WoW: Midnight's hardcore raiders are on a gold treadmill, with a first-time clear of Mythic Midnight Falls costing around 87,750 gold in repairs alone
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And that's before consumables, which ramps that bill up to 340,692 if you're going full tryhard.
World of Warcraft: Midnight seems inclined, like its past couple of expansions, to be less demanding of entry-level requirements for Mythic+ and high-end raiding—there's more ways to gear up a character solo than ever via activities like Prey, and there's no mandatory Torghast-esque chores to tick off or borrowed power item to grind out points on.
And yet, some players have found themselves on an economic treadmill—as broken down by this solid analysis on WoWHead. This had mostly passed me by, given I'm not pushing keys—though I'd been aware of shield-wielding tanks getting shafted.
The issue? Repair costs. Now, repair costs are important to your average MMO—see, MMOs are technically printing money all the time. Every mob you kill, every bit of trash you vendor, every dungeon you complete, adds some form of money into the economy.
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And if there's too much cash going around, then inflation becomes a major problem. And you can't just make non-player sources of gold generation more generous, because that'll only make it worse.
Still, when you look at WoW's repair costs for the highest-end players, it's nasty. Gear quality (what "track" it's on) makes a large impact, with Mythic gear being around 67% more expensive to repair—WoWHead compares a Mythic-tier two hander (523 gold) to a Champion-tier one hander (93 gold) to demonstrate.
Overall, WoWHead puts the average cost of a single death for a Mythic at 250 gold—if you want to kill the latest Mythic boss, WoW's Progstats puts that at an average of 343 pulls, rounded down. That's 87,750 gold to clear one boss—and that's not even including the extra gold costs required to raid at that level.
As a matter of fact, let's figure it out with the prices on my current server, even being charitable and assuming I've got a crafting friend who's willing to foot the bill for my gear and gems and enchants. WoWHead's Outlaw Rogue BiS for consumables suggests the following:
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- Flask of the Shattered Sun (917g per hour).
- Thalassian Phoenix Oil (40g per hour).
- Void-Touched Augment Rune (846g per hour).
- For a total cost of 1,803 gold per hour of progression.
- (I've not put the recommended food here since it can be shared with the whole raid.)
That's just the hourly stuff—Light's Potential, a combat potion, and the SIlvermoon Health Potion can be added onto that per-pull cost, a combined total of 585 gold on my server. Using progstats' average progression timing of 29 hours (rounded up), we can actually figure out how much it costs to beat the Midnight Falls raid, purely in repair costs and consumables.
- Repair costs are 87,750 gold (250 gold x 343 pulls).
- Per-encounter consumables are an eye-watering 200,655 gold (585 gold x 343 pulls).
- Hourly consumables are 52,287 gold (1,803 gold x 29 hours).
- 52,287 + 87,750 + 200,655 = 340,692.
So if you're a Mythic raider, being as tryhard as you possibly can, it costs 340,692 gold to prog and clear Midnight Falls. Now, that number's probably a little high—that Light's Potential and health potion are by far the biggest cost factor, and you might not be using a per-encounter consumable on every pull if you still haven't seen enrage.
But even without them, repair costs being significantly more expensive than your hourly consumables budget is wild, and players are feeling the sting in their wallets. As one player pointed out on the WoW subreddit this month, it all adds up very quickly: "I as a Warlock am paying 20 THOUSAND gold in repairs and APPARENTLY I am on the LOWER END. The Protection Warrior is allegedly (in his words) paying over 35k a raid night."
Which is rough. I can absolutely see why some costs are there—again, MMO economies do need gold sinks, or stuff gets out of hand real quickly. You don't want a SWTOR situation circa 2023 where a level 24 accessory is being sold for 49 million credits.
But it does seem countermand to WoW's anti-busywork philosophy in recent years. Sure, you can get gold from just about anywhere, but demanding players foot a steep bill just for the honour of hardcore raiding does seem like an extra layer of unnecessary punishment.
