WoW: Welcome to Azeroth, Population 8 Million

It seems like just yesterday that Ingrid reported the astounding number of six million subscribers for Blizzard’s behemoth MMORPG. From early March of last yest until January 11th of 2007, World of Warcraft has somehow managed to suck even more people into the colourful virtual void. Up 2 million subscribers this year, the game that everyone keeps waiting to plateau shows no signs of slowing, and with the impending release of The Burning Crusade expansion pack, the number could grow by leaps and bounds yet again.

WoW, Wow, w0w, wOw…however you want to abbreviate it, now sits at a comfortable 8 million registered, paying accounts. Let’s do a little math.

Eight million gamers have dished out at least $19.99 for the retail boxed version, or the online acount upgrade (after a trial):

8,000,000 x $19.99 = $159,920,000

After the “free” month that you get when you purchase, you are charged $14.95 USD per month to continue playing, so:

8,000,000 x $14.95 = $119,600,000 per month

I’m going to assume that every month, 10% of subscriptions lapse, but that they are replaced with new users. That means that over a year, in addition to the $160 million Blizzard has already made on the selling the software, they rake in an astounding:

$119,600,000 x 12 = $1,435,200,000 per annum

In case the zeros are a little blinding, that’s $1.44 billion dollars per year. Billion. Factor in a 25% increase in total subscriptions from year to year, and the amount of extra cash that will be shelled out for The Burning Crusade, and the total starts to look downright ghastly.

I’m not going to consider in all of the licensed gear and apparel profits, not anything other than the actual subscriber costs, and will even cut Blizzard some slack by recognizing that a game of this size requires a lot of revenue to keep it staffed, running and smooth. So let’s half the proposed total. That leaves us with seven hundred and seventeen million, six hundred thousand dollars ($717,600,000). Not too shabby.