Aha, but you&#x27;re using the assumption that there are an equal number of WoW tokens bought by players and sold by players.<p>Blizzard could sell 20 million WoW tokens each month to players for cash even if only 2 million tokens are bought by players for virtual currency. Blizzard needs only buy the remaining 18 million tokens on their own auction house in exchange for virtual currency (which, conveniently, they can create out of thin air).<p>The question here, then, is not about the number of active accounts, but: how much extra cash are players willing to put into the game in order to get gear &#x2F; avoid grinding &#x2F; gain a competitive edge, etc. The size of this market could be very different; Wikipedia links to [0] (2008), which on page 10 examines some possible lower ($200m) and upper ($1.4bn) bounds for the annual size of the market. Of course, not all of that is WoW, and not all of it would necessarily be captured by Blizzard, but that&#x27;s where I&#x27;m pulling the &quot;tens to hundreds of millions in additional annual revenue&quot; from.<p>[0]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sed.manchester.ac.uk&#x2F;idpm&#x2F;research&#x2F;publications&#x2F;wp&#x2F;di&#x2F;documents&#x2F;di_wp32.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sed.manchester.ac.uk&#x2F;idpm&#x2F;research&#x2F;publications&#x2F;w...</a>