How do MMOs make money?

What a stupid question. They make money off the sale of the game, the subscription fee (which is just a steady flow of free money that goes towards nothing) and expansion packs. The only cost in running a server is the front-end cost setting it up. After that you hire onstaff techs to maintain it (which is nothing) and pay the fee of electricity to run the servers and massive AC units for the server rooms. Part of my job is running a massive server for a biomedical research center. There is little to no maintanence cost. Atleast not one that would warrent 15 dollars a month from 10million people.

Makes sad that Lineage and Lineage 2 are beating AoC and WAR - makes me think there is no hope for new mmo's out there.

There is this new gaming reality show on Sci Fi Channel. I decided to check it out because I noticed XBOX is in the show and it's all about video games and I actually really liked it. It's on Tuesdays at 10pm on the Sci Fi Channel. Here is a drinking game I found on another site to play during this Tuesday's episode b/c it's on St. Pattys day.


www.wcgultimategamer.com


• Every time you hear Samsung or see a logo, drink for 5 seconds
• Every time you hear WCG or see a logo, drink for 8 seconds
• Every time you hear Virtua Fighter or see a logo, drink until you don’t hear/see it anymore
• Every time Dante plays with his hair, drink for 10 seconds
• Pick a gamer – every time they cry, drink while in a funny position
• Pick a gamer – every time they curse, assign a drink to someone
• Predict whether a team will pass or fail the real world challenge.
o If you are correct, make someone else drink.
o If you are incorrect, you drink.
• Predict which gamer will win the Isolation Challenge.
o If you are correct, make someone else drink.
o If you are incorrect, you drink.
• Predict which gamer will win the Elimination Challenge.
o If you are correct, make someone else drink.
o If you are incorrect, you drink.

Well one expense you missed was the bandwidth pipe to allow all those people to actually access your servers simultaneously. Not to mention business insurance to cover your exposure from the half bajillion frivolous lawsuits a year. Oh then there's marketing, that runs up in the millions, MR T and The Shatt don't come cheap! Then there's the cost of the buildings that house your servers, taxes on everything in and out of your doors, other buildings and servers in other countries....ya you missed allot, hell I am probably missing a bunch myself! It is a great business model in the end, your going to make FAR more than you spend if you have a fun game that keeps people coming back and fanbois flaming (your free marketing, how ya like that?).