Now let’s add in the cost of upgrading equipment to keep up with the requirements. I know I’ve been through 3 main boards, CPUs, graphics cards, and memory at the very least.
It’s an investment for sure,mine been since 1978 , so did I get my dividend from it ? I would say some as entertainment but more of a headache in resent years.
I think many of us would’ve done those upgrades anyway. Thinking over the past 16 years only 2-3 of upgrades in the past 5 years (when disposable income became a thing I actually had) were on my own volition… at least two upgrades happened because the machines they replaced fried, and one was because of a living situation change that forced me to ditch a desktop for a laptop.
Even most of those more recent upgrades weren’t driven by WoW, but by work needs or other games. The 6700k + 980Ti box I built in 2015 can handle WoW more than well enough even now.
I’ve used five computers over the time WoW has been out – four of them laptops and two of those were ASUS. (Fun fact, the first two, which lasted until the Argent Tournament in Wrath, were so old they didn’t even meet WoW’s minimum requirements. 
) Of all the ones I’ve tried, ASUS has been the best. When I replaced my ASUS at the start of BfA, I got an Acer Predator and (other than the function keys on the 17" screen ASUS models being in a wonky place) I frequently wish I had gotten another ASUS RoG. The one I had lasted over six years as my main play computer and is STILL RUNNING as my backup computer, or when I want to play somewhere else in the house. It was so seriously worth the about $1500 I spent on it.
In the time I had my RoG, there were only two things I had to do with it. I had to replace the thermal paste (ASUS almost always run RIDICULOUSLY hot) and about mid-Legion I finally dropped in an SSD, swapping it’s original HDD into the second drive slot as backup storage.
Good point, I know I would have, when a machine starts making me wait, I start doing research. LoL
I haven’t paid a sub fee on either of my accounts since tokens came out, save a scattered month here or there when the token prices were REALLY high. Instead, other people have paid Blizzard over $4000 for my accounts, while I give up the cosmetic advantages that I would’ve had from the literal millions of gold I’ve spent on tokens over time.
To be fair, though, I do have a decent amount of store-bought mounts and pets. I tend to snatch them up on half-off sales at Christmas.
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Reminds me of when I coaxed late TBC/early WotLK WoW into running on a circa 2000 CRT iMac with a 400Mhz CPU and ATI Rage 128 Pro w/8MB VRAM. That little guy tried valiantly and even got as far as the character select screen, but the textures were all garbled and it ran at single-digit FPS even at 640x480.
I recently picked up a RoG Zephyrus G15 w/ Ryzen 5900HS + RTX 3080 (mainly for other games, not WoW). Has been pretty good so far with a little tuning so far, hope it lasts.
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RIP the three or four mechanical hard drives that this game killed over time. Running two clients at a time really chewed them up and spit them out.
Traditional HDs have been by far the most temperamental pieces of hardware I’ve worked with in the past 20 years. Those things die and corrupt data like crazy. So glad they’re not the standard any more.
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i have bigger enjoyment outta that kinda assessment dude.
Wait till people find out how much they have paid for 10yrs of TV and/or Internet access.
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In that time I’ve probably spent way more on hamburgers. God bless hamburgers.
“Only”.
I think i have $12,000 in my savings account right now, if i clicked my fingers and that magically changed to $15,450, i don’t think anything in my life would be different 
I must say though, WoW has helped me through some really tough times in life, especially some very long hospital stays, i think we’ve gotten our money’s worth.
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Many players living in moderately-to-heavily urbanized areas have probably spent more on coffee. Assuming the average cup of joe is $2.50 with one cup per work day since 2004 you’re looking at around $11,000 spent on momentary pleasure with a caffeine kick.
So if I was NOT playing WoW and went the console route instead over 16 years and spent the same amount of money… I would have bought and owned 78 games which I could still play now without a recurring sub
PS3 = $200
PS4 = $400
PS5 = $500
then 78 AAA console games at $30 each
Console amounts are what I paid for each one, your results may vary.
Assuming $30 per game (a mix of some $60 new release titles and $20 “greatest hits” style or older titles and some in between… I think $30 seems fair)
MASSIVE EDIT - This is of course not figuring in the amount of money it costs to have a PC over that time either is it? Probably about twice the console cost I would think?
Time is money in this world. How many doctrines could we have earned? How much real life money could we have made not playing wow?
Yep. About two years ago I spent over the course of 18 months around a thousand dollars on character services, a couple mounts and pets, etc from the store. Not something I’m likely to ever repeat though so I hope Blizzard enjoyed it. I’ve moved and race changed all the characters I care to active realms and to races I enjoy so that’s a one and done. Still pisses me off a little I couldn’t get a discount for all those server and faction and race changes done in bulk.
I already work. Why would I work in my downtime, and put myself into an early grave.
When tokens first dropped I bought over year’s worth before the price skyrocketed and I still buy a couple every year. So, a little less for me.