Originally posted by Kuro1n

TL;DR, read the first part.

The more users the more the cost... theres a average amount of bandwidth every user will use every month and except for that you need to protect your server against stuff such as DDOS atks and such things, you also gotta have GMs and other staff taking care of exploiters and ppl abusing different things as well as a small group of developers to fix bugs. ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC.... Theres a neverending list.

Yeah, I figured there were a lot of costs that are hard to put a nail on so that is why i guessed $2 million a month to maintain for about 88k players or so.  I have no idea really, but it must be rediculous, and I suspect any profit made from th $14 a month must fluctuate as well as players come and go, expansions are created, etc.  Anyhow, interesting topic I think. 

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

Originally posted by Turnell

My guess, about 2 million a month

 

I"ve seen other estimates, adn this sounds about right.

 

Here's what the servers for Darkfall look like. This sort of high tech set up is not cheap:

lol'd hard

Originally posted by Kuro1n

TL;DR, read the first part.

The more users the more the cost... theres a average amount of bandwidth every user will use every month and except for that you need to protect your server against stuff such as DDOS atks and such things, you also gotta have GMs and other staff taking care of exploiters and ppl abusing different things as well as a small group of developers to fix bugs. ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC.... Theres a neverending list.

don't forget the building(s) that these servers are stored in, the manpower to clean and keep the building operational, utilities, security for said building, insurance on everything... and so on

Tree Fidy

Originally posted by Rintintin

Yeah, I figured there were a lot of costs that are hard to put a nail on so that is why i guessed $2 million a month to maintain for about 88k players or so. 

That math puts you in the hole for about 700 grand a month. :)

Payroll would probably make the bulk of overhead provided your servers arent giving you much trouble. Im guessing f2ps (aside from a lower development/licensing cost) do have a larger profit margin than p2p games, since they somehow manage to run on a much smaller scale. PWI got started with three servers and after a year theyre up to five with nationwide (in the US) distribution of prepaid cards. Those guys were even selling those at 7/11s. They probably have a payroll at around 1 mil and im guessing something like around 30k active accounts? No more than 50-60k at any rate... Their developers are in China and although i imagine they send money back home, their operations would be reduced to management, billing, localization, GMs and Hamster pellets (someone has to keep the servers running). 100 grand a month? That would make it something around 2-3 bucks a month from each user just to keep going, and from my experience in the game i can say they probably make at least twice that, even with 3-4 guys playing for free for every paying customer (im sure at least half are paying overall). Now operations in North America are handled by a branch of the Chinese developer. The game had an expansion earlier in the year and theyre coming with a new one before the year ends (if not already) that will add 1 race and 2 classes. All of this im guessing is being paid by Chinese users where the game has been around for 5-6 years. On top of that they license their game to other operators in about a handful of Asian nations, Russia and Europe.

This "small" operation probably has a larger profit margin than Blizzard, even if at a lesser volume. And thats just one f2p, which unlike some other p2p releases last year actually managed to grow. While it seems the game was originally intended as a p2p (in China it even got to have a housing system) im pretty sure development costs were nothing like what western games spend.

This ofc, is all troll math and guesstimates but may help in providing something of a bigger picture.

Edit; Btw, im glad to see DF finally came around to upgrading their servers.

Something to read. : )

http://www.ncsoft.net/global/ir/prfile.aspx?ID=27C7C416-AB3F-4C49-B68B-ACCD3AC78E6A

WoW costs an average of $50m a year.

I remember reading a few stories about it last year.