Thanks to subscriptions and purchase prices, World of Warcraft has been generating high revenues for Blizzard for two decades. But how much is your share of the financial blessing actually? A website now reveals how much money you have put into WoW so far.
What kind of website is this? On Reddit, the WoW fan CloudyBastien introduced the project spentonwow.com, which he and a friend have been working on for some time. He himself says: “It is an initial basic version, so we are sure that there are bugs and we might have missed something about how Blizzard takes our money.”
The website works as follows:
- You select your region, the server, and the character, and then click “Embrace the Truth.”
- The website calculates an amount of money in euros or dollars that you have put into WoW since 2008.
- You find out how many Big Macs you could have bought for that money, how many gold coins the money is worth, and what your share would have been if you had instead put the money into the production of a movie.
- Scroll down to see how long your subscription has been running during this period, which expansions you bought in which variant, and into which mounts, pets, toys, and bundles additional money has gone.
- An extra pie chart visually represents the expenses as well.
The website unfortunately is not one hundred percent accurate and does not fit every player perfectly. On the one hand, there are certainly a few who have been playing WoW since 2005, 2006, or 2007. For them, all subscription payments made before 2008 are missing.
Moreover, the website does not recognize all content correctly. For example, the Viridian phase hunter is supposed to cost 25 euros. However, the corresponding deluxe version of Burning Crusade Classic was significantly more expensive. Additionally, discount purchases, subscriptions paid through tokens, or free keys from Blizzard are not recognized.
WoW is celebrating its 20th anniversary, how long have you been playing?
Afraid of the Truth?
How does the community evaluate the website? Some players are happy with the website and the insight it provides into their own WoW past. Others do not want to know exactly how much money they have spent on the Blizzard MMORPG over the years.
- NoPark5849 writes on Reddit: “I don’t want to know …”
- abiert feels similarly (via Reddit): “Ignorance is bliss.”
- For ItsRaevenne, the case is clear (via Reddit): “3,420 dollars. All in all, I would rather spend that money on WoW than on Big Macs again. I’m just saying.”
- _TheBgrey sees it this way (via Reddit): “187 dollars per year for 16 years of entertainment is a pretty solid return.”
- Emeckk jokes on Reddit: “It’s only 13 euros, so it can’t add up that much. … ohh shit.”
- NiceWrathy summarizes on Reddit: “Funny, but not even close to accurate. Doesn’t count tokens, has an incorrect subscription duration (says less than 4 years, even though I’ve been paying for a subscription since Vanilla). Still a clever little website.”
How long have you been playing WoW? How long is your playtime likely to be? How much money have you invested in World of Warcraft over the years? Do you know the answers to the last two questions, or would you rather not know them as well? Let us know in the comments! By the way: Player plays 40,000 hours of WoW, doesn’t even use a mouse
