Race to World First World of Warcraft raids cost $40,000 to prepare for

In the midst of Method’s multi-day Race to World First event, one of the casters revealed the amount of in-game gold, and its real-life cash equivalent, it costs to get a high-level World of Warcraft guild ready for the new raid tier.

A new Mythic difficulty tier for World of Warcraft means a new race to be the first to bring down the most challenging bosses in the game.

The fifth raid of the Battle for Azeroth expansion was released in late January, titled Ny’alotha, The Waking City. The normal and Heroic difficult versions were released on January 21 and 22 for North American and European servers respectively, but the all-important Mythic difficulty Ny’alotha came out on January 28 and 29.

With that, another race between the MMO’s most illustrious guilds in the world kicked off, spearheaded by two of the most iconic in Method (EU) and Complexity Limit (NA). But to face the most challenging raids in the game requires a lot of prep, as well as a lot of gold to cover gearing up.

• Read more: How to watch the WoW Race to World First Ny’alotha: Streams, progress

Rich Campbell, a beloved member of the WoW and Blizzard communities, joined the cast on Day 2 of the Method event, and explained how much gold a guild needs to prepare for a new Mythic raid, and what the real-world equivalent would be.

Campbell gives a wide estimate of roughly 100-300 million gold as being necessary to prepare for a raid of this caliber. 300 million gold, he says, translates to somewhere around $40,000. This number comes from the Token Price rate.

WoW tokens are worth 30 days of in-game or $15 of Battle.net balance. As such, they go for thousands in the auction house. These tokens can be bought for $20 from the Blizzard store, and then sold on the auction house for in-game gold.

• Read more: Four reasons World of Warcraft: Shadowlands could “save” the game

As of writing this article, January 31, according to the WoW Token Price tracker, tokens sell for roughly 160,000 gold in North American auction houses. At $20 a piece, it would cost around $37,000 to get 300 million gold from selling them in North America, but that’s assuming your guild is starting at zero.

In Europe, tokens cost €20, but they sell for closer to 207,000 gold on European auction houses, meaning it would cost around €29,000. They sell for the highest gold value on Taiwanese servers, where they go for 309,000.

But as another member of the broadcast team explained, that’s not how Method makes its money. Months have past since the fourth raid, Azshara’s Eternal Palace, was released, giving the guild ample time to replay Mythic runs and sell their spoils on the auction house.

Rather than spend money on gold, Method spent it on hosting their RWF event and raising money for the Save The Children foundation. They’ve raised over $12,000 so far, and you can still donate to send the players a heartfelt message on stream.