How much has WoW cost you?

[ravenmoon]

Let's try and figure out how much wow has actually cost you. Can you figure it out? or give a rough estimate? Are you brave enough?

Game purchase + expansions + game time + character services + game shop

How many cups of coffee is that?

What about time spent? That's also a cost factor right?


Then throw in exams, opportuniteis, jobs, relationships, trips, vacations, family members etc

Have I missed any other cost factors?

-- EDIT ADD (from reply 17)---

there is also the time cost of doing wow related content:

1. Reading and posting on fan sites like MMO-champion, wow reddit, wowhead, ice-veins etc etc

2. Trips to conventions like Blizzcon

3. Youtube & Twitch following videos and streams

4. The amount of people you had to be rude too because they were interrupting you during the raid , arena, or dungeon (esp M+) you were running - then what that cost you with them.

Was wow the primary reason you upgraded your PC? Be honest!! Especially if the old one would have done for all the other purposes you were using it for. If so, then you can add the entire cost of the PC or any upgrade you made.

[Jyggalag]

I don't dare check or even bare thinking about it. All I can say is money well spent. I'd do it all again with the cost up front.

[Schizoide]

Roughly three grand, over the lifetime of the game.

[Maljinwo]

Easily more than 40.000 ARS
But my country's economy is awful, so it ramped up during these years. It doesn't seem like a lot I guess.
Haven't lost any relationship or job for playing. In fact, I found my wife playing wow

Also, it's incredible the amount of threads you churn out each day. I'm convinced you are some sort of AI trying to learn about us to destroy us in the future

[babyback]

I only un-subbed for a short while between wotlk and Cata.

So I’ve probably spent more than I want to know. But hasn’t hurt me financially.

[Guildenstern]

..everything

[ravenmoon]

I don't dare check or even bare thinking about it. All I can say is money well spent. I'd do it all again with the cost up front.

You're braver than I thought. I don't think I would touch it if you summed up how much money I had spent on this elaborate escapism.

Yes, I dare not check either, you do it

[Dellis0991]

My wallet: Don't you look at me!

[RoKPaNda]

It's actually a pretty cheap experience. It's a lot of cups of coffee though considering the cost of a cup of coffee is around 20 cents unless you throw money away at Starbucks or the like. So about 75 cups of coffee per month? A couple thousand dollars over 15 years most likely. We could break it down into how much a game costs and how much time on average one gets out of games but that's going to vary greatly by person. For example I like ARPGs so something like PoE is "free" and you can squeeze a lot of game play out of it, versus something like say God of War which is $65 after tax and you get 12~ hours out of it.

As for missed exams / opportunities / jobs / relationships / trips / vacations / family members etc: 0. I guess if you have a compulsive disorder or addictive personality you'd miss out on those things for WoW, or Sports, or most other hobbies. I've personally never had that problem. I've always scheduled WoW around my life, not my life around WoW. Though I have known people over the years who have scheduled their entire lives around WoW. Most people that play it, even at the top, are pretty normal people with pretty normal lives though.

[Throwme]

CAn you figure it out? or give a rough estimate?

Somewhere between A Lot and Not Enough.

It has cost me a good amount over the years, but as I continue paying with real money and not use tokens for bnet currency, it's obviously closer to Not Enough.

[Alaenore]

I guess about 3000 euros, maybe 3200, in 15 years.
In comparison it's about what I've spent last year in Uber, so a pretty good deal if you ask me.

[Drusin]

What about time spent? That's also a cost factor right?


Then throw in exams, opportuniteis, jobs, relationships, trips, vacations, family members etc

Have I missed any other cost factors?

Here's the thing, people like to say WoW is a waste of time and for 1 a person can't waste time unless they are doing something they don't want to do. If a person wants to smoke meth all day every day they didn't waste their life they lived it like they wanted. Number 2 I feel like some people assume that if it wasn't for wow they (I) would be a doctor or something else that falls into the stereotypical ideal profession or even simply just something society deems as admirable or productive. But the truth is I wouldn't, I'd just be playing some other game. WoW just happened to step in the way of a guy who was an all day gamer all his life already.

Why do I say all this? Because there is no intangible cost in my eyes for wow. I didn't miss out on vacations, trips, relationships, jobs or anything else because I wouldn't have done those things anyways.

The cost for wow for me is however many dollars I throw at it. Started in BC 2007

13 years * 12 months = 156 months * 14.95 = $2332
Then I spent around $3k on gold from around BC to cata from 3rd party sites
60*7=$420 for xpacs but I've had/have like 10 accounts, don't remember the exact number so I'll just ignore that
A MOUNTAIN of services, faction changes, race changes, realm transfers, guild transfers, I own all the shop toys, I've bought a lot of the trading card items from a website but there's no quick way to math that out so I'll just say $1k but it's much more than that lol.
Also I try to buy wow tokens every month and there's no way to know how many of those I've bought, at least 20 since they released.

So I'd say around $8k

[bagdawoolin]

Well, lets see..

15*12*13 subs = 2340 €
All 2 years a new expac plus classic 60 € * 6 = 360€
Microtransactions = around 200€

[blackbird1205]

..everything

Came here for this.

But honestly, way too much. Playing many years, many character services, I don't want to know an exact number. I just know that I should be far in the 4 digits

[owbu]

~2300 €
Which seems fine for 15 years. My last hobby (Warhammer) would have laughed at that

[Wyviner]

For starters, originally firing up the game, Christmas of 2004, cost me my girlfriend at the time. We had planned to get engaged, but mounting issues with video gaming was leading us down a rocky path, and wow landed up being the straw that broke her back. 4 months later we broke up, and it all stemmed from the moment I logged into the game for the first time.

Ultimately, it cost me an amazing career, maybe. I still have a good career, but how much better could it have been if I hadn't been distracted with WoW for all the years since it's release? Not sure I could even begin to guess. Career aside, how many friends did I not make or keep because I was too busy sitting at my computer, alone. What impact has that had, and will continue to have even though I no longer play? Impossible to determine.

Actual cost? Year's of subscriptions, at times multiple accounts. 30+ character transfers, all purchasable mounts / pets. I'd put the cost over $2000 CAD. Is $2000 a lot for 15 years of entertainment? Not at all. A drop in the ocean really. I think the actually cost of the game in terms of dollars spent is really the least of what you give up.

[ravenmoon]

Oh yeah, there is also the time cost of doing wow related content:

1. Reading and posting on fan sites like MMO-champion, wow reddit, wowhead, ice-veins etc etc

2. Trips to conventions like Blizzcon

3. Youtube & Twitch following videos and streams

4. The amount of people you had to be rude too because they were interrupting you during the raid , arena, or dungeon (esp M+) you were running - then what that cost you with them.

[bagdawoolin]

~2300 €
Which seems fine for 15 years. My last hobby (Warhammer) would have laughed at that

Well, "fine" is if you pay €50 for a game you play for half a decade. As like strategy games like CIV.

[Enz0]

With all of the race changes, sub fees, expansions, and building a PC for WoW it has cost me at least 1500 USD.

The monetary cost was worth every penny. I had really good experiences with my group of friends in the game and wouldn't trade that time back.

As for the opportunity cost of all the man hours I have lost playing wow. I lost a lot with my education and did irreparable damage to my professional potential.

[Candy Cough]

Across all blizzard games I think I spent 1500$ when I checked over 8 years

Dunno about wow though. Probably alot considering Ive bought a couple collectors editions aswell as BFA multiple times off G2A for free boosts