World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft requires a subscription fee, but also requires the purchase of the game and future expansions. A new expansions release roughly every 2 years. They cost around 40 USD at their base value. Paired with the subscription cost playing for 2 years will cost you roughly 400 USD.

Often times large subscription bundles comes bundled with exclusive cosmetics such as mounts or pets. If you wish to attain these cosmetics the only way is to make these large purchases. This is often the case with the 6-month subscription bundle.

The game features a large number of real-money only items. This includes pets, mounts, costumes, toys, and other cosmetic only items.

Some services can only be done with real money purchases. Such as Name changes, server transfers, faction changes, factions changes, and more. These can be rather expensive.

In-game gold can be bought for real money using "WoW tokens". These tokens are sold on a player driven market place. The value of these tokens fluctuates as demand for the tokens goes up and down. These tokens can be used to converted to Battle.net balance, allowing you to purchase the subscription fee and all premium content for in-game gold.

Leveling up a character can largely be bypassed with the purchase of a Character boost, instantly boosting you to the level of the start of the current expansion for roughly 60 USD. In some cases this also includes mid-level equipment, allowing you to start participating in higher level content right away, rather than having to collect it yourself.

Many of the games newer features and content are time-gated. These pieces of content often take place over several months, even though they could be completed in hours. You could argue this is for player retention, giving you stuff to do over a longer period of time. But at the end of the day you're paying a monthly subscription and in order to enjoy all content you will need to pay for several months.

Future expansions grant early-access via a hefty additional cost, almost twice the base cost. With all games, but especially MMOs, the initial few days of expansions are extra special since everyone is at a level playing field, both in player strength and in knowledge. Locking early access behind a high price barrier removes this aspect unless you are willing to pay.

Another recent addition is an in-game mount which provides utilities in-game. This mount was previously available for a very large amount of in-game gold. It was made unavailable after some time, on to come back, but 90 USD instead of in-game gold.