GC: New WOW expansion every year - Blizzard

By GamesIndustry International Published 24 August, 2006

Plus, Burning Crusade date talk.

Blizzard COO Paul Sams has told our sister-site GamesIndustry.biz that the company plans to release a new expansion pack for multi-million selling MMO World of Warcraft every year.

Speaking in an exclusive interview, Sams said, "Starting with The Burning Crusade, every year thereafter we plan on bringing out a new expansion set - so every 12 months."

The Burning Crusade is the first expansion pack to be released for WOW. According to Sams, details of the beta will be announced in the near future. As for the release date - "We're still quoting very confidently winter and we will be more specific on the timeframe quite soon."

Although the code on the show floor in Leipzig this week has already been shown once, at E3, German consumers don't seem to mind - with Blizzard's booth almost impossible to navigate on the first public day of exhibition.

Come back tomorrow to read the full interview with Paul Sams and find out which next-gen machine he prefers, and what his thoughts are with regard to bringing WOW to consoles.

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Comments (32) Latest comment 6 years ago

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

  • York #1 6 years ago

    Money money money money moneeeeeeey.

  • rinoaMW #2 6 years ago

    well people want more. So what?

  • Tiiti #3 6 years ago

    I want one every 6 months... :(

  • hjarg666 #4 6 years ago

    Bah, going over to Everquest business model. :(

  • dudefella #5 6 years ago

    As long as the expansion packs offer enough content to justify the price tag, I'm behind this. And it's smart as it keeps the 60s playing and paying.

  • Dizzy #6 6 years ago

    Like drug dealers!

  • El_MUERkO #7 6 years ago

    major new content once a year should be nice, assuming i'm still playing

  • Carlo #8 6 years ago

    This isn't mandatory is it?

  • rinoaMW #9 6 years ago

    lets put it this way - the more "major content" they release, the more likely you WILL continue playing. And if the if the other expansions follow the £17.99 price tag (like BC on Play.com) once yearly - then that is an excellent price to pay for great new content and the amount of enjoyment you get from it...

    EDIT: No it isn't Carlo
    Edited by rinoaMW at 24/08/06 @ 15:56

  • redd #10 6 years ago

    reads: the end of any other blizzard games.

  • InfiniteFury #11 6 years ago

    Nah, they had an interview with one of the senior bods yesterday up on the WoW site. They believe in a 5-8 year model for MMOs. I reckon 3 more annual expansion packs followed by an announcement of the next game then a couple of years winding down on WoW with new dungeons patched throughout that time.

    They could be developing a new MMO right now and they probably wouldn't say much. Would make the current players too twitchy and feel like it wasn't worth playing the current one any more.

    Edit - don't get me wrong, World of Starcraft would positively get down on its hands and knees and lick my balls, that's how good it would be. I think it'll happen eventually but all's good until then.
    Edited by InfiniteFury at 24/08/06 @ 16:10

  • smelly #12 6 years ago

    >reads: the end of any other blizzard games.

    reads : blizzard making shit loads of money to spend on other games.

  • Psi #13 6 years ago

    how much money is wow actually making them?

    i honestly think it'll be like that mrburns smithers scene where he shouts 'money fight!'

  • zoidberg #14 6 years ago

    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 !!!

  • InfiniteFury #15 6 years ago

    I suppose the critical question is how big can the MMO market potentially be?

    There's little point in Blizzard spending $50million making World of Starcraft and another $50million making World of Diablo if their share of the market ends up being 6,000,000 subscribers - with each game taking 2,000,000 subscribers.

    You can only commit to one MMO after all. I never want to meet the person trying to play two - and chances are of course, I never will :-)

  • Blood_and_Thunder #16 6 years ago

    For the amount of money they make, I think they should have been offering the stuff in the expansion pack as part of regular patches for the game. For £7.99 a month you get very little extra content for that cash, only playing the game and thats it. For Blizzard's massive profit they should be providing far more addon stuff for that subscription fee.

  • Nillsens #17 6 years ago

    I quit WoW last week, I've never been happier :D

    My ex-girlfriend is still addicted and met someone new through it... I hope she drops dead ^_^

    These two statements are unrelated.

  • InfiniteFury #18 6 years ago

    The only thing that makes me happier than quitting WoW is coming back to it :-)

  • Sko #19 6 years ago

    "For £7.99 a month you get very little extra content for that cash, only playing the game and thats it."

    That's it? Ignoring the all new instances, raids and battlegrounds, you mean? (and of course, all the associated quests, items, recipes, etc. that they bring).

  • Gl3n #20 6 years ago

    Guild wars does it every 6 months. Which seems too often imo. Every year seems about right.

  • Kazzahdrane #21 6 years ago

    "For the amount of money they make, I think they should have been offering the stuff in the expansion pack as part of regular patches for the game. For £7.99 a month you get very little extra content for that cash, only playing the game and thats it. For Blizzard's massive profit they should be providing far more addon stuff for that subscription fee."

    Emm.....have you ever played WoW for any length of time? The amount they add with every patch is staggering, this is the first expansion we're talking about and the game has already grown enormously since launch.

  • jonbwfc #22 6 years ago

    zoidberg:

    Your numbers probably aren't far off but you're not taking the full costs into account. Running an MMO of the size of WoW is a massive undertaking - they have several data centres with probably hundreds of servers to run in each 'zone', plus the bandwidth charges they have to pay must be astronomical.

    I'd say your sums for takings are pretty much correct but profit probably isn't more than 10% of that. So say total takings of WoW so far are about $1billion. So profit is very roughly $100 million over two years. $50m a year profit is certainly not to be sniffed at. However they probably don't see all of that - their publishers will also take a big chunk. They're not poor; in fact I'd be surprised if they weren't the most profitable PC developers in history but they're probably not in a position to start giving thing away that they could charge for and people will happily pay for.

  • EmiliasHorse #23 6 years ago

    As a resident (Officially now Purple in the great new patch 1.12..Yah!) of Azsune my master is often found to be complaining about Blizzard: Money bags should be doing this, that and the other...cuss cuss. But when I mention (In horsey speak) that maybe she should go try another game her responce is always... Why go to another game when WOW is the greatest game ever released? She is right.
    Azeroth has never been busier across all realms, with the expansion due it will only get bigger and better. Yearly updates to the greatest game ever? Yes please.

  • SeesThroughAll #24 6 years ago

    Blizzard is the new EA :D

  • zoidberg #25 6 years ago

    @jonbwfc

    You make good points, and I agree, I only specified some rough income numbers only, not their expenses.

    However, no business manager (and let me put business in bold lettering) will price a game where he will profit a meager 10% from it. It's more along the lines of:

    $12 / month breakdown:
    20% publisher
    40% server/bandwidth costs
    40% blizzard profit

    $40 / purchase breakdown:
    40% publisher
    20% cost of product
    20% retail and VAT
    20% blizzard profit

    I don't think Blizzard will take the Guild Wars path of not taking monthly fees. It's still a business and however much passion the developers (artists, programmers, and the likes) put into the game, the managers and most importantly shareholders/owners want as much profit as possible. They are doing all this and still making an incredible franchise with millions of players. From a business perspective, why shouldn't they do yearly expansions and charge people for them?

    Another good business model is 3D Realms, but let's not get into it.
    Edited by zoidberg at 25/08/06 @ 10:32

  • mezzomorto #26 6 years ago

    Also, let's not forget to factor Blizzard's owner-publisher, Vivendi into the equation when talking about the drive for profits from WoW.

    Thanks to the devastation caused by Jean-Marie Messer's wild spending spree a few years ago, Vivendi need all the revenue they can get to get out of the red (I'm referring more to the company as a whole, not just Vivendi Games - though still have "fond" memories of urgent requests for hardware being turned down as being "too expensive";).

  • Psi #27 6 years ago

    Nillsens don't worry about it, he's probly a spotty larper anyway.

    any whoever said they take a lot of costs with bandwidth... erm their updates are via bittorrent! everythings cut down for profit.

  • EmiliasHorse #28 6 years ago

    Blizzard don't need to bother counting the money they earn, you guys do that for free...Oh and grumble and complain... Blizzard the new EA?!?.


    It's simple. You want to keep playing or not.

    The button "speak your brain..." should be replaced with vent your anger. :)

    /mutters

  • Sko #29 6 years ago

    "any whoever said they take a lot of costs with bandwidth... erm their updates are via bittorrent! everythings cut down for profit."

    Erm, I think they were talking about the people actually playing the game, not the patches specifically.

  • SeesThroughAll #30 6 years ago

    No anger at all mate, this just goes to show that any company milks it's own cashcow, whenever they find it... In any case, a steady flow of new content is always goods news for WOW regulars...

  • EmiliasHorse #31 6 years ago

    Agreed Blizzard are milking WOW and hopefully they will do so for many years.
    Unlike other famed milkers Blizzard care deeply for thier babies, a company who released a patch for Starcraft 8 years after launch shows just how dedicated they are.

  • Markusdragon #32 6 years ago

    Am I the only person who's never cared about Blizzard in any way?