Blizzard planning new WoW expansions every year

Now all the freaks & geeks can have a orgy of WoW every year! Move over Everquest nuts, here comes the WoW mafia!

Brains!

OK...I have to say it. ENOUGH ALREADY.
I have been waiting patiently for the last 6 years, waiting for news, screenshots, anything on Diablo 3...and all I get from Blizzard is World Of Warcraft. Well I do not care for WoW (the only one on the planet from what I can understand).

Blizzard, you have till the end of the year to give me something...anything on Diablo 3. If I do not hear from you by then, you will be dead to me. As it is Blizzard, you are on notice.

I hope Blizzard realizes that this ride can't last forever. People are going to latch on to the next big thing. If that next big thing isn't a WoW expansion, then they've wasted time that could have spent coming up with the next big thing. Follow me?

I tried WOW and did not like it either.
They need to release starcraft 2 and diablo 3 already!

12 year olds everywhere must be giddy with excitement!

Blizzard is going to milk the World of Warcraft thing as long as possible. They tasted the fruits of the MMORPG tree and they like it much. What other buisness model in the gaming realm brings you revenues of $1.2 billion a month? When WoW starts to lose steam, they're going to bring out World of Starcraft, and that one will get 8 million players and be popular for years just like WoW is now.

Until the MMORPG craze dies down (the Koreans are going to do a good job of killing the genre with their cookie-cutter games that are being pumped out by the dozens), don't expect Blizzard to put a huge emphasis on lower revenue generating operations like Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, or Warcraft 4.

12 year olds might be excited.

But I think most adults realize all this means is that they are going to release only enough new content monthly (you know...the content we pay $15 a month for) to pacify the masses.

Then they are going to take the content they SHOULD have released in the monthly update and CHARGE you for it in the expansion AGAIN.

So maybe 12 year olds are giddy....but adults with any economics or marketing or medium level intelligence know what's really going on.

Yeah seriously Blizzard is going to devote pretty much all their attention to this game until WoW2 ships.

Which isn't a bad thing it shows they're loyal to their HUGE MMO fanbase, which you need to be in the MMO world. If the Devs doing listen to the players... they can kiss those revenues goodbye....

(I'm looking at you Lucasarts/SOE SW:Galaxies....)

But Derbeste to Blizzards credit, they're expansion packs usually contain a lot of new and revised system or program changes that would warrant the 15-20 whatever dollars. Kind of like when EQ would put out expansion packs, it would add all new continents and what not,
But they do add a lot monthly to the mix as well, more than enough to justify the monthly fee.

Of course i dont play Wow, but from what i've heard they do pretty well in the content area.

I tried to add up how much WoW is actually making for Blizzard... it comes to 6+ million players per month, right? All paying $12 per month right? Plus a $40 per game purchase...

12 x 6000000 = $72 000 000 per month income plus
40 x 6000000 = $240 000 000 purchases.

Although I expect there are some who purchased WoW, played a few months and now have the game on the shelf. It'd be more than 6000000 purchases...

With this kind of money, they can't make World Of Starcraft or Diablo or whatever? Come on! It took Valve $40 million to make Half Life 2 !!!

wow is getting old. now if they made a MMO based on great games like Lost Vikings, that would be gold.

Quite impressive. Very ambitious. As a fellow WoW player I think they're providing more content than people know what to play with. Even the patches come with additional content and massive gameplay changes. I can't think of any MMO that continuously delivers at this scale to the players. I just hope they hold some things back to keep the people salivating.

The problem with Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 is that they got boring real quick. The Diablo games were not true MMO's in that there was no real community, outside of Battle.net. Blizzard didn't really make Diablo 2 by the way, some other company was outsourced. It would be a simple endeavor to do the same. For those of you who are looking for a toned down online game which isn't an MMO like Warcraft but Diablo 2 style, there is always simple games like Neverwinter Nights and such.

I think the next Starcraft game will be "World of Starcraft" since there have been recent job postings for people familiar with the original.

zoidberg - It is not that they can't do it, but the question comes in to play is why would they?

(I screwed up my calculations, at $15 a month, the current subscriber base pulls $120 million, not $1.2 billion.)

Anyway, given it won't cost nearly as much to build an expansion and have a near guaranteed 6+ million in sales (of the 8 million currently there), and places like EBGames are reporting the Burning Crusade to be sold at $40, why would they spend $40 million to build another game?

Lets assume Diablo 3 takes $40 million to make. They can sell around 10 million copies of it worldwide. At $40 each (running average over the lifetime), that comes to $400 million in revenue and $360 million in gross profit (before advertising, etc).

Compare this to Burning Crusade. Most of the game is already done being built. Blizzard doesn't have to spend anything to build the engine, gameplay mechanics, etc. All they have to do is model a few new races, add a couple of tradeskills, and model a few new zones. Boom, probably ran them around $5 million max. They sell 8 million of them, you got $320 million in revenue, $315 in gross profits.

Wait, but why would they do that you ask. Fewer gross profits on Burning Crusade. Ah, but given that Burning Crusade is not just an expansion for higher level players, like Everquest does, but an expansion that offers something for every level of player, even new playesr, they just boosted the opportunity to bring in more revenue for their MMORPG baby. Also, to build that level of sales, Diablo 3 will have to be out on the market for a long while. Burning Crusade will sell much faster, meaning better return on investments when considering time value of money. Furthermore, an expansion will reduce the chance that players will leave the game, which is probably the biggest concern at this point for Blizzard.

Toss in the existing $120 million/month, and you have a clear advantage in keeping the World of Warcraft community happy and hanging around.

Keep $1.44 billion in yearly revenues from WoW fairly secure plus add another $320 in revenue on top of that or sacrifice that $1.44 billion a year pie just to release Starcraft 2? Fairly easy choice.

Vivendi/Universal's annual report for 2005 reports their games division had an operating income of 45 million euros from revenues of something like 640-ish million euros.

They make a lot of money, but the division is not very profitable. Vivendi states in their annual report that increasing their income/revenue ratio is one of their goals for 2006.

So either WoW is very expensive to run, or the other products and companies that comprise Vivendi Games are losing vast amounts of money.

I think WoW makes a shitload of profit. However on the flipside to the amount of money generated per month, I'm sure operating the servers and paying for maintenance costs quite a bit. Perhaps things even out, but I would bet that most of the money being lost is from other ventures among Vivendi's portfolio of side companies.

Here we go again, Blizzard does NOT make $15 off every subscription. They don't even make $12 (reduced rate) off every subscription. Now don't get me wrong, they are making a nice buck but please for the love of pete stop saying they are making $120m / month on this.

They have:

- Bandwidth bills
- Hardware bills
- Employee pay
- R&D

The list can go on. Income != Profit

I'm very excited about Burning Crusade, but I can't believe Blizzard could actually make a new _good_ expansion annually, I mean what could it have? New races? By the fifth expansion we can play as murlocs, furbolgs, naga etc. (or much earlier than fifth). BC is enough for me (and most likely the majority) for at least the next two years.

Point of fact is why compete with yourself lol. WoW has the largest fanbase out there for MMO's period. My guess is until they start to see a dramatic decline in sales and subscriptions they will probably not come out with anything else until it does. Similiar to there RTS's I believe. I think they staggard those.

My proposal though is that before they make promises of annual expansions they looke to improve their base models (ie server issues etc) before spreading out more.

@ Miharu

I have to disagree with you on ONE thing...

One thing the game DESPERATELY needs soon......is new classes.

The classes we have now are getting old quick and there aren't really enough to give a good sense of diversity and variety.

FFXI has like 14. I don't know about any others.

But Blizzard WILL have to add them in the future if they want to have a good retention rate over a longer period.

I know they are in the works (hero classes). But they have not been implimented because they are having a hard enough time balancing the classes they have now.

But it is the next obvious idea for expansions beyond burning crusade.

Sony's been releasing expansions for both Everquest and Everquest II every 3-4 months, so color me unimpressed.

Derbeste, Blizzard "balancing" is increased DPS when it comes to WoW.

I really don't see why people got so hooked on this game. Took me two months, and I was bored as hell. I'm a bit of a MMORPG whore, bouncing from FFXI, to WoW, to EQII (my personal favorite), to Lineage 2, and soon Vanguard. Each one has had its strengths and weaknessess, but out of all of those, WoW was the most bland.

Seriously, though. FFXI has 4 races, and 14 classes, with crappy customization.

EQ2 has 16 (17 with the new expansion coming up) races and 24 classes. With Oblivion-level customization.

WoW? 9 classes, 8 (10 with expansion) races. Bad customization.

On top of that, there are server issues, an in-game maturity level of a 14 year old, very little end-game and a 60 lvl cap that's too-easily reached. The only thing WoW has going for it is PvP, and even that is quickly being overshadowed by games that have learned from WoW's mistakes, namely, EQ2 again.

Let's not forget to mention that grouping for anything but raids and the *occasional* instance is almost non existant...for god's sake, they JUST implemented an lfg CHAT. There is STILL no LFG function.

I just don't see the point of this game,it's...basic...

All i want is some more faces, hairstyles and bodytypes etc etc.. Is that too much to ask blizzard?

Loque - WoW's attraction is two fold. One, it is an easier game to get into. Like you said, getting to level 60 is fairly simple. The bulk of the MMORPG's prior were entirely grind fests. Given the original EQ was the same thing, this turned off players from EQ2. The EverQuest name is synonymous for grinding to most people, and that is a bad thing. Furthermore, reviews of early EQ2 were not exactly friendly on the user interface, something World of Warcraft has perfected. It is very easy to pick up and play. WoW is mass-marketable, EQ2 is not.

The second factor is the mythos. EverQuest, regardless of what a lot of fans try to say, doesn't exactly have a huge, varied world filled with mythology and story. Brad McQuaid way back when EQ was still in closed BETA told the community that the focus of EverQuest was not on story and questing, but on killing monsters. The game system was specifically designed to actually PUNISH anyone questing and not camping. This didn't create an opportunity to build a living world around EverQuest.

In contrast, World of Warcraft has Warcraft, Warcraft 2, Warcraft 2: Beyond the Dark Portal, Warcraft 3, and Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne as backstories. Furthermore, Blizzard made it a point to continue the storyline in World of Warcraft itself, building numerous story driven quests into the game and made them the best way to advance your character. WoW developed a full story around the game, something MMORPG players haven't had before.

EQ2 is built for the hardcore gamer, WoW is built for the masses. This is why WoW is popular and EQ2 is not.

How can LaughingTarget have 7 stars when its shown in 2 posts on this subject that his math skills are incredibly poor. The so called "information" he gives is a detriment to this article.

#2Thryon) Diablo 3 is on retail shelves now, its called Guild Wars, the minds behind Diablo are long gone from bliazzrd. with WoW's success it seems as if all the creative minds behind Classic Blizzard titles have been replaced by WoW team members. I still have hope they will revisit the Starcraft Universe.

Blizzard needs to make a new IP...

frenchtoast -

1. I'm not perfect, I screwed up and mentioned it before anyone even called me out. I added an additional zero, it happens.

2. The other information I am posting is in fact accurate. Standard monthly rates for World of Warcraft, right from their own website, are $14.99 reoccurring per month. Yes, there are pay ahead options, like $13.99/mo for three months and $12.99/mo for six, but that doesn't change the fact that all but the hardcore population picks the $14.99 a month option because they're not sure if they'll be playing come next month.

My information is accurate, all calculations are correct with the exception of a mis-placed zero, so please check yourselves before telling someone else is wrong. If you had any stars, Mr. Toast, I believe you'd owe them to me at this point.

Jae Wu - That is true, but then again, those costs aren't all that high given Blizzard's strong priority in keeping the content updated on a regular basis. This is clearly a winning business proposition for them that clearly outperforms any of their one shot purchase titles that are nothing more than future money drains through Battle.Net. I'd probably guess the costs are roughly around $5-10 million to keep WoW going month-to-month.

Also, for anyone curious, I never once said profits of $120 million, but revenue. Revenue is money coming in before expenses.

One of the biggest expenses in running a MMORPG is the customer service. Blizzard is expanding its customer service for WOW to 1,200 people. That's about four full time customer service people per shift, per realm (roughly).