TLC Crackdown: The real cost of playing World of Warcraft

Now for something different from the usual mishmash of random crap that has appeared on this blog of late. Last evening I indulged in the most intellectual of conversations with my associate J. Ho PhD Lovematics, and discussed the "cost" of playing World of Warcraft. Below I will provide the results and findings we uncovered during our scholarly chat.

First of all, lets look at the cost in terms of money. We calculated this based on the "loyal customer" or "steadfast consumer", ie. someone who is going to play to max level (with expansion) and participate in a reasonable amount of end-game content. Individual prices are taken from the lowest we've seen of the RRP in Australia. All costs are calculated in AUD.

Step 1.... Rolling start
World of Warcraft CD/DVDs with account key, with 1 month of play = $25
Burning Crusade CDs with expansion key = $50

Now, when Mr (or Miss) New WoW Player starts a new account, they have to either enter credit card details or a game card number in order to "activate" their subscription. You see, this is just how well Blizzard had thought out their business plan. Basically the credit card details are proof of the consumer's ability to keep on playing after the first month runs out. The truth is, anyone who's only going to play WoW for only the initial month is not getting their money's worth.

Ok, so they've just forked out $75 for the game and expansion (all you're really doing is paying for the account keys printed on the CD slips). Now if they don't have a credit card, and only someone with a steady income could keep one and play using it, expect to pay another $40 for a game card, which will be instantly activated and stacked after the initial month. So this forces a consecutive 3 month period of activated gameplay. Basically this gives the consumer no option at all to stop playing after the first month and save their extra 2 months for another time.

Step 2... Level 1 to 60
J. Ho proposed a 2-hour-a-day gameplay plan for our imaginary consumer. How long would an average WoW player take to reach Level 60 on this schedule? I estimated something close to 6 months.

6 months of WoW subscription is....
3 game cards = $120 (if bought from a shop)
3 game cards = $102 (if bought from eBay)

Now, C knows that certain sellers on eBay vendor the game cards at $34 free postage, so we can bring that cost down quite a bit. However, for the WoW player, unless they are well organized (highly doubtful), they will most likely not keep track of their WoW subscription and suddenly one day realize, "Oh, darn, it's run out." The fastest option would be to head down to the local EB and fork out a hefty $40 for the 60-day recharge. For organized people and Asians, eBay is probably the better option simply because its the cheaper option. Though the delivery is not instant, if one has not reached the level of addiction, the consumer could probably survive a few days without it and save themselves $6. Go buy yourself a cookie!

Alright... so our lucky friend has reached Level 60! Ding! Grats!

Step 3... Gearing at 60
Gearing up is a lengthy process, but there are a few different ways to obtain decent equipment. At 60 our player would be pretty experienced at the game by now, but probably has never entered a 40-man raid. So first they're going to take some time to get "attuned" and "keyed", which are fancy terms that roughly translate to "do lots of quests and other menial tasks for a month or two".

I gave our consumer 1 month of gameplay time to get attuned for Molten Core, the first 40-man raid dungeon available. During their time in MC, they'll roughly be spending 3+ hour sessions inside the dungeon with 39 other people. With only a handful of bosses and very low drop-rates, and a total of 8 character classes, and one piece of the armor set dropping if you're lucky, getting enough gear to move on to the next dungeon can be a very long and arduous (sp?) task.

If they decide to not raid and just PVP, the honor required for the 60 epic sets is a reasonably high amount. So that's a lot of PVPing right there, whether its from world or BGs. BGs are a lot faster, but could get old very quick because of random team matchups.

Lets not forget the money required for the Epic mount too. Something close to 550 gold will take maybe a few weeks to farm, if all they're doing is pure farming.... farming day after day for quite a few days. I managed to make close to 400 gold after 2 months of semi-farming from Level 20-45-ish. At Level 60, depending on their professions, the grind for cash could be much faster or slower.

So... another 3 months of gameplay will amount to a total of $60.

Step 4... Grind to 70 and beyond
Alright, they work hard to hit 70 after getting geared and then at 70, it's time to get attuned for more dungeons and raid more on weekends and get geared and then PVP more and whatnot. Maybe this will keep them entertained for 2 months, but usually people will roll new characters. So now they've started a new character and they'll be playing this one again.

Grind, grind, grind and suddenly 3 months of their life has wasted away again.

Let's pretend that's a total of 6 months... which is... $120.

Step 5... Year 2 Maths
Let's sum it all up now, for the cost of someone who plays to Level 70 and enjoys some end-game content and maybe play a new character...

$25 + $50 + $120 + $60 + 120 = $375...

Well, you look at it, and it doesn't seem to be all that much.

Now there are people out there who've been playing since the release, which was like 2 years back... Every year of WoW subscription costs $240. Do the maths yourself. Blizzard must be very very rich.