How much time (and possible earnings) has been lost in WoW?

Post by **Rollie** » Thu Jan 08, 2009 4:15 pm

I was approached by a research firm to work some of the data I've gathered and in getting some data together for them, I did some different queries than I usually do.

Recently I started using a little productivity tool called RescueTimer to basically track every little thing I do while on my computer. I basically always feel like I never have enough time to get the important things done so I started looking at ways to track it.

One thing that jumped out at me right away was just how much time I was spending playing World of Warcraft. While I *thought* I only played WoW about 15 hours per week, I was easily putting in 25+. Those little sessions that I was convincing myself that I wasn't spending too much time were way more than I realized.

So anyway, to the point, basically I started looking at my WoW time as lost productivity time, and on a grander scale how much possible productivity has been lost in WoW over the past 4 years.

Warning, fudging numbers ahead!

I went back and took an average number of players seen per day since May 1, 2005, and the number of online servers to find the average number of total hours spent on WoW per day since May 1, 2005 according to the Census snapshot counts. I then took the number of servers which were online for each day. I took the average number of players, multiplied that by 24 hours in the day, and multiplied by the number of servers that were online to give the total number of average man hours spent in wow per day. The numbers were quite astonishing.

For example, let's take January 21, 2007. There were an average of 1083 characters seen per snapshot throughout the day. There were 217 servers online. This gives us a whopping 4.6 million man hours. The average hourly wage for USA in Jan of 07 was $17.22. If you calculate out the potential productivity based on that hourly rate, you are looking at $100,574,775 in potential lost earnings. Yes, that's one hundred million dollars.

BUT WAIT. Those numbers are only PER FACTION. The actual average is per faction so you DOUBLE that figure.

9.2 Million Man hours
$200,000,000 Possible dollars

For ONE DAY!

If you go back and calculate since March 2005, it comes up to over $200 billion!

Just food for thought =)

Alanthus · Post by **Alanthus** » Thu Jan 08, 2009 4:30 pm

Man, and here I thought the Wall Street was the reason for the ailing economy. I guess now we know the real reason...

xpolockx · Post by **xpolockx** » Thu Jan 08, 2009 9:30 pm

An interesting read!

Of course, "productivity" can mean different things to different people, but it's still an interesting way of looking at things

DM. · Post by **DM.** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 10:33 am

Thats alot of numbers.....

SannaSK · Post by **SannaSK** » Wed Jan 14, 2009 2:58 pm

"The average hourly wage for USA in Jan of 07 was $17.22."

wtb job that pays me anywhere close to that. Judging from the talk that flies around my guild, I highly suspect that you should refigure some of the numbers to assume that at least 45% of the playing population of wow makes $8-$11/hour.

In fact, the three people I know who have jobs who make anywhere near that amount of money that you quoted... are all way way too busy to play a game like Wowcraft. My father makes a decent chunk of change at his job... and has, uh, compensated me for xping his character so he could catch up to his guildies.

which is not to invalidate the point of what you're saying: a lot of people play a lot of wow. But damn... I'd do a lot of (legal thank you) things for $17 an hour : <.

Real moral of the story: don't let your children grow up to try to be authors. Or if they do, demand they enroll in welding school, so they can at least get /some/ kind of respectable work. >_>.

Post by **Rollie** » Wed Jan 14, 2009 8:25 pm

That was the average wage then. The average wage now was over $20 per hour.

As for authoring, do you also do copy writing? There's quite a bit of work to be had in that area, as well as writing for blogs, etc.

Dromic · Post by **Dromic** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 12:05 am

You know I have to believe US is using the wages of the billionaires and trillionaires to get the hourly wages. In your state other than autoworkers, some white collar it is hard to find a job that pays over $12 an hour. Heck in our state a majority of the jobs are minimum wage to $9.

Last place I worked they payed $11 to 80%, 19% made $39, .9% $32 (with bonus). The last .1% made a majority of the money. VP x 18 made 10 to 20 million each and CEO pulled in , get this, 32 billion. And funny part with is the more they got payed the less work done. My staff only make $11 to 13 tops did 99% of the work. Now this was not a small company in the US alone we have 11200 workers. I was of the lucky ones at the .9% (department supervisor).

But this company is a good example of almost all companies in the USA. Worse case is fast food. The staff make minimum wage, manager 40 to 60 thousand and CEO $100 million to close to 1 billion.

if this forum allowed would state my views but this forum is not for that.

But to this thread it is amazing when you think trillions of dollars in lost hours (our free time) is spent in online today. Back in 10 years ago you could have noted millions.
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xpolockx · Post by **xpolockx** » Fri Jan 16, 2009 1:18 am

Just out of curiousity, where did you get your numbers for average wages Rollie?

Post by **Rollie** » Fri Jan 16, 2009 9:34 am

US Bureau of Labor and Statistics:

http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyO ... w=net_1mth