what was the biggest amount you've spent for online games? like for buying local money, membership, privileges? i only spent 10 euros for Cabal Online   i always hear rumors like mad gamers always spent enormous amounts for their hobby, but i never met someone who actually paid billions for online games. anyone wants to share experience?  

I only really spend money to get full versions of good indie games online, not really into MMORPGS, they take the joy out of RPGs. Tho one of my mates supposedly spent £107 on booze on a night out recently so maybe that's a more profitable question.

I've never paid more than a monthly subscription for WoW a while back. I had a few friends that would spend hundreds of dollars on WoW gold, etc. It was rather silly.
 
I'd also seen a few people pay $500+ for characters that they were too lazy to level up their selves.

Quite frankly, I don't spend money on online games simply because I have yet to see a game attractive enough to spend on a monthly basis (not that I boycott the idea).
 
I would never spend a penny to play games like WOW. However, if BF2 would have charged a monthly fee (although for cheap) I would have contributed of course.
 
I have spent tones on hardware for gaming thou...practically all of my PC was purchased online.

most of the bf2 servers out there are clan servers, generally members donate anywhere from 5 to 50$ a month... I never donated for my clan (didn't know how easy to set up paypal was) but the server was hardly used anyway, just last week, one of my clanmates bought a 16 man for 40$ a month, and another one in our clan runs a cod4 server (and also our new site).
 
I think i'll be buying from steam soon, or maybe for episode 3 .

Only online game I bought was the add-on for GalCivII, because that was the only way to buy it.  I like to have the discs and a manual  

I played WoW for about 8 months (first 2 of which were free, so its £54) but only because 5 of my mates also played. We all quit together.

Well i've been playing SWG:ED since 2003, and with 40 paid accounts currently, that's 600 USD a month, 7200 USD per year.  Plus I have to buy my credits to keep up with all the maint costs and collection items, which is 100 USD extra per month.   SO per month it costs me 700 USD and 8400 per yr.   One of these days i'll get married and spend the money on the kids instead.

I just started paying for EVE Online. Never subscribed to an online game before.
 
But I look forward to Guild Wars 2, which will have no fees

I really liked Guild Wars for about a week. Then I hit the level cap and it got kinda stale. (That and I finished the entire prophecies campaign) Guild Wars 2 will let you jump though!