How much is World of Warcraft costing you?

A subscription to World of Warcraft costs 14.99 a month (a buck or two less if you buy your subscription in 3 or 6 month chunks). That comes out to $180 bucks a year. Not bad. Quite a bit cheaper then just about any other hobby you could name. Or is it?

I have spent right around 100 days in World of Warcraft since I started in July of 2005. That’s 2400 hours. Just to put that in perspective:

2400 hours x $6.55 (Federal Minimum Wage) = $15,720

2400 hours x $8.85 (What I made at my old job) = $21,240

2400 hours x $17.91 (Avg hourly wage of a factory worker) = $42,984

2400 hours x 22.02 (Avg hourly wage of business services) = $52,848

(Average wage data retrieved from the Bureau of Labor Services)

Granted, most people don’t play WoW during normal working hours, so the money you lose is probably significantly less then my averages. The numbers are meant to give you a mental picture of what that time you spent equates to. 2400 hours is hard to visualize, but fifty thousand dollars is pretty easy to picture.

World of Warcraft is a finely tuned, expertly crafted timesink. It’s purpose is to consume as much time as you’re willing to give it, and the danger comes into play when you don’t realize how much time you’re really spending on it. I won’t argue whether or not playing World of Warcraft is a waste of time, because the definition of “waste” is so subjective its pointless to debate that point.

Consider this. Time is the single most valuable resource in existence. It’s nonrenewable, finite, and no one knows how much they have at any given moment. Be very careful how you spend it.