I thought it would be a nice fun exercise to calculate how much money I actually have saved by playing World of Warcraft.

Back before I started playing World of Warcraft I would hit the local movie theaters every weekend with some friends to check out the newly released movies. Once WoW came into my life I still do go see movies but a whole lot less. I decided to calculate how much money WoW has saved me since I started playing it. Remember this is no way scientific or should be taken for granted and this is my own personal experience as everyone will differ.

This also just includes the months I have actually paid for my World of Warcraft subscription. There was a time about 5 months after I started that I pretty much didn't touch the game for about 6 months. It is also pretty neat to see in my account management screen how much game time Blizzard "gave me for free" (not really free as they usually awarded it because of unexpected downtime or major patch screwups that left us without play for a day). Not including the free month when I bought WoW I have received 25 "free" days.

I have also paid for 38 months of WoW mostly using the 3 month subscription package but did use the 6 month package once. Roughly, that's 3 years 2 months of WoW.

3 years 2 months comes to roughly
1155 days which rounds off to
165 weeks of WoW

Cost of WoW game software: $49.95
Cost of BC game software: $49.95
Cost of 165 weeks subscription time: $527.59
Total: $627.49

That figure really surprised me since I figured it would be a whole lot more. Anyway, movie time! I would go see a new movie once a week and this assumes I would have carried on doing that if I never started playing WoW. I can't forget the nachos I always get when I go to the movies and a drink. This also doesn't include the cost of gas or paying for more people than myself.

Movie tickets: $8.00
Nachos: $3.75
Drink: $3.00
Total: $14.75
Total for 165 weeks: $2,433.75

I would also go out to eat before the movie every week. The price would differ as sometimes we would go to McDonald's while other times we would eat at places like Applebee's or Chili's. I kinda just picked what I think would be the average cost of eating out.

Average cost of eating out: $12.00
Total for 165 weeks: $1,980.00

Total for movie/eating out for 165 weeks: $4,413.75

Now, I wouldn't be totally honest if I kept the figures at that point. I still do go see movies but on a much smaller scale. I typically average about 1 movie every 2 months since playing WoW.

Total movie/eating out for 38 months: $508.25

So, here are the totals while playing WoW versus if I didn't ever start playing WoW.

Total money spent while playing WoW: $1,135.74
Total money spent if I didn't play WoW: $4,413.75

So, I have saved about $3,278.01 since I started playing WoW!