It puts Dan's computer setup to shame.

[Clayton]

This guy has too much money. Way too much. I'll admit, I play WoW, but this? Come on.

In case you missed it: http://www.ripten.com/2008/10/10/wow-whore-has-36-accounts-raids-by-himself/

[Dan]

I have seen it before and it is a shame that it is being used for WoW. There are so many other cool things you could do with that much screen space and computer power.

I whonder what he does for a living.

[Vertico]

i could imagine it being quite expensive. Isn't warcraft $20 a month to play? Plus power fees, and the price of all the computers / monitors? A huge waste...

[Dan]

Vertico @ 12th December 2008, 1:31 pm wrote:

i could imagine it being quite expensive. Isn't warcraft $20 a month to play? Plus power fees, and the price of all the computers / monitors? A huge waste...

And the cost of each game and 2 expsaions for each.

[jernst]

Dan @ Fri Dec 12, 2008 1:00 pm wrote:

I whonder what he does for a living.

I bet he sells the wow money to ppl who want to get ahead faster

I agree, it is a shame that stuff is being used for wow lol

[Vermette]

Ugh, you can see the crud on the keyboards from that far away.

Plus, the owner claims his 'hobby' is only $5k/year for the software and subscriptions, but there's gotta be almost $10k in equipment there that we can see.

[Insectoid]

If I had a computer setup like that, I would sell all the laptops & desktops and buy 1 ridiculously powerful laptop, a super-powerful desktop, and a less powerful but more portable laptop. Then I would put all the money that would have gone into subscriptions into a savings account for a super-server from Sun. The rest would go into a big house, a fancy car and games.

You must remember, this guy is taking up a lot of bandwidth. How much is his ISP charging him per month? How many routers/modems is he using?

[ecookman]

10k in equipment...i don't think soooo

if he is able to run 4 copies of WoW per computer...i think each machine would be like 5k (considering they are all lappys)

[Clayton]

Probably around 12-13k is a reasonable estimate price range for the equipment. WoW itself does not require all that many resources to play on lowest graphical settings, and most laptops coming out now can run the game at highest settings without breaking a sweat. About $1.5k per laptop is reasonable, with the towers being slightly less. It's not that impossible.

[ecookman]

really i thought WoW was a pig

[Dan]

ecookman @ 12th December 2008, 2:29 pm wrote:

if he is able to run 4 copies of WoW per computer...i think each machine would be like 5k (considering they are all lappys)

It looks like the laptops only have 3 copys running each, i know a modern portable tablet laptop can run at least 2 copys of WoW at once fine so i am going to guse that the laptops are proably close to 1.5k as clayton sugested.

From what i can see in the pic there are 6 laptops running 3 copys each, 3 desktops runing 4 each and one desktop running 2 for a total of 32 at once. Since the artical says he has 36 accounts and there is another laptop out of the pic running 3 that brings us up to 35, this matches the 11 computers the artical says but still leaves 1 account missing (my guses is one laptop we can not see the screen of runs 4 rather then 2).

So the totals i am guseing are:

7 laptops at 1.5K each = 10.5K
3 Desktops esmtaned at 1k = 3K
1 Cheap Desktop (running only 2) estamnted at 600 = 600
8 wireless mice show in pic estamted at $25 each at best = 200
3 keyboard shown in pic estamted at $20 at best = 60
4 LCD screens at $150 = 600
total = $14,960

So a total of about 15k in equipment

Now for the software:

36 copys of WoW at current price ($20) = 720
36 copys of Wrath of the Lich King ($40) = 1440
36 copys of The Burning Crusade ($30) = 1080
total = $3,240

So a total of about 3k just in buying the games, assuming he got them at the current price, more like he got them when they all cost $50 each witch would be about 5.5k.

The monthly cost (at about $15) whould be $540 a month or $6,480 a year.

So grad total is $18,200 fixed cost and $6,480 a year and that is not counting any ISP or power costs and assuming he only got the 8 mice and 4 keyborads and no other accesroies. Also most of the costs (if not all) are in USD.

[ecookman]

lol

THE GREAT ONE HAS SPOKEN
------------------------------------------

mmmmmm looking at those numbers it does seem to add up

my estimate was based on WoW being a pig to run needing a 3k-5k laptop to run it ...guess i was wrong

[Insectoid]

When I did play wow, I was able to run it at full detail on my macbook pro, with load times under 10 seconds. Wow is actually not much of a hog, though it uses cheep texturing. I suppose the code is really efficient.

[Tony]

Pff... I was running WoW on a first generation PPC MacMini.

[Vermette]

Dan @ December 12th 2008, 15:44 wrote:

Cost breakdown

Well, I did say equipment you could see in the picture, so no counting a 7th laptop
I was working with a more conservative $1k for the laptops (x6 since I didn't assume a 7th).. This guy is probably in the States so you can assume much lower sales tax, and we end up around the same figure
I could see 4 instances of WoW running no problem on a mid-range box with enough RAM to minimize disk IO, assuming the instances are tailored for performance over quality.... probably only cares about framerate on 1 or two of them.


You can read the Original Thread; there seems to be some extra details:
http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=14611&pageNo=1