Could you post how much (total) money you spent on WoW over the years?
Would be interesting to calculate the €/hour and to compare it with single player games/discos/clubs/holidays and other free-time activities.
 

I do not play WoW any longer, but I was easily at 100 days played I would guesstimate.
 

551 days 7 hours
not including a couple deleted characters...
 

I spent around 800 Euro for 4 years of WoW in subscription fees plus the three boxes. So less than 20 cents per hour of entertainment, which is clearly less than most other forms of entertainment. But then you start a huge argument of whether to include the cost of the PC, and of the internet access into the calculation. Which in my case would raise the total cost to around 1 Euro per hour, which still isn't all that expensive.
 

That only matters if you never used your PC for anything else. Obviously, we know that's not the case or we wouldn't be reading this blog at all, and you wouldn't be talking about other things on your blog.
 

A 120 hours single player game costs no more than 60€ in Germany. That makes 50 cent per hour; and much less if you wait a bit before you buy it. Anything outside of computers (cinema) is usually massively more expensive.
 

175 days 22 hours, I thought it might be more than that. 72,042 gold.
 

That's roughly equivalent to a part time job (20 hours/week). Not too surprising... but significant.

I've gotten about 15 cents/hour (or better) out of most offline RPGs that I buy. Thing is, that calculation just gets *better* as I play them more. Not so if I had to keep paying to play. ;)
 

I have 433 days played, my wife has 227.
 

230 days played. Expected it to be higher actually, suprising. 4,700g.
 

1000 hours per year is 41 days per year. Thats almost 1.5 months per years. Compare those hours to time sleeping, time "at work", time spent with your family.

Over 300 days played = addiction. Thats almost 1 year of the last 5 years spent in wow.

Be careful if you think the higher the number is better.
 

Using that addon to total mine up would fall short since I've deleted some of my very first characters. My 2 current high level characters easily put me over 130 days played. Interestingly enough, in my guild, my toons have the most played time. Heh.

@Dink, I'm not sure that the amount of time can so easily correlate into addiction. People might not divide their time up as much into other activities, but still be leading a healthy life. Maybe they don't go out much (cheaper to stay in and play). Or what about increased time played during time off work? That doesn't mean someone is addicted. Having a threshold of # of days played equalling addiction is unrealistic. Plus, I don't remember a time requirement in any addiction assessment I've encountered. All that is doing is trying to incite fear and shame into people who see it who's numbers are close or exceed 300.

~Syrana
 

You should always be careful when you say 'addiction'. Many people spend 200 days and more in front of monitors (during work), sitting on chairs or spend even more time communicating with other people. Not all activities humans do a lot mean an addiction.

If someone uses WoW simply for chatting (many do) it would be completely wrong to call him a WoW-addict. He/she may just have few friends in RL, which is not necessarily sad.
I myself am one of those guys who traditionally has only a few friends at the same time. I don't even have facebook lists of hundreds of 'friends'.
When I stopped playing WoW many months ago, it took me some time to get a few more friends in RL (which wasn't hard at all) to feel integrated again. My WoW friend were very good and full-fledged friends, I just didn't want to play and pay for WoW anymore, which unfortunately meant that I would lose most of them. THAT was sad and the reason why it took me so long to stop playing.

Even in times when I spent almost 12 hours a day plays I had absolutely no problems going on holidays with RL-friends. WoW does not have any withdrawal-symptoms except for potential boredom, which all fun activities share.
 

@ Dink & Syrana

As someone with over 300 days played (433) I feel that I play a reasonable ammount now but in the past I did use it to escape from reality at the cost of work, school, and my physical health. That has been since I started playing in December 2004, and with several breaks/burnout periods as well. I do agree with Dink's assessment that anyone over 300 days played at this point has played excessively at some point.
 

198 days, 170k gold.
 

"Over 300 days played = addiction. Thats almost 1 year of the last 5 years spent in wow."

And a damn good year that was too!
 

It doesn't work 1005 for me as I'm on a new account. Luckily I knew the /played of my two old characters. Total of 320 days played.

As to all the claims of addiction, I spend a lot of time doing other shit on my computer (coding, chatting, playing other games) with WoW open in the background. Or I'll leave it on and afk in bgs while watching movies or whatever.
 

"Many people spend 200 days and more in front of monitors (during work), sitting on chairs or spend even more time communicating with other people. Not all activities humans do a lot mean an addiction."


No, it doesn't. But you are kidding yourself if your excuse for playing 200 days of WoW is that you spent more time working during the same period... I mean c'mon. You have to work to eat. You need to play Wow to... play WoW.

The real test is this: Are the top three things you spend your time on 1) work/school 2) sleep and 3) WoW (not necessarily in that order)?

If yes, you are an addict. If it has ever been true, you are an ex-addict. Let's not put a number on it; it's not like the guy who put in 280 days is that much better than the guy who put in 305.


If you are angrily writing a reply using TV or some other popular activity as an excuse for playing WoW 6 hours a day, you are in denial. Right now someone is sucking dick for coke, that isn't proof you aren't a junkie. And hey, I'm not trying to make anybody feel bad. But a spade is a spade.

I'm Toxic, I used to make 300 fire protection potions a week so my guild could kill Ragnaros. I am an addict.
 

I define addiction not based on how much time is spent on doing something, but how easily I can just walk away from it. I've had games in the past where I have played a lot, but then just decided to quit, left and never looked back. I can go on a two week vacation and not once miss the game or barely even remember it exists. I have days where I may play for hours and days where I might not play at all. There is no overwhelming desire to be constantly logged on. To me this means that there is no addiction. It's not just based on some /played number where you decide Y > X = addiction.
 

That addon opened my eyes a year ago: I played way too much (an average of euh, six hours a day for over a year).

Now I think it'll show something like
-> Gold: 63.000
-> Played: 210 days

I should check my /played time but I'm not too worried about it anymore.
 

I've not played WoW so I can't do the addon, but my EQ2 times showing amongst my various alts adds up to 223 days, 15 hours, and 18 minutes.

This doesn't include time on characters that I've played and deleted. Those were mostly done in the 1st year or so of the game when leveling took a while, but only 1 character went plast level 16, as I recall it, so I'd imagine most of those toons were only 1-2 days /played each, and I'd guess that there were probably about 8 of them, so... add 12-ish days to it, I suppose.

But, this *does* include a lot of "/afk selling" from the 1st year where you had to leave your toon logged in in "merchant mode" in your house overnight in order to sell anything. That afk selling probably accounts for at least 45-60 days of that overall total, so I'd say probably subtract about 50 days overall as well, giving me a nice guesstimate of 185 days. 6 months out of 4.5 years.... that's about 11% of my overall time, or about 17 hours per week.... pretty much a part time job, as Tobold states.
 

364 days /played, out of which less than 1 hour in the last few months. Still got the account but can't find any enthusiasm for actual gameplay.

53k gold and nothing to spend it on.