I happened upon this little gem today:
They link to an article that suggests that Blizzard has spent $200 million to date (five years so far) on keeping WoW up and running. That seems like a lot (and it is), but compared to the revenue they are likely bringing in with over ten million subscribers at around $15/month ($9 billion over five years, or $1.8 billion per year), that’s a surprisingly small amount. Now, non-Americans don’t pay as much as we do for a few reasons, and they haven’t had that many subscribers for the whole five years, so that total is probably closer to, say, $2-3 billion or so, but still… yikes.
I’m not sure I can take those assertions at face value, as it seems to me that such news would be a good reason for some uproar directed at Blizzard and the subscription model, and I can’t find much online as yet to corroborate those numbers. Still, they gibe well enough with my back-of-the-envelope guesstimates.
Perhaps the lack of outrage is merely ignorance, much like the lack of outrage about the Federal Reserve, fiat money, fractional reserve lending and interest/usury. People just don’t know about them, or understand why things are so out of whack.
…and maybe I need to bust out my tin foil hat with the cute little propeller. Still, if the recent trouble with AIG, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and a host of others on the brink is any indication, it’s very possible to have big things afoot and still see a lot of people blithely going through life unawares.
It’s one thing to say “I know about it, and I’m doing what I can about it, though it isn’t much” and completely another to not even be paying attention. Americans have a stigma of being stupid and ignorant… do we really need to feed that perception?
…please pardon me while I check on the American Idol Presidential race…
Tish Tosh Tesh 
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