MMO Weekly: The Cost Of WoW

Recently, I got to thinking about how much money my family has spent on WoW.  The truth is, I don't know the answer, even as I type this.  Interestingly, that question led to another similar question, simply because I've spent money on a whole bunch of other Blizzard products.  I tried to do a quick little mental calculation, but things quickly got out of hand.  The moment I began to do the mental mathematics, I realized that the amounts involved far exceeded anything I'd expected. So, for this week's MMO Weekly, I thought it would be entertaining to answer a very simple question.  It's a question that has probably crossed the minds of many of the MMO gamers out there in virtual space, but one they never took the time to actually answer.  In a nutshell, here it is:  “Over time, how much money have I personally spent on Blizzard Entertainment products and services?”

This shouldn't be all that hard to answer, quite frankly.  I don't think I'll be able to be pinpoint accurate – some of these are purchases are from years gone by, and I'm recalling a number of the prices from memory – but I believe I can come pretty darned close.  I'm going to do my best to consider everything.  Here goes...

There was a copy of Diablo II I bought back in....I have no idea.  Probably in the dark ages.  $49.99 [Unless otherwise noted, all prices in this article are in USD - Ed].

I also bought a copy of Warcraft III, Battle Chest.  That was $39.99.

Recently, I picked up another, separate copy of Diablo II (via Blizzard's digital download service) for $19.99.  My first copy of Diablo II got tossed during a major housecleaning some time back.  No, I don't know what I was thinking. 

Now beyond those two games (both of which I played the heck out of), I don't remember buying anything else from Blizz in the pre-WoW era.

So now let's talk about the 800 pound gorilla, WoW. 

My wife and I both picked up the original “vanilla” WoW on opening day (we were actually covering the story for WorldofWar.Net).  We got one copy of the collector's edition ($79.99) and one of the standard game ($49.99).  That was November 23, 2004.  That's $129.98.

Included in both you get your first 30 days of playing for free.  If I remember correctly, in the first few months we all got credited a number of days to our accounts, all because of server crashes, downtime, and other issues that plaque an MMOs launch.  Normally, we would have started paying as of December 23, 2005.  However, considering the time we were credited and for the sake of argument in general, I'm going to start counting the subscription fees as of January 1, 2005. 

According to my very rudimentary math skills, that's a total of 4 years and 8 months as of right now.  That means that I've paid $14.95 a month for 56 months.  That's $837.20. 

Oh yeah, I almost forgot.  My wife and I have two accounts.  So that's a grand total of $1674.40. 

Um, yeah.  That's a bit mind blowing.  This is, after all, a video game.