Life in World of Warcraft is getting more expensive. At least when you’re playing current, hard content.
World of Warcraft comes with some costs. It’s not just about the €13 per month, but also about expenses incurred in the game. Equipment doesn’t last forever in the game and must be repaired regularly if you want to keep using it. However, these repair costs have drastically increased in recent months, and more and more WoW fans are noticing: Slowly, the gold supply is melting away.
How expensive is repairing? How costly the repair of equipment is primarily depends on two factors – the number of deaths a character suffers and the item level of the individual items.
If a character is wearing only items at the ‘Mythic’ level, the total repair can easily cost 3,000 gold or more.
Since characters with the best equipment typically also die the most often – because they are playing particularly difficult content like mythic raids or Mythic+ beyond level 15 – the repair costs are highest here.
A raid night focused on progression can easily come with 20 to 30 deaths – which then adds up to nearly 10,000 gold. In addition to all the other preparations, like buff food, potions, or enchantments.
The consequence: Endgame content is becoming increasingly expensive.
A mechanic from Vanilla – Can repairing be eliminated?
The community has been hotly debating for years whether repair costs are just relics from the Vanilla era that no longer have a place in a modern MMORPG. In the past, WoW had many of these small RPG mechanics that were often standard at the time, but have been increasingly lost in modern MMORPGs.
Details that many found more annoying, such as weapon skills that had to be learned painstakingly, arrows, and feeding pets as a hunter, have disappeared from the game over time.
Many therefore wish that this would also apply to repair costs, as there are enough other costs in the game that also nibble at the characters’ gold reserves. A few opinions from the community (wowhead):
- “It’s 2026, can we finally get rid of repairs altogether? A completely useless mechanic in today’s game.” – Gearsz
- “Having to repair equipment feels like such a Vanilla mechanic. It should have disappeared at the latest with Mists of Pandaria.” – kaizuim
- “Durability is such an outdated and nearly unnecessary concept. I’m really exhausted that my characters run out of gold because of this if they’re not actively farming it.” – Silverdonut
A popular theory is that Blizzard has intentionally raised the costs of repairs so that some must resort to other sources to manage them. Because if one doesn’t have gold in the game to cover the repair costs, they might buy a WoW Token for real money and turn it into gold. That is at least a suspicion:
- “Higher repair costs = greater gold expenses = more WoW Tokens sold = more money for Blizzard / Microslop. These costs will never be lowered. Why would they make a change that earns them less money?” – justonesock
It’s even “worse” if you’re not only actively playing in endgame with raids and Mythic+, but also spending a lot of time on housing. While most prestige items here cost special currencies, like the Voidlight Merge or Resonance Crystals, this does not apply to everything. Particularly the basic decorations you always need – like cabinets, walls, carpets, or grasses – are available for purchase with gold. To furnish the layout of a room, you might easily spend several tens of thousands of gold pieces.
Of course, there are also reliable sources of gold, such as world quests that often grant 1,000 gold or more, or weekly chests with at least 2,000 gold as a reward – but that’s not enough for many to cover the costs. Or they would have to spend significantly more time on content that they actually don’t want to play.
Cortyn says: Usually, my gold level in World of Warcraft is quite stable. Sure, there are times when I suddenly earn a larger amount when I find a good opportunity to make a few hundred thousand gold coins – but generally speaking, my gold is stable. Expenses and income have been balanced while playing for over a decade.
In Midnight, for the first time, things are different. Here, I notice that my gold supply shrinks a little from week to week. It’s always just a few thousand to tens of thousands of gold pieces, but the trend is clearly recognizable. I’m not playing any less than before – it has just become more expensive. Sure, my mage tower construction has also consumed more resources, but the big constant here is definitely the repair costs. I can easily imagine that for players who visit many more raids and dungeons than I do, this has become a really significant cost factor.
What do you think about the repair costs in the game? Are they still relevant and an essential part of World of Warcraft? Or should Blizzard part ways with them, since this mechanic no longer serves any real purpose other than to annoy players?
Actually, only tank warriors have it worse. Because the higher costs of repairs are even part of their class design.
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