NPD Reveals World of Warcraft's Lifetime Sales in the US

nova18

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I was trying to figure out roughly how much they get from subscription when the shocking truth hit me.
These are just the US sales.

Imagine how many European, Chinese and Korean subscribers there are. Then add in the other sales and subscription from other countries.
Jesus, they probably have enough money to buy the countries their selling games to.
 

jmdin83

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Jun 25, 2009
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yeah, they
FeverSK said:
Wait. If there were only 1 million of active p(l)ayers of WoW, then Blizzard would get 15x1,000,000 dollars A MONTH.

WAT
yeah, they recently celebrated 11 million active accounts.
165million per month.
And we still deal with lazy and shoddy "new" textures and designs for new Tier gear. Wizards of the coast makes MAYBE 1/4 of the money blizzard does, and have over 6000 different pieces of artwork, including armor appearances, in just their Magic the Gathering property. Bad Blizz. Stop being lazy.
 

Singing Gremlin

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Ok, let's do the maths here. Original purchases aside, they claim to have approaching 12 million subscribers. We'll round that down and say 11,000,000. We'll also assume every one of those is on the 6 month plan, so bear that in mind. That comes to $12.99 a month per head.

So, 12.99*11000000=142890000

Yeah. 142,890,000 dollars a month. At a very, very conservative guess. Bear in mind if the average comes to a dollar more for each head, they'll make another 11/12 million.

How have these guys not bought the solar system yet?

Edit: Curses, by jove. I appear to have been ninjaed somewhat. Watson, fetch the blunderbuss! We'll snuff these black clad blighters yet, wot!
 

SirSchmoopy

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Zeldadudes said:
Its 11million subscribers or so i believe.
Although i think Aion will soon remove WoW from the market...
Dream On. No name IP that is just a Guild Wars clone won't do anything to the WoW market but make it bigger. MMORPGs don't get killed off by other ones, I'm not sure why people think thats how it works these days.
 

laryri

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SirSchmoopy said:
Zeldadudes said:
Its 11million subscribers or so i believe.
Although i think Aion will soon remove WoW from the market...
Dream On. No name IP that is just a Guild Wars clone won't do anything to the WoW market but make it bigger. MMORPGs don't get killed off by other ones, I'm not sure why people think thats how it works these days.
The only game that could kill World of Warcraft is World of Warcraft 2.
 

Cortheya

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IxionIndustries said:
Blizzard should spend it's money on enslaving humani- Oh, wait a minute..
That's EA's job or Activision's.....wait that's the same company.....
laryri said:
SirSchmoopy said:
Zeldadudes said:
Its 11million subscribers or so i believe.
Although i think Aion will soon remove WoW from the market...
Dream On. No name IP that is just a Guild Wars clone won't do anything to the WoW market but make it bigger. MMORPGs don't get killed off by other ones, I'm not sure why people think thats how it works these days.
The only game that could kill World of Warcraft is World of Warcraft 2.
Didn't work for EQ 2
 

Byers

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Sparrow Tag said:
8.6 billion? And Dead Space only sold 1.5 million?

Somethings not right there.
You're right. Dead Space should have sold far less if there was any justice in the world.
 

benbenthegamerman

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SirSchmoopy said:
ShaunnEvz said:
Woooooooot I am one of the subscribers to WoW ! I enjoy every second of the game, excellent but I got to say a bit pricey !
How is 15 a month pricey? Average gamer buying a game per month spends 60.
i know plenty of people who quit becuz of the price. i mean, i can understand why some people might find it expensive. i think its worth it. ive been a fan and hardcore player for about 4 years, and i dont think im gonna stop any time soon. theres nothing wrong with that right?
 

Computer-Noob

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Zeldadudes said:
Its 11million subscribers or so i believe.
Although i think Aion will soon remove WoW from the market...
Yeah, devs have only been trying to do that since 2004. I doubt an MMO with so little hype as Aion will ever come close to toppling the fat social-stealing money giant that is WoW.

Blizzard had already made three Warcraft RTSs, one starcraft RTS, and two Diablo RPGs. This doesnt include expansions. Unless the devs of Aion have a shining trophy wall of huge successes, Aion will only make people wish they stayed an extra month on WoW.
 

benbenthegamerman

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jmdin83 said:
yeah, they
FeverSK said:
Wait. If there were only 1 million of active p(l)ayers of WoW, then Blizzard would get 15x1,000,000 dollars A MONTH.

WAT
yeah, they recently celebrated 11 million active accounts.
165million per month.
And we still deal with lazy and shoddy "new" textures and designs for new Tier gear. Wizards of the coast makes MAYBE 1/4 of the money blizzard does, and have over 6000 different pieces of artwork, including armor appearances, in just their Magic the Gathering property. Bad Blizz. Stop being lazy.
in blizzard's defense, my cousin works there and is one of at least 500 employees in the entire world. that being said, lets say you were put in a room with 500 people and you were supposed to do a server maitenence, work on the artforms for Diablo 3 and the starcraft 2 beta, make preperations for the convention, work on things for the next patch, and on top of that talk to players about the troubel theyre having with the game. oh, and you have a 3 day deadline. i dont think theyre lazy, i just think they have too many things to keep them occupied besides using the same skins and textures for t8 or t9 armor sets. just sayin.
 

Syntax Error

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SirSchmoopy said:
ShaunnEvz said:
Woooooooot I am one of the subscribers to WoW ! I enjoy every second of the game, excellent but I got to say a bit pricey !
How is 15 a month pricey? Average gamer buying a game per month spends 60.
The real question here is do you buy one game every month? You just feel the price because you're continuously dipping in your wallet for payments, as opposed to getting a new game (which would be a one-time purchase). Plus, you can sell your game if you're finished with it. Sure, items in WoW fetch quite a price, but if I remember correctly, Real Money Trading (RMT) will get you banned (or at least looked down upon).
 

Flos

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Remember that Blizzard has a lot of bills to pay. They have to pay for the tech support across the world, still pay the developers and translators, and pay for all the servers they're using. Everything Blizzard does costs money.

Still, they sure are profiting on a massive scale.
 

Amnestic

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Aug 22, 2008
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8.6 Million copies in the US, which accounts for approximately 3-4 million active accounts last time I checked (Europe is something like 2.5 to 3 with the Asian market making up the rest.)

If you count the numbers up, there might be something like 20 million copies worldwide, if not more.

More interested in the worldwide numbers personally, but this was still pretty cool to note nonetheless.

Oh, and anyone who says that $15/month is expensive? That's just under 50 cents per hour if you play it for a single hour every day over your month.

If you play it for 2 hours per day, it obviously drops down to 25 cents/hour.

Expensive entertainment indeed, especially considering some games these days come with a $60 price tag and offer you 10-15 hours of entertainment, which being generous offers $4 dollars/hour.

That said...as someone who's been playing since EU release, I've spent just under £480 if my napkin maths is correct on subscriptions alone, with an extra ~£60-80 on the actual game plus expansions.

So about £540-560 for four years of entertainment. That's a pretty damn good investment if I do say so myself.

Edit: Actually it's less because I pay for my subscription in three month blocks which is slightly cheaper than paying monthly. £25 for 3 months rather than £27 (9x3). Comes out to £450 with some time left over in my current payment, bring the total down to £510-530.
 

Sparrow

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Byers said:
Sparrow Tag said:
8.6 billion? And Dead Space only sold 1.5 million?

Somethings not right there.
You're right. Dead Space should have sold far less if there was any justice in the world.
Well now, that's just mean.

I have alot of love for the past two days I've spent with Dead Space. It's a shame that I'm cheating on Fallout 3, but a man has to do what a man has to do.

(Also, I quite like the storyline. It's like Bioshock. IN SPACE. And everyone knows that something is better if it's in space.)
 

Byers

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Sparrow Tag said:
Byers said:
Sparrow Tag said:
8.6 billion? And Dead Space only sold 1.5 million?

Somethings not right there.
You're right. Dead Space should have sold far less if there was any justice in the world.
Well now, that's just mean.

I have alot of love for the past two days I've spent with Dead Space. It's a shame that I'm cheating on Fallout 3, but a man has to do what a man has to do.

(Also, I quite like the storyline. It's like Bioshock. IN SPACE. And everyone knows that something is better if it's in space.)
It's like a cliche. IN SPACE.

Honestly it's Doom 3 with camera issues starring Frances the faceless mute.

Now, I can forgive a lot of "boy has this been done before" familiarities if the game was actually well crafted and clever. But the camera was atrocious, the scares were just the same alien zombie jumping out from the corner and going "Boo!" event over and over, and the story just fell completely flat with its complete straightforwardness and the absence of any kind of emotional or personal connection to the main character or his long lost girlfriend.

Also his suit became more and more hideous and ridiculous looking the more you upgraded it.

I am completely at a loss as to why it's been lavished praise upon by a notable amount of reviewers and players. It's a story-driven game with a poorly told story, and an action game without entertaining action. And it's definitely not scary. Scary has been done so much better before.
 

Boxpopper

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Something doesn't seem right. I don't know why, but that number seems kinda low.

Like, how are there 10 million + players, and yet they haven't even sold 8 million copies of the game?
 

Amnestic

High Priest of Haruhi
Aug 22, 2008
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Boxpopper said:
Something doesn't seem right. I don't know why, but that number seems kinda low.

Like, how are there 10 million + players, and yet they haven't even sold 8 million copies of the game?
It's safe to assume that World of Warcraft has sold quite a few copies at retail in the US. Now we can add a number to that assumption thanks to the NPD, who have revealed the lifetime sales figures for WoW to Gamasutra. Counting every single version of WoW that's been released thus far, the series has sold a whopping 8.6 million copies to date.
Bolded the important part. We have to assume that they're talking about US retail sales only, rather than worldwide.