(WoW) Money Lost for Downtime Credit

CGMark · Post by **CGMark** » Wed Jul 27, 2005 1:01 pm

Now, I dont know server population numbers. My guess had been about 3500 people per server. So if you look at that, with 15 Bux a month for your fee, and divide that 15 bux by a 30 day month, you get .50 cents a day. That means from one server alone with a population of 3500, Blizz looses 1750 Bux for one day of player credit. Multiply that by 10 servers, and your looking at 17,500 Dollars they loose for just one day.

BUT, I saw a number that seemed high to me at 25,000 people per server. If we go with those numbers. .50 Cents a day, for 25,000 people is 12,500 Dollars. Mutliplying that number by ten is 125,000 Dollars just for one lost day. Either number seems a lot to me.

I suppose in the big picture ( of some 3 million users) its not much. Paying all thier emplyees, plus the programmers who worked on the game, who I am sure still see money, not to mention the programmers who still work for them on patches, content, and what not. Customer Service. Building Fees, electricty not only for buildings that servers are housed in since they arent all on one place, which also means extra staff to care and maintain them, but the amount of electricity used to just RUN a server. I would imagine that takes a large chunk of thier money away. If someone has some more concrete numbers or another view, I would love to see em. Maybe some numbers on what it costs to run a server, electricity wise? Or someone who runs a office building and can give some sort of idea as to electricity bills for that.

They just busted a landlord here in the Detroit area, for not paying the waterbill in the apartment building. Not a 2-3 story building, but something like 10 stories high. Just to get the water in the building turned back on was 6000 bux.

The Mad Hatter · Post by **The Mad Hatter** » Wed Jul 27, 2005 2:13 pm

I doubt Blizzard's monetary loss is much consolation for those players whose servers have been down since Tuesday morning.

CGMark · Post by **CGMark** » Wed Jul 27, 2005 3:39 pm

My server is down as well. Whisperwind. So I know the feeling there. I was just trying to work out monetary loss to them. Not as any sort of consolation really.

Peacedog · Post by **Peacedog** » Wed Jul 27, 2005 3:49 pm

I suppose in the big picture ( of some 3 million users) its not much.

Well, that's a gross of 45 million dollars per month. Yes, it's expensive to do alot of the things you said.

But that's a nice starting point to deal with all the expenses.

CGMark · Post by **CGMark** » Wed Jul 27, 2005 8:23 pm

i understand as a base number they see 45 million a month. Or somewhere there abouts based on overseas numbers, which I am sure are slightly different then the number we get here.

So building rent, property tax, electric, water, gas, Salary Emplolyees, Blue Collar Employees, Maintenance people. Keep in mind that there are at least two locations for servers here in the US. not to mention at least two overseas locations for servers as well.

CGMark · Post by **CGMark** » Wed Jul 27, 2005 9:07 pm

Ok, as a side note. I found a link that says office space on everage in the San Fran area is 50$ per square foot, per month. In relation to this. A 5 story office building here in Detroir area was listed at 250,000 square feet. That means one month of rent is about a million bucks a month. Just for building rent. I cant seem to find any numbers that make any sense to me for property taxes though. Most forumals work off numbers that I dont know. They all seem geared for people who know some sort of sccounting, and I Dont.

I also dont know anyting about servers, so I cant begin to look for information on what one costs to own, rent, maintain, and what not. But, a million dollars a month in rent seems like A LOT.

Peacedog · Post by **Peacedog** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 9:17 am

So building rent, property tax, electric, water, gas, Salary Emplolyees, Blue Collar Employees, Maintenance people. Keep in mind that there are at least two locations for servers here in the US. not to mention at least two overseas locations for servers as well.

Yes, but I can assure you that these things do not total 45 million dollars a month. I'll wager they don't total 30 million.

And let me assure you the "player credits" aren't going to strain them much.

Alefroth · Post by **Alefroth** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 11:15 am

It's not like they are actually losing that much money per day. They are just postponing by a day when they will get paid. It is hard for me to see it a loss for them.

Ale

RLMullen · Post by **RLMullen** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 11:39 am

They are just postponing by a day when they will get paid. It is hard for me to see it a loss for them.

I'm glad you aren't my accountant.

nomorals · Post by **nomorals** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 5:04 pm

Well, considering no gaming company that i know of maintains it's own datacenter facility and farms it out instead, this whole discussion is a waste of time. And although you've researched square footage costs that doesn't help much if you don't know where the datacenters themselves are located.

CGMark · Post by **CGMark** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 10:24 pm

I understand that, I was just using it as a example with SOME numbers as opposed to no numbers.

Also. Lets say 200 people work in said office, averaging 12 dollar a hour and 40 hours a week. I am sure this number is low for a tech related business, but lets just say. thats 125,000 dollars a month.

I am not saying Blizz doesnt make money. If they didnt make good money, they wouldn't do it. Its just bad business if they did. But people think that blizz is just rolling in money. And to most of us the numbers are HUGE. Considering I make 25,000, thereabouts, a year, and I work my ass off most of the time to do that. Seeing numbers like that for a one month number seems like oodles to me. But it costs lots of money to run a business. Just to start up say a Uno's like I work at costs 5 mil, just for the building and equipment, to start. That was our store, there is one nearby thats actually costing them 10 to start up.

I understand people get disgruntled. "I pay for said service, and I see your are making said amount of money, so why cant I have things a certain way?'. I dont get the impression that Blizz LIKES having to take servers down for a day and credit some 350,000 users. Because some of those users will not renew.

Grifman · Post by **Grifman** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 12:28 am

RLMullen wrote:
They are just postponing by a day when they will get paid. It is hard for me to see it a loss for them.
I'm glad you aren't my accountant.

Yeah, I was trying to understand that one, myself

tals · Post by **tals** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 1:54 am

BUT, I saw a number that seemed high to me at 25,000 people per server. If we go with those numbers. .50 Cents a day, for 25,000 people is 12,500 Dollars. Mutliplying that number by ten is 125,000 Dollars just for one lost day. Either number seems a lot to me.

I believe (was true about 6 months ago), that the max server population is 2000 people - after that the queues kick in. However server population is not the same as people who use the server which could be 25K, possibly higher. They now have 100 realms in the US - assuming the server populations are fairly equal

http://www.blizzard.com/press/050720.shtml

2 million subscribers in US then that comes in around 20,000 people per server so the 25K sounds about right for the more populated servers - probably more.

However getting back to the original point

Do WOW now reimbuse for server downtime and if so how do they work out which server you are mainly active on? If they don't then its not them loosing any money

Tals

Cofcos · Post by **Cofcos** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 3:15 am

...Clearly you've been reading the official WoW forums and this has caused you to perform a thinly veiled backlash-- STOP! Those forums will errode anyones sanity.

Your arguement doesn't pass the "Cofcos Certified Sane Posit" test. You're arguing pity for a company which is, now, most successful in their field; which would have retained said profitablity for almost a year after release even if they hadn't charged a monthly fee to begin with(they finished paying development costs off boxed sales ages ago...)*...

I'll weep for Blizzard the same day I weep for Microsoft... Which Blizzard is quickly turning in to from my point of view.

*It confused me, too. But after reading over Arena.net's buisiness plan, I think it could apply to all such services-- Just takes a lot more upkeep.

Cofcos · Post by **Cofcos** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 3:40 am

I thought I'd qualify this: "Which Blizzard is quickly turning in to from my point of view." since the download I'm waiting on seems to have stopped...

It is my belief that VUG is, at the moment, cashing in on the good will Blizzard pent up through the years. I think this not due to inane balance complaints or "over-sights": But due to the fact most of the freaking staff have left the company!

...Well, that didn't take as long as I thought... I'm sure no one's interested in hearing my rant about Blizzard, anyway...

LawBeefaroni · Post by **LawBeefaroni** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 10:05 am

They don't lose or pay out "lost time credits."

The days they give you are tacked on to the end of whatever subscription you have. Subscriptions are anywhere from 1 month to a year. Say you have a 3 month sub. You get 3 days of credit. Those days only really mean anything if you were going to quit on the exact day your sub ran out and ended up playing 3 more days and then quit. I promise you they have more people quitting and not playing out the end of their subscription (or not playing every day) than they've give out lost time credit.

Alefroth · Post by **Alefroth** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 12:33 pm

RLMullen wrote:
They are just postponing by a day when they will get paid. It is hard for me to see it a loss for them.
I'm glad you aren't my accountant.

Me too. Lawbeef did a good job of explaining it, maybe he will be your accountant

Ale

tals · Post by **tals** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 1:44 pm

LawBeefaroni wrote:They don't lose or pay out "lost time credits."

The days they give you are tacked on to the end of whatever subscription you have. Subscriptions are anywhere from 1 month to a year. Say you have a 3 month sub. You get 3 days of credit. Those days only really mean anything if you were going to quit on the exact day your sub ran out and ended up playing 3 more days and then quit. I promise you they have more people quitting and not playing out the end of their subscription (or not playing every day) than they've give out lost time credit.

But how do they know the server you use. Is their benefit in creating a character on every server to get credits whenever any of the servers are down?

Tals

RLMullen · Post by **RLMullen** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 2:08 pm

Alefroth wrote:
RLMullen wrote:
They are just postponing by a day when they will get paid. It is hard for me to see it a loss for them.
I'm glad you aren't my accountant.
Me too. Lawbeef did a good job of explaining it, maybe he will be your accountant

Ale

Actually, before taking a left turn into software engineering, I was an accounting major... only had 3 classes left to graduate, then I was sitting for the CPA exam.

Lawbeef explained things well from the standpoint of the customer, but from the standpoint of the business, he is still wrong. When they give 1 day credits, they lose revenue... period. That is one day of revenue that cannot be regained. It is revenue that cannot be shown on their quarterly profit-loss report... or their yearly profit-loss report.

I know that somebody is going to try to explain away the fact that people quit, don't use their full subscription, etc. All of that is completely moot from the standpoint of accounting.

Edit: stupid spelling errors

CGMark · Post by **CGMark** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 2:43 pm

I dont know how they know. Maybe they look at played time per person on servers, and determine it that way? <shrug> A lot of this is speculation really.

I am not saying its right that servers go down every week for 6 hours. Or that servers that I dont play on, go down during the week, or the high end instances crash. Or like on Uldum, the server a friend at work plays on, his Cousins guild got to Onyxia, and there were TWO of her there.

Being on Whisperwind, i think for the most part we have it good. Yea, we cant post our ID's in the forums, but we dont crash, we dont really have lag issues anymore. I cant think of times hearing about instance crashes. WW has really always been one of the most stabel servers even when I frsit started playing and servers were going down all over the place.

All I really wanted was to look at some number, not just for me, but to sort of show other people. Blizz is making good money or they wouldnt do it. Why would any business continue to do something if it wasn't profitable? Seeing some numbers helped me as well. I mean giving people a days credit really didnt seem like much to me. When I sat down though and looked at the numbers, its a nice chunk.

Talked with a techie guy at work, and he said prolly electric wise for 90 servers your looking at 100,000 a month. Just for the servers. I dont know about what your bill for the rest of the building would be. I mean if I run my air here in my apartment like I did most of July it cranks my little apartment bill to almost 70 bux.

tals · Post by **tals** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 2:57 pm

90 servers your looking at 100,000 a month

Sack the techie - on his calculations that is >1000$ a month per server. I'd be shocked if a server costs that much to run (electric)

Tals

msurby · Post by **msurby** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 7:26 pm

RLMullen wrote:
They are just postponing by a day when they will get paid. It is hard for me to see it a loss for them.
I'm glad you aren't my accountant.

It's called the Wimpy Accounting Technique (WAT). It is a theory based entirely upon a quote from the character from the Popeye cartoons: "If you buy me a hamburger today, I will gladly pay you on Tuesday."

SlyFrog · Post by **SlyFrog** » Sat Jul 30, 2005 10:47 pm

RLMullen wrote:
They are just postponing by a day when they will get paid. It is hard for me to see it a loss for them.
I'm glad you aren't my accountant.

I don't know; as accountants need to, he seems to understand the concept of the materiality of an event compared to the income statement as a whole better than some people.