World of Warcraft

[nobbie]

Financially speaking, I have this: UK prices for a MMORPG (If you're lucky enough to find one with decent UK support) are as follows: £40 for the game, £10 per month fee.  Assuming that you pay for and play a game for three years you would have spent £520 on a single game in that period.

For a German Telekom user, the prices would be as follows. In order to play a data-intense MMORPG, you'll also need a fast connection like DSL on top of a very good, up-to-date PC with a very good graphics card like Geforce 4 Ti and better. Also, because you'll likely play the MMORPG of your choice 10 hours or more per week, you'll need a flat rate to keep costs as low as possible (at least here in Germany). I'm currently using the "Surftime 30" T-Online option, which grants 30 hours Internet surfing per month (or 1 hour per day) for a price of 14.95 Euro at no additional costs. This option is available for both 56K dial-up modem and T-DSL. I'm using using a 56K dial-up modem though, because it costs 19.95 Euro per month less than a T-DSL connection. The T-Online flat rate, which grants unlimited surftime, costs just 29.95 Euro per month but there's a catch: it is only available for the expensive T-DSL connection. Assuming I would play a certain MMORPG for about 3 years, the prices would now be as follows (per month):

1.) T-DSL connection: 19.95 Euro
2.) T-Online flat rate: 29.95 Euro minus 14.95 Euro = 15 Euro more than the "Surftime 30" option
3.) 10 Euro per month fee

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Sum: 44.95 x 36 months = 1618.20 Euro

plus

4.) 50 Euro (or even 60 Euro) for the base game
5.) 2 (or even more) Expansion packs in 3 years for 30 Euro each

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Sum: 1618.20 Euro + 50 Euro + 120 Euro = 1788.20 Euro


So, that's about 1800 Euro/Dollars in 3 years, or about 600 Euro/Dollars per year. This does not include the costs for a new PC, processor, PC component or monitor which are usually due every 3 - 5 years (depending on your personal needs/demands). For 1800 Euro/Dollars, I can buy a new PC with everything incl. OS + software, or a DVD recorder (home unit) plus sound system, or a new TV with DVD recorder, or a digital video recorder plus digital camera, or or or. Everyone has to decide for himself/herself whether he wants to pay that sum for the latest Internet gaming fad, or not. I personaly have made my decision because a new TV is due by the end of this year ;)