WoW: Blizzard's Celestial Cash Cow
http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/83423
*Update* Wowhead article ->
"So I was speaking with Draknorr, who has been doing some math about the release of the Celestial Steed mount pictured to the right.His friend entered the queue for a mount, and at the time the queue was at almost exactly 100k, and the stock ticked from 91% to 90% as he watched. When it ticked down to 89%, there were 46k in the queue. That's around 54,000 mounts for every 1% of the total stock—or, I would guess, about 5 million total mounts.So this means that every 1% of the stock, they've sold 50k mounts at $25 a piece. That's $1,250,000. At the time of this writing the queue was at 88%—making that $15,000,000 so far—and that's just in the United States. Holy cow."
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I really don't know what to say. Blizzard is brilliant [their 3d modellers probably spent like 1 day to create this celestial horse - basically they gonna make tons of money with almost zero "work"], however I don't understand that how can a person pay $25 for something like this. Incredible. [e digicons]O[/e]
If Blizzard had said from the getgo "We may decide to start charging for individual items" I could possibly agree with some of these arguments. However, people have spent countless hours in the game leveling up characters, and while the game is very basic (all classes available to both sides of the race war, and only 2 sides in said war) and lacking any kind of diversity, at least until now offered the same chances for everyone assuming they purchased the expansions. When these players started playing this was not an expectation because they are already paying the fee and purchased the game itself.
Granted the mount doesn't change the balance of the game, but it's the principal of the thing, and the potential now for Blizzard to actually make something that DOES affect the balance of the game.
No it doesn't. The principle of charging for game changing items is different from charging for fluff.
And they HAVE done this since day one. What do you think the collectors edition was? You paid more and got... pets. The BC and Wrath expansions also had collectors editions, and again both feature pets in exchange for more money. The 2009 arena tournament featured a pet for people who participated (causing people to make teams and sign up just to get the pet), and the past several Blizzcons have all given pets (or mounts, or costumes) to attendees (and most recently to people watching on DirecTV). The trading card game has rare cards with all kinds of frivolous effects, including a rare spectral mount. Hell, the pet store itself opened months ago.
So... where have you been? All they've done differently is eliminate the middleman. You want the goodie, you now buy it directly instead of buying some other box that contains it, or having to go to ebay. We're five years into this, and there's still no sign of gameplay affecting items.
I guess this is on topic -
Blizzard Entertainment already charges over 11 million World of Warcraft players up to $15 a month for access to the world of Azeroth. Now the company hopes those subscribers will be willing to tack on a few extra dollars each month for access to new WOW-related features.
The company has announced a beta testing period for World of Warcraft Remote, a $3 monthly subscription service that will allow players to manage their in-game auction house activities from a Web browser or through the World of Warcraft Mobile Armory app for the iPhone and iPod Touch (Blizzard is considering adding support for other mobile devices). During the beta, players will be able to test out all the features of World of Warcraft Remote for free.
Once the service goes live, World of Warcraft players will still be able to use some features without paying for the additional subscription. Browsing auctions, receiving notifications when auctions close or players are outbid, and viewing various character information and status updates will all remain free.
However, bidding and buying out auctions, placing items up for sale, collecting gold, relisting items, or cancelling actions will all be limited to those players who sign up for the additional subscription fee. A list of the in-game realms currently running the World of Warcraft Remote beta test is available on Blizzard's official World of Warcraft forums.
The auction app is just the latest source of revenue for Blizzard, which analysts are expecting to have a very successful year. Pacific Crest Securities' Evan Wilson is predicting that the real-time strategy game Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty will sell more than 6 million copies after it launches July 27. Wedbush's Michael Pachter believes that, combined with the launch of the latest WOW expansion, Cataclysm, Blizzard could see game sales of 12 million units this year.
They wouldn't do it unless they are going to make money out of it and they don't have to do it to stay ahead (they are doing that with game content - not external features).
Put simply - no MMO is half as good as WoW. (THIS IS MY OPINION! Not based on popularity but how much I care about the game, the world, lore, story, features, options, my agency within the game etc) They are also the most popular western "sub" game and that means no competition, that means they can charge whatever they think people will pay.
All these other MMOs have to do deals, cut corners (and they STILL don't know how to get players properly - Im constantly seeing customers turned off because of bad design).
I am not sure about this....they are not half as popular. Popularity |= being the best, but huh...this is a matter of subjective opinion I guess.
Sometimes you do things like this to maintain customers, not just charge them more. WoW won't be on top forever. They just won't be. It's only a matter of time. Nickle and diming their playerbase to death will only speed the process.
"I was still considering buying Starcraft 2 (aka Starcraft 1 with slightly different units and improved graphics) but now i'm afraid they are going to charge for extra levels, or game modes, or units....."
Well they are breaking the game up into 3 full price games. instead of xpacks.
Okay its my opinion. As in its features, its playstyles, options and content are - in my opinion - far better than any other MMO I have tried (thats means the features fit me more than other MMOs) and the others I extrapolate from others opinions to be the same. Thus, my "Put simply" statement.
Nesrie, your correct. Note that EQ2 is doing a $25 mount also now* (which is crap since it dosn't have wings - I wonder if the EQ2 developers from 2003 acttually knew their bad designs would screw over the game for the next decade?).
* as opposed to a $26 or $22 one - all they ever seem to do at SOE is steal everyone elses methods, they sell other crap as well I think. I havn't played EQ2 since RoK.
In the business world, "best" is pretty easy to figure out. Blizzard makes more money then pretty well every other MMO combined. There's WoW, and then there is everybody else. Nothing is even close.
For the "best" game, that's subjective. Blizzard is obviously doing something right, though.
Pricing on the next two hasn't been announced yet, so that's speculation. The only real difference is that you don't need the first one to play the second one, whereas with a normal expansion you do. But really all they did in this case was pre-announce the expansions, rather then waiting until release then telling people what everybody already knew was coming.
And more importantly - they should be offering far more depth into the single player story! Now yes, this could be a simple Activision cash grap but as I have said before I trust blizzard for now that I plan to get them all. That can change.
I loved starcrafts singleplayer - I get the feeling this will put SupCom2 (oh the humanity) and C&C4 to shame but I could be wrong.
(also I edited my ealier post to add in the subjectiveness of my statement lol)
The problem is the MMO business model has shifted from let's sell this game, build a playerbase, and maintain that playerbase by offering an ever evolving world with constant free updates, new content and well goodies and when we have something really big in the works charge for an expansion pack.
Now it's more like, forget the playerbase, let's hype the hell out of our unfinished often still in beta status game, sell the hell out of it, watch most those players leave, while those remaining players are asking for ridiculous things like fixes to bugs and features we promised and might even have written on the box, open up a cash shop and start selling them more while we still can because we're just going to loose them anyway. Later down the road, what, we still have players left, obviously we're not charging enough! Let's get these sucks, err players, again and find another way to charge them. New mounts, extra monthly services, heck some of us might even create a premium service... you know one where you send a message to customer service and you actually get a reply back! That should certainly up the monthly charge from 15 to 25, 30 easy!
EQ2 is in no position, by the way, to try and milk their playerbase. At least WoW has a substantial playerbase, EQ2 still need to get that.
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