It’s been a whopping 21 years since World of Warcraft released, making it one of the longest-running games today. Somehow, the game remains alive and well, with a dedicated player base that keeps coming back for more. Since WoW first released, the game has seen several major expansion packs with new content from 2007’s The Burning Crusade up through 2024’s The War Within, with the newly unveiled World of Warcraft: Midnight on the way as well. Whether you pay for expansions or not, playing an MMORPG like WoW comes with a subscription. And that means it can get quite expensive.
Players can get started with World of Warcraft for free thanks to the trial, which lets you play up to Level 20. But that wasn’t always the case. When it was first released in 2004, the base game cost players $50 to get started, along with the $14.99 monthly subscription. These days, new players can waive that base game price, but they’ll still need to opt in for a monthly subscription to keep playing past Level 20. If someone has been with WoW from the beginning, just how much would that cost? Let’s do the math to find out.
What 20+ Years of Monthly World of Warcraft Subscriptions Cost
A monthly subscription for World of Warcraft costs $15. This price, unlike the base game itself, hasn’t changed in recent years. That said, you can save up to $24 a year if you put in for a full year up front rather than paying month to month.
Let’s say someone has been paying that $15 monthly fee for the entire 20 years that WoW has been around. That would total up to $3,720. And if they bought the game back in 2004, you can add an additional $50 on top of that, for a total of $3,770.
Now, a budget-friendly WoW fan could certainly bring that down a smidge thanks to the multi-month discounts offered in recent years. But no matter how you slice it, a longtime WoW fan has certainly shelled out a pretty penny to explore Azeroth for these past 20 years and some change. And we haven’t even gotten to the expansions of it all, which tack on an extra fee.
And Then There’s the Cost of Every Paid World of Warcraft Expansion
Since 2004, World of Warcraft has released 10 paid expansions. There’s already an 11th installment on the way, with World of Warcraft: Midnight already available for pre-order. This latest DLC will arrive next year, so I’m leaving that $49.99 purchase out of our calculations for now. But that leaves the rest of the expansions to account for.
Starting with 2007’s The Burning Crusade, Blizzard has put out a new major expansion for World of Warcraft every few years. Although you can no longer buy some of the older expansions, those who have been around since 2004 may well have bought them all. Most early expansions were priced at $39.99 each, while those after Warlords of Draenor were hiked up to $49.99. Presuming someone bought them all at full price at launch, that’s another $460 on top of the monthly subscription.
So, someone who has been with WoW from the very beginning has likely spent around $4,200 for the subscription and expansions combined. That’s quite a stark number when you look at it, though of course, that pricetag is spread out for over 20 years of content.
If someone opted for special editions or additional cosmetic DLC purchases, that number could get even higher. The Epic Edition of the upcoming World of Warcraft: Midnight DLC, for instance, costs $89.99. And the Battle.net shop for WoW is packed full of paid mounts, pets, and more, that can tack on anywhere from $10 to $25 each. Even newer players can easily rack up a hefty pricetag for their WoW habit thanks to all those options for spending money in-game.
But of course, World of Warcraft has stood the test of time for a reason. Despite the staggering cost of 20 years of play, many WoW fans continue to log in for the ongoing MMORPG experience, with much more to come.
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