Everyone knows that Blizzard make a lot of money from World of Warcraft every month, but have you ever wondered how much it costs to keep the MMO operation running?
If you did, then you need not wonder any more. Blizzard have calculated that since the game launched in November 2004 until now; the operations behind it total US$200 million. That does not include the cost of developing the game, just paying for everything to keep it running. Those would be costs such as running the servers, paying the support staff, and marketing the game.
The figure was stated during an analyst conference call and if it seems high, then just think about their revenue stream. A WoW subscription costs US$15 a month and back in January Blizzard announced there were 10 million subscribers. So if we use that as a base they are generating US$150 million a month before any charges.
In other words, the operations costs for the past 4 years of running WoW are recouped by Blizzard every 2 months.
Read more at Kotaku.com