Vivendi profiting from WoW; in other news, Pope Catholic
by Jennie Lees 
Sep 12th 2006 at 12:00PM
Vivendi is certainly raking in the cash from its subsidiary Blizzard -- the company has recorded a 12.1% boost in profit for Q2 2006, and attributes much of it to WoW's phenomenal success. This isn't exactly news -- Vivendi has been reporting continual increases on last year as WoW has grown -- but it's something to think about as a player.I frequently see comments on forums and in general channels along the lines of "Blizzard are making loads of money, why don't they fix our servers/add new content/pay attention to me?". It's certainly true that Blizzard and Vivendi are profiting from WoW, but how many corners are being cut in order to announce new profit highs?
Even if Blizzard are doing all they can with the vast sums of money available, having players who think they are doing nothing with it is bad communication. These days, when Blizzard say they are aware of a problem and working to fix it, few of us believe it.
Filed under: Blizzard
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
fhornmikey Sep 12th 2006 12:13PM
Coming from a game where the developers literally hated the player base, and bugs within the game mechanics went unpatched for months, I can safely say that Blizzards customer support pretty damn good.
I honestly can't say I can complain about WoW after playing FFXI. Replace the term "class balancing" with "blatant game mechanic nerfing" and that's what the developers did to FFXI, over and over and over again. They tell people what they're doing, and have had posts about the new hardware updates for months, but people don't listen. They'd rather bitch and moan on the internet.
My server is actually down for the next 36 hours (Hellscream) because of hardware retrofitting in preperation for BC.
Jacob Marley Sep 12th 2006 12:25PM
Blizzard may take in a ton of money, but think about all the money they have to pipe back in. The bandwidth costs alone per month have to be staggering. They aren't quite You Tubeesque, but it's gotta be close.
Then you've gotta pay a staff to monitor servers 24/7 and kudos to them for keeping those servers in the states. They could have gone the way of every other American company and sent those to low-cost countries. Lord knows what the server status would be like then.
Then they pump out things like Naxx which comes out as a patch. Some software companies would call that a 30 dollar expansion pack!
No, Blizzard gives us much to enjoy and I think the whiners are only 1% of the player base. But when you are talking about 7 million users, that's still 70 thousand people. Pfft, some games don't get 70 thousand users!
My server is down also. That's fine. Will make the experience that much more smooth when they are back online.
Kudos Blizzard for the hard work! You are keeping 99% of us happy!
Jacob Marley
James Sep 12th 2006 12:29PM
People bitching about Blizzard servers and people tech support apparently have not played other MMO's. I came from City of Heroes--the first MMO I had every played, and frankly, I thought it was the norm for the developers to ignore the players, push changes they wanted to see regardless of what the playerbase wanted, and to never communicate, ever, what they were doing. Blizzard takes the time to tell users about planned server shutdowns, and even future plans. I just shake my head when people complain--if you don't like, go play another MMO. In fact go play City of Lost Connection with Mapserver Heroes where life is exciting, all the time, because you never know what the hell the developers are going to drop on you next.
And more content? Again--City of Heroes--no, and I mean NO endgame content. Congrats on level 50, now, go roll another character and do the same grind again. WoW has plenty of endgame raids, and I guess the soon to arrive Burning Crusade doesn't count as more content?
Frankly, Blizzard may not being doing everything they can for the players--but they are doing far, far more than I have seen at NCSoft. So, if you're ever curious, go play some other MMO's. I hear Star Wars Galaxies is just FANTASTIC when it comes to customer service.
Trippy Sep 12th 2006 12:31PM
Speaking of problems... the comment box for today's breakfast topic is missing...would love to comment if only it can be found. ;-)
Burgdorn Sep 12th 2006 12:36PM
Most people complain siting other games such as Everquest on how they expect service to be in WoW. One thing they don't think about is that where there money goes. A lot of server maintenance is going on all the time and many many people who work on servers agree that they are doing a very good job.
Problems first started out with WoW based on their projected figures in which case the 3 million copies might not all sell, they really weren't expecting a sellout. You may say, "Well they should have looked at the preorders." That isn't as simple a statement as it sounds, for one Blizzard is a developer and leave Vivendi incharge of shipping details, if Vivendi differs pre-orders for stores from actual orders then I would be shocked. Usually shipping companies just worry about getting the requested number to the retail chain warehouses and let them deal with the details.
Right off the bat they sold out, which is unheard of in the traditional MMO market. Follow this with the continued growth over 2 years and you are literally a part of a reshaping process in teh market then just following Business as Usual. Then we can look at actuall server management.
Servers are managed realistically, the older servers had been dealing with a constant load of new players for a long period of time. Only recently have they seen a load reduction as old players go to newer servers. On top of this the process of retrofitting isn't an exact science like most would think. They are pretty much rebuilding the entire servers to keep them stable for BC launch.
This is also very necessary, think about it. The servers are going to be crushed by the load of all the players that have left. It is estimated that 3 million players in the US are playing now, which is down from 4 million. That figure doesn't even factor in the 500 thousand to 1 million players that might have already jump shipped because they got bored, having nothing to do.
These people will probably get the expansion and log on to their older server when it is released. The oldest servers would pratically die under that load. Fact is that stuff gets old and needs to be replaced, and hindsight is always 20/20. Maybe now we can see something that could have been done better but we are individuals and not whole companies literally remaking the market as they go.
As far as complainers go, they are just that, complainer. I can bet that the majority of people in these groups don't have the slightest idea of what goes on in the business side of things and treat it as often having a simple switch. You do have the IT guys make these long post as how they could fix it but they tend to leave out the massive cost and testing necessary to see if this method is even viable.
People just need to relax and wait, things will be just fine.
Burgdorn out,
P.S. I'm from Magtheridon
Dayglow Sep 12th 2006 12:54PM
I have played WOW coming up on 4months now. I have been on multiple servers and played many different classes. Since I have been with WOW (the first and only MMO I will play) the servers I have been on have never DCed and the most my current server has been down was the day of the cross-realm BG update. I have since instances where GMs have stepped in because of player misconduct and instances where they just told people to stop whinnying (though the GM was in the right). As far as I know Blizzard releases the most free new content of any MMO and TBC expansion is monumental in comparison to everyone other MMO release...except maybe City of Heroes when City of Villains was released...anyway...
Sure my latency has been double what it normally is (85 doubled to 157) lately but sometimes there is a price for change. They'll figure it all out and when the do...well, people will still bitch about stuff; however, I will continue to believe in the effort Blizzard puts forth. Once you find something great you stick with it through to tough times…or down times as it were.
Swiftlydead Sep 12th 2006 1:52PM
There are absolutely no corners being cut. IE: The only pains are growing pains, not shrinking pains.
Kurackus Sep 12th 2006 3:01PM
I am actually one of those people who spends their whole day working with servers. The job they have done with their product is phenomenal, and I have to applaud them their ability and effort.
The one thing I would like to know for their server setup is whether they are using Virtual Machines to run their servers. This is what my company does, and with some of the new Virtual Machine setups coming out, they would be able to take the physical server down without interupting the server it self. There is one in particular that when this was done on a Quake3 server supporting 50-100 players, there was a downtime of 130ms. Future hardware upgrades may not take down the server for a day or two, but on for a few seconds at a time.
Big Dan Sep 12th 2006 4:01PM
I think the previous comments say just about everything.
I have played other games (EQ2 for a while) my first MMO was GW and I still have my account on it as well.(Its free so wth not?) But when I sit down to my computer I always come back to WOW. I have seen the havoc that can be caused during server upgrades. What we have experienced with the Blizz is nothing. I was on staff at the help desk when our mail server completely died because our company wanted to wait till the next fiscal year. We were down for 2 and a half days and still had problems/bugs to fix when we got the new ones up. So.. Blizz I bow to you. Great Job!
Angry Joe Sep 12th 2006 5:11PM
Blizzard is at the same place Ford and GM was 20 years ago: poor or no competition and a low quality product. They just need a fine competitor and things will suddenly fall in place.
Let's name it.
Customer service. Laughable. At best. Just look at the blue posts at their forums. Better yet, look at the green ones.
Hardware. Lag. Lag spikes. Disconnects. Server restart. Lag. Database corrupt. Server restart. Maintenence. "It's AT&T".
Software. Glitch. Poor ai. Bad design. Can't really play without third party ui, if you wanna experience full content(I mean raids).
Player Community. Can't really blame blizz for this one, but still ruins the game sometimes. Game policies not enforced at all. Ruined RP servers.
fhornmikey Sep 12th 2006 7:58PM
I think Angry Joe has a little sand in his vagina.
The point stands, go play another MMO and come back and try to talk shit about the job Blizzard does with WoW. Hell, show me another mmo that has 1/4 the player base WoW does that is run remotely as well.
You're one of those whinny people that make the official forums impossible to read for more than 30mins.
Angry Joe Sep 13th 2006 1:04AM
Yeah, you're right, I'll go play the game. No, wait... I can't!
So, as you said, I'm gonna whine on their official forums! Hey, I can't either! There is an error message!
I think I'll just take the sand off my vagina, thanks for the tip. WTF! I don't have a vagina!
Don Yu Sep 14th 2006 3:25AM
Blizzard is generally good but not having Australian servers with maintenances schedule when it is not peak playing time will be great. How about putting Australian server in Australia or if that's not going to be cost effective, what about putting some in Korea/China server farms?
That should remove most of the problems.
Well that's my two cents worth.
Mordiceius Sep 13th 2006 8:46AM
Angry Joe is just one of those people that is impossible to please. It is best to just ignore his ignorance. Another thing I'd like to point out is look how much free content Blizzard puts out in these patches. It's staggering. And also, note that 98% of the stuff they put out... works. I remember in games where they would release new content or xpacs and half the stuff did not work. There would be spells that did nothing but just sit on your interface. I applaud Blizzard for doing their part.
Pougen (ER) Sep 15th 2006 10:28AM
Sure, it's a well-designed game, perfectly addictive, and fun to play. Yes, they have 7 million players, and that's a tough number to please no matter how many servers they launch.
But Angry Joe has a point, and anyone who is unwilling to complain about poor hardware performance deserves the poor quality they get. Is it acceptable to have lag, disconnects and multi-day maintenance get in the way of your play time? I think not. The question here is not whether the problems exists, it's whether Blizzard is going to fix it. They will NEVER fix it as long as people blow off the problems.
And BTW, insulting other posters does NOT help bolster your side of the argument; it just illustrates the kind of people who are facilitating the poor service.
As far as the RP servers are concerned, I've pretty much stopped thinking that good roleplaying can be found on them unless you specifically look for it. I just take it with a grain of salt that for every one good roleplayer, there are a dozen players who either don't get it or don't care.