WOW celebrates Lunar New Year

By Tom Bramwell Published 20 January, 2006

And one million Euro subs.

As you may have spotted, Blizzard's revealed European WOW subs are now over a million, and fans of the game will be able to share in the pyrotechnic delights of some well-timed fireworks if they feel like celebrating.

Not that it's a sale-a-bration; things'll be getting sparkly in Azeroth on account of the Lunar New Year. Between January 27th and February 14th there'll be celebrations focusing on Moonglade - the 29th will also see celebrations in Stormwind, Thunder Bluff and Booty Bay, while all the capital cities will be decorated.

Then on Feb 13th, there'll be a proper firework show in Moonglade paralleling the Chinese "Festival of Lanterns", during which a big light show will take place over Lake Elune'ara.

There'll be some gameplay-based events too - the celebration's focused on the inhabitants of Azeroth's ancestors, and quests offering holiday items as rewards will be doled out by Elder Ghosts throughout the world. They'll cough up tokens players can redeem against things like rockets and fireworks, Festive Dumplings, Lunar holiday dresses and suits and a special red lockbox with a surprise inspired by the Hong Bao given during Chinese New Year.

There'll also be a raid encounter boss named Omen active during the period, and even newbies can take him on. He's been inspired by "Nian" from Chinese lore, and indeed that'll be its name in the Chinese version of WOW.

For more information, refer to the World of Warcraft site.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000. Follow him on Twitter.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (14) Latest comment 6 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • citizenHUNTER #1 6 years ago

    Ok, so my friend recently got into this, it doesn't interest me too much.

    What does though is adding things up in my head... It costs £8 a month to play this... they hove a million subscribers alone in just Europe, I could find out but I guess that means maybe at least 5 million worldwide.... 5 times 8 equals £40 million a month!? Am I doing something wrong here, because surely that makes them ridiculously wealthy... That's them making almost half a billion pounds a year, something like 1 billion dollars... Can someone please reassure me they are not making THIS amount of profit for just for this game? Cos if they are it's extraordinary!

  • #2 6 years ago

    Yes, they're making that much.

    Blizzard employees routinely sleep on piles of money with many beautiful ladies.

  • gaijin #3 6 years ago

    that's not the version of the rumour I heard - I heard Blizz employees sleep with many piles of money on beautiful ladies. Or maybe that they *have* lots of piles... I get confused.

    Few points on the maths - I don't *think* they have that many subs worldwide. Also, £8 is the UK rate - I can't imagine that's what the chinese are paying? And that's not profit, that's revenue. So you can remove start up and running costs, which I imagine to be not insubstantial.

    But yes, people will pay a lot of money to become a virtual level 60 undead tauren shaman with a big chopper, while their real lives languish into old age and decrepitude, youth's young bloom spent and etc etc


    Edited by gaijin at 20/01/06 @ 16:11

  • Bertie Verified Senior Staff Writer, Eurogamer.net #4 6 years ago

    WoW's a good game and the celebrations for the different seasons and the content that's added over time is very nice and blah blah.

    They are making a lot of money from the game, they have a lot to 'support' consistently. There's all those servers that never seem to have worked properly, and training for that customer care team ;)

    They're making a lot, it'll be interesting to see where it goes.

  • rinoaMW #5 6 years ago

    "Few points on the maths - I don't *think* they have that many subs worldwide. Also, £8 is the UK rate - I can't imagine that's what the chinese are paying? And that's not profit, that's revenue. So you can remove start up and running costs, which I imagine to be not insubstantial. "

    they have over 4m subs for the Uk and US alone - with probably 2 billion chinese players? ;)

    also i pay £8.99 a month (lets call it £9).

  • gaijin #6 6 years ago

    @rinoaMW

    ok then, I sit corrected. And the world is an even more topsy-turvy place than e'er I dreamt it.

  • MrAtheist #7 6 years ago

    Of the 5.5 million, I would guess (judging from previous press releases) 2.5 million (1 mill Euro accounts, 1.5 North America + misc) accounts for the $15 a month model. For Asia, Vivendi has licensed the game to local partners and the fee is much lower.

    Sony used to brag about gross margins of 40% for EQ, so yes, Blizzard dudes are swimming in money and banging supermodels.

    According to my calculations, by the year 2014, Vivendi will be able to buy France and turn it into "World of REAL Warcraft".

  • madcrazy #8 6 years ago

    @MrAthiest

    Thing is, Vivendi is only getting a single bit of money for each unit sold. They aren't getting continuous revenue like Blizzard, and Blizzard will also get a little cut out of every retail unit sold. So Blizzard really are making heaps of gold. They might even be able to afford an epic mount!

  • MrAtheist #9 6 years ago

    Dude, Vivendi own Blizzard... :)

  • Martin #10 6 years ago

    Besides the start-up costs, you need to take into account the running costs:

    - Server maintenaince
    - Wages
    - Bandwidth consumed
    - Housing (employees and server space)

    And probably a lot more.

    Sure, they *might* have a 40% profit from every WoW acount there is but I'm guessing that it's lower. Who knows when in EQ's life cycle that 40% quote is from?

    In 2-3 years I'm sure that WoW will be a lot more profitable but right now it's most likely not the cash cow everyone makes it out to be.

  • MrAtheist #11 6 years ago

    The 40% figure is from an old business2.com article from 2000, just as EQ was entering its peak years of 400,000+ subscribers. I have seen this margin figure backed up by other industry figures several times over the years (somewhere in the region of 40-60% for a MMOG).

    WOW would have easily made its initial production costs ($40 odd million) back in just a few short months and now its a money printing machine. The figures involved are amazing. With just a bit more growth its entirely possible for it to march towards $1 billion in revenue a year. To put that into perspective, EA (the biggest game publisher out there) has revenues in the region of $3 billion (but the margins on WOW are way better than EA gets.)

  • AOFanboi #12 6 years ago

    Also (IIRC) remember Blizzard counts actually active accounts, unlike Sony's "units sold" or "accounts registered - whether active or not" or "Station Pass customers who theoretically could be playing it even if they aren't".

    One million actively questing/dungeoneering Europeans.

  • ekko #13 6 years ago

    I got to level 60 and did a fair number of high end dungeons (including Molten Core attempts). I gave up after finding that the high end dungeons with 40 players wasn't really my cup of tea and I much prefered the normal dungeons and normal questing.

    Is there any reason to go back? If I did go back it would be to a new server and I would be restarting (got bored of my old class before it even it 60). I know there is the expansion due some time this year - but if it is just going to be high end dungeons for 40 players I am not going to be too interested.

    Sigh.

  • Aga #14 6 years ago

    You could try your hand at the new 20 man instances, but there are not that many new 5 man instances. I guess you played enough to experience Dire Maul.