Gawd, how many times do we have to go over this. Cost of the game helps cover the years of development, just like with any other game. The monthly payments help to cover the massive bandwidth cost, 24/7 service coverage, continuing development and programming, etc, etc. Everyone keeps talking about 600,000 copies sold at $50 each plus $15 for a month, Blizz must be rolling in phat lewt right now. That's probably BS, especially since the first month was free, and probably some that bought the game didn't continue past the first month. The continuous work that's going on with the battlegrounds, honor system, and fixing existiong issues is already tapping them out of resources and the website has plenty of Looking to hire messages. This is not cheap to maintain.