pay monthly/quarterly/whatever, but (or so I've heard) many players in the asian market don't pay a monthly fee, but instead have a much higher initial purchase price on the software itself. We (NA/Euro) make up something around 1/2 or less of WoW's playerbase. (About 4.5 million or so, last I heard)
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Ok, so the $3 billion is actually $2.7 billion after reduced subscribers and tax rates, or $2.5 billion. Even $2 billion is a 90% profit margin, on a company that does not increase its dev team size, while seeing a steady and quite sizeable increase in the time it takes to release content.
Because there is a point where increasing the size of a programing and development team increases the time to get anything done.
I'm trying to think of a significant negative factor or significant time increase that would result in hiring two additional artists to shore up the art assets that were lacking for so long. I can't think of any.
Edit: I don't think the $200 million includes any costs from production of the original game, or the expansions. But then, we've only been talking about subscription revenue, and not revenue from selling the boxes themselves.
Septus on
PSN: Kurahoshi1
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ThomamelasOnly one man can kill this many Russians. Bring his guitar to me! Registered Userregular
Ok, so the $3 billion is actually $2.7 billion after reduced subscribers and tax rates, or $2.5 billion. Even $2 billion is a 90% profit margin, on a company that does not increase its dev team size, while seeing a steady and quite sizeable increase in the time it takes to release content.
Because there is a point where increasing the size of a programing and development team increases the time to get anything done.
I'm trying to think of a significant negative factor or significant time increase that would result in hiring two additional artists to shore up the art assets that were lacking for so long. I can't think of any.
Increased meeting time to make sure that art styles stay inline with the general style or to keep art styles consistent within an instance. Increased lead time to make sure that people understand what's planned better. More QA time to make sure that those art styles look the same.
Simply throwing more warm bodies at a solution doesn't solve the issue. It's like throwing more cooks into a kitchen. There comes a point where it's too many cooks and it becomes a negative thing.
Well I'm not denying that the cost efficiency may fall, but there's a hard cap on the amount of art assets you'll get produced with 5 artists, instead of 10. It's possible that the 6th and 7th artists may not be as good as the 4th and 5th, but you still need them to ramp up production.
Well I'm not denying that the cost efficiency may fall, but there's a hard cap on the amount of art assets you'll get produced with 5 artists, instead of 10. It's possible that the 6th and 7th artists may not be as good as the 4th and 5th, but you still need them to ramp up production.
It's not a cost efficiency issue, it literally becomes an issue in which you end up spending more time coordinating assets then you get time out of new assets. The more people you have on a project the more you get people heading in their own directions. But it's not just meetings, it's time spent asking other people "Why did you do X?"
You're assuming that there is a diminishing returns, when the reality is there is a point in which it has a negative return.
I'm curious to know what they bring in for pure profit these days. The last I'd read was about 50 million a year or so, and that was at the time that TBC had been announced, and they were still sitting at six or seven million subscribers.
I find it hard to believe they're only generating 50 million of pure profit from a 1.08 billion dollar a year income. [if you take 6 million users]
If it's a worldwide count of subscribers, you can't just take 6 million x $15 a month x 12. Places other than the US have different subscription schemes, etc.
edit: Both of you are ignoring taxes and probably other things they left out as well.
Taxes are tacked on top of the subscription cost. For instance the $15 a month would be almost $18 on your bill.
Nope, I only see 14.99 on my credit card.
I don't think most online subscriptions can be taxed in most areas, since sales tax is a state thing.
Sales tax from game card sales is lopped on top of the preset price, so it's you, the consumer, who sees the sales tax, not Blizzard, or even the retailer.
Of course, there's probably a whole slew of corporate taxes, I imagine, but I don't really know that much about that.
End on
I wish that someway, somehow, that I could save every one of us
The attunement requirements for Onyxia's Lair have been lifted. The Alliance quests had to be removed due to King Wrynn's return. As I said in the quest forum, we'll try and come back to this one and adjust the questline to work with the current timeline. That won't happen for launch.
I wonder how easy she is at 80.
Al Baron on
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
edited September 2008
Internet transactions get to avoid sales tax. One of the perks of it being an entirely new area of law that the government doesn't quite know how to deal with yet.
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
The attunement requirements for Onyxia's Lair have been lifted. The Alliance quests had to be removed due to King Wrynn's return. As I said in the quest forum, we'll try and come back to this one and adjust the questline to work with the current timeline. That won't happen for launch.
I wonder how easy she is at 80.
Very easy... I'm sad, that quest line was good exp for time spent for Alliance.
Internet transactions get to avoid sales tax. One of the perks of it being an entirely new area of law that the government doesn't quite know how to deal with yet.
This has been explained to me before, but I thought I specifically pay sales tax in Texas.
I know there's some early compact going on, among 13 states or so to adopt either destination-based sales tax or origin-based sales tax, which will have all sorts of ramifications on local revenue, and this has been stuck in Congress for a while.
That's totally awesome about Onyxia, now I won't have to get attuned on my Horde hunter.
I'm curious to know what they bring in for pure profit these days. The last I'd read was about 50 million a year or so, and that was at the time that TBC had been announced, and they were still sitting at six or seven million subscribers.
I find it hard to believe they're only generating 50 million of pure profit from a 1.08 billion dollar a year income. [if you take 6 million users]
If it's a worldwide count of subscribers, you can't just take 6 million x $15 a month x 12. Places other than the US have different subscription schemes, etc.
edit: Both of you are ignoring taxes and probably other things they left out as well.
Taxes are tacked on top of the subscription cost. For instance the $15 a month would be almost $18 on your bill.
Nope, I only see 14.99 on my credit card.
I don't think most online subscriptions can be taxed in most areas, since sales tax is a state thing.
Sales tax from game card sales is lopped on top of the preset price, so it's you, the consumer, who sees the sales tax, not Blizzard, or even the retailer.
Of course, there's probably a whole slew of corporate taxes, I imagine, but I don't really know that much about that.
I had higher on mine because of NYS. They've recently rescinded this law in Cali last I knew, so that NYS can't charge companies sales tax on online purchases. At least that's what Newegg and Blizzard have told me.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
0
ThomamelasOnly one man can kill this many Russians. Bring his guitar to me! Registered Userregular
Internet transactions get to avoid sales tax. One of the perks of it being an entirely new area of law that the government doesn't quite know how to deal with yet.
Not quite true. If a business has a physical presence in the state then they are required to collect sales taxes for people in that state. That's the same as mail order businesses.
Internet transactions get to avoid sales tax. One of the perks of it being an entirely new area of law that the government doesn't quite know how to deal with yet.
This is not true as a blanket statement. For example if you live in New York state and you buy something online, the retailer has to pay sales tax. link
And technically speaking, in most states, you are suppose to report any out of state purchases on your taxes under "use tax".
Internet transactions get to avoid sales tax. One of the perks of it being an entirely new area of law that the government doesn't quite know how to deal with yet.
This is not true as a blanket statement. For example if you live in New York state and you buy something online, the retailer has to pay sales tax. link
And technically speaking, in most states, you are suppose to report any out of state purchases on your taxes under "use tax".
They've changed this recently though. Again.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Internet transactions get to avoid sales tax. One of the perks of it being an entirely new area of law that the government doesn't quite know how to deal with yet.
This is not true as a blanket statement. For example if you live in New York state and you buy something online, the retailer has to pay sales tax. link
And technically speaking, in most states, you are suppose to report any out of state purchases on your taxes under "use tax".
They've changed this recently though. Again.
Still use tax, the government does know how to deal with it. It's just most people ignore it and hope they didn't get audited when they bought that 50" plasma online.
Internet transactions get to avoid sales tax. One of the perks of it being an entirely new area of law that the government doesn't quite know how to deal with yet.
This is not true as a blanket statement. For example if you live in New York state and you buy something online, the retailer has to pay sales tax. link
And technically speaking, in most states, you are suppose to report any out of state purchases on your taxes under "use tax".
They've changed this recently though. Again.
Still use tax, the government does know how to deal with it. It's just most people ignore it and hope they didn't get audited when they bought that 50" plasma online.
I know. I hardly doubt they'd do much more than "hmm just make sure you keep track of it in the future, and pay us $80 for tax on that $1000 purchase."
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Blizzard makes a fuck load more money than CCP but EVE Online gets free expansions.
Done.
Also, lets completely ignore the pyramid scheme that is RAF. It's caused about 20 people in my guild to buy second game clients already. By buy game clients I mean pay Blizzard with a credit card online and require them to provide absolutely no physical product.
Every time I think about how much money MMOs make it makes me physically angry that they are allowed to operate with virtually no checks and balances, make gluttonous amounts of cash with very little to no product, and hide all their financial information without having to defend their business model on a moral or legal level.
That said, every time they charge me $15 I shrug and accept the fact it only costs me 50 cents a day.
Posts
And yet, I had it installed and running 2 days before my friend who preordered -- and I paid less
Thank god for Amazon and pre-ordering the collectors edition to save me from that.
Watch it jiggle
I have every faith in my fellow raider's ability to react to environmental hazards.
So shaman are going to get 1% chance to block out of their glyphs?
A development team that has never had substantial increases in size?
Shocker.
Sounds about right to me.
I find it hard to believe they're only generating 50 million of pure profit from a 1.08 billion dollar a year income. [if you take 6 million users]
Shitty thing is I haven't been able to play in months, so my only 70 now and probably before launch is going to be my Rogue. Shaman is still 65, Warrior 62.
What really sucks is that my laptop doesn't have a DVD drive (it, uh, fell out), so I'll need to buy an external one along with the game. I mean, that's something I would have to do anyway -- laptop without a CD/DVD drive is pretty crunky -- but it's still sort of a hassle.
I'm pretty excited though.
Pretty gosh-darn excited.
Do Achievements in WoW confer any kind of bonus or reward, or are they just for bragging rights? This is the one new feature I've been unable to scare up any more info on.
Rough math time!
So lets say over these 4 years Blizzard has had 5million subscribers on average (10mil now 0 to start).
And they pay between $12 and $15 a month so about $145 - $175 (160 average) per year
So (160*4) = 640
640 * 5,000,000 = $3,200,000,000
So before any character transfer, name transfer, account transfer, buying the game and BC money, they are ahead 3bil.
some give unique titles, tabards, small pets or mounts.
most are just for epeen
If it's a worldwide count of subscribers, you can't just take 6 million x $15 a month x 12. Places other than the US have different subscription schemes, etc.
edit: Both of you are ignoring taxes and probably other things they left out as well.
I love me some bullshit items
I have the crimson TCG tabard + Sawbones shirt on my Rogue
I could use some of that crap for my other characters
Taxes are tacked on top of the subscription cost. For instance the $15 a month would be almost $18 on your bill.
Yeah yeah. But 50 million is still around a 4-5 percent profit, which just sounds absurdly low.
It took into account employee wages and benefits, hardware maintenance, development costs and every other basic expense for the company, which all added up to something like 65% of their total gross income. That still left 35% of pure profit, which was (and again I could be remembering incorrectly here) about 50 million. I think this may have been prior to the launch in China (or Korea) as well, so that's something to consider.
Because there is a point where increasing the size of a programing and development team increases the time to get anything done.
I'm no financial expert, but I always assumed that their yearly expenditures would've been much, much higher.
Edit; also remember that over half of those players might be on a different pricing scheme. NA and Euro players pay monthly/quarterly/whatever, but (or so I've heard) many players in the asian market don't pay a monthly fee, but instead have a much higher initial purchase price on the software itself. We (NA/Euro) make up something around 1/2 or less of WoW's playerbase. (About 4.5 million or so, last I heard)
I'm trying to think of a significant negative factor or significant time increase that would result in hiring two additional artists to shore up the art assets that were lacking for so long. I can't think of any.
Edit: I don't think the $200 million includes any costs from production of the original game, or the expansions. But then, we've only been talking about subscription revenue, and not revenue from selling the boxes themselves.
Increased meeting time to make sure that art styles stay inline with the general style or to keep art styles consistent within an instance. Increased lead time to make sure that people understand what's planned better. More QA time to make sure that those art styles look the same.
Simply throwing more warm bodies at a solution doesn't solve the issue. It's like throwing more cooks into a kitchen. There comes a point where it's too many cooks and it becomes a negative thing.
Does this add to the current conversation? Probably not.
It's not a cost efficiency issue, it literally becomes an issue in which you end up spending more time coordinating assets then you get time out of new assets. The more people you have on a project the more you get people heading in their own directions. But it's not just meetings, it's time spent asking other people "Why did you do X?"
You're assuming that there is a diminishing returns, when the reality is there is a point in which it has a negative return.
Nope, I only see 14.99 on my credit card.
I don't think most online subscriptions can be taxed in most areas, since sales tax is a state thing.
Sales tax from game card sales is lopped on top of the preset price, so it's you, the consumer, who sees the sales tax, not Blizzard, or even the retailer.
Of course, there's probably a whole slew of corporate taxes, I imagine, but I don't really know that much about that.
I wonder how easy she is at 80.
Very easy... I'm sad, that quest line was good exp for time spent for Alliance.
This has been explained to me before, but I thought I specifically pay sales tax in Texas.
I know there's some early compact going on, among 13 states or so to adopt either destination-based sales tax or origin-based sales tax, which will have all sorts of ramifications on local revenue, and this has been stuck in Congress for a while.
That's totally awesome about Onyxia, now I won't have to get attuned on my Horde hunter.
I had higher on mine because of NYS. They've recently rescinded this law in Cali last I knew, so that NYS can't charge companies sales tax on online purchases. At least that's what Newegg and Blizzard have told me.
Not quite true. If a business has a physical presence in the state then they are required to collect sales taxes for people in that state. That's the same as mail order businesses.
This is not true as a blanket statement. For example if you live in New York state and you buy something online, the retailer has to pay sales tax. link
And technically speaking, in most states, you are suppose to report any out of state purchases on your taxes under "use tax".
They've changed this recently though. Again.
Still use tax, the government does know how to deal with it. It's just most people ignore it and hope they didn't get audited when they bought that 50" plasma online.
I know. I hardly doubt they'd do much more than "hmm just make sure you keep track of it in the future, and pay us $80 for tax on that $1000 purchase."
Blizzard makes a fuck load more money than CCP but EVE Online gets free expansions.
Done.
Also, lets completely ignore the pyramid scheme that is RAF. It's caused about 20 people in my guild to buy second game clients already. By buy game clients I mean pay Blizzard with a credit card online and require them to provide absolutely no physical product.
Every time I think about how much money MMOs make it makes me physically angry that they are allowed to operate with virtually no checks and balances, make gluttonous amounts of cash with very little to no product, and hide all their financial information without having to defend their business model on a moral or legal level.
That said, every time they charge me $15 I shrug and accept the fact it only costs me 50 cents a day.