I feel insulted with their excuses on the front page about pricing.

[d0cHolland]

Well, for 60 bucks I'd rather get a brand new game than pay for a level 90 tbh.

Does WoD include a "Boost to 90" code or do you think it will require you to activate the expansion on an account?

If it's the latter, don't the expansions require all previous titles, typically included in the "WoW Battlechest"?

(WoD)$40 + (BattleChest)$20 = $60.

I doubt that's a coincidence.

[Zka]

Stop feeling insulted, laugh at the shitty PR explanation instead.

I just read their arguments and honestly, it's pretty good and valid. The only funny thing is that they JUST HAD TO offer this service because there is a free 90 for each WoD purchase

[Nerraw]

Why the hell should I be insulted? You can pay if you don't want to level. If you don't want to pay, play the game like the rest of us "indian slum kids".

[Chrysia]

I just read their arguments and honestly, it's pretty good and valid. The only funny thing is that they JUST HAD TO offer this service because there is a free 90 for each WoD purchase

Really, they had to offer the service because there are a lot of players that detest leveling characters. I, personally, don't find it that onerous, but I can kinda see the point, especially for super-altoholics that are doing it for the billionth time.

[Glaziola]

Does WoD include a "Boost to 90" code or do you think it will require you to activate the expansion on an account?

If it's the latter, don't the expansions require all previous titles, typically included in the "WoW Battlechest"?

(WoD)$40 + (BattleChest)$20 = $60.

I doubt that's a coincidence.

MOP is another 20€.

[Zka]

I can argue logically for the $60 price point being used as a barrier, and not a profit maximization metric, quite easily.

Also think about gold farmers. I mean the sweatshop workers who do it for a living. Currently they have to steal accounts or level a character before they can farm. If it was a trivial amount of $, they would pay it and we'd be swimming in farming bots. Acc stealing would not stop anyway, they need the stolen money too.

[Deleted]

How about you stop and think for once instead of just blindly whining all the time about Blizzard's decisions. Isn't it obvious that a 60 price tag would turn a lot of people away from using it, thus bringing them a lower income than it would if they put the boost at a lower price and almost everyone would use it?

[Chrysia]

How about you stop and think for once instead of just blindly whining all the time about Blizzard's decisions. Isn't it obvious that a 60 price tag would turn a lot of people away from using it, thus bringing them a lower income than it would if they put the boost at a lower price and almost everyone would use it?

Not necessarily, depending on the cost of development. However, in this specific case, all the base technology for this service already existed, so yes, a lower price point would likely maximize profit.

[Slant]

Just say you maximize profit which is the truth. By saying "We gave a value of $60 to levelling to 90" you insult gaming in whole, not just computer gaming. You can not put value in gaming or sports, they are on a plane of their own.

Besides, even if you could put value to it, which you can't, it's totally relative. e.g. the rich kids will find it peanuts anyway. A poor kid from the indian slumps will find it a fortune.

So stop the hypocrisy and call it maximizing profit (or don't call it at all).

Did you bother to think that with this move Blizzard pretty much eliminated the chinese levelling services that got a few people into trouble with the hacked accounts etc.? I'm not sure this is something Blizzard did because they wanted to profit, I'm fairly certain they did it because people were paying money for levelling services anyway. The market is there, obviously, why have some chinese slave driver reap in the profits when instead it could go back into the infrastructure.

Edit: Also, you have to consider that realm transfer plus faction change clocks in at what, 50 bucks? You can't make it cheaper than that, or people would be complaining how they were forced to leave their alts behind because just buying a new throwaway alt is cheaper.

[Immitis]

The thing is, with as little development as this likely cost, they really could maximize profit by pricing it lower. This isn't maximizing profit. This is pricing to preclude people doing ridiculous workarounds to get more free 90s.

If they want it, they can buy it. If they don't, leveling is still viable, and really not that huge a time investment.

If they'd priced it at ~35-40 dollars, they probably would maximize profit, because a lot more people would pay it.

this.

i dont see why people seem to think it would take less than a couple minutes to change the price if they wanted to.

they could sell it for 10 bucks if they wanted and all it would take is a few minutes.

[crunk]

yeah all you people are being ridiculous, the whole point of this service is to give the RoF + account transfer people an easy way to get a character without all the hassle. maybe bring in some extra money from people who WOULD do RoF for themselves if it wasn't such a damn headache to account transfer characters and whatnot.

if they wanted to get rich off paid 90s they'd be 25 bucks, it isn't as if the ability to spawn max level characters hasn't existed in this game since day 1. the development of this option came at minimal cost to blizzard at best - eg, it costs them almost nothing to make characters so if they were just being the money whores you accuse them of being they wouldn't cost 60 dollars.

[d0cHolland]

MOP is another 20€.

They were fairly quick, with the last two expansions, to include the previous expansion in with the Battlechest. I don't recall the exact timing, but I was thinking it was only a few months after MoP released that they added Cataclysm to the BC.

[Deleted]

I don't disagree with the price, but I do disagree with the "reasoning". Putting an arbitrary value on work put into character progression is just silly. The price itself is quite apt though, low enough to discourage buying multiple copies of the game to get free 90s to transfer, high enough to feel optional rather than mandatory. If people want to buy it, I'm okay with that, but I'm not one of those people. I'd be pretty mad if it was marketed at 10$, because although I enjoy levelling, I couldn't shake the subconscious calculation of $/hour of my levelling.

[Deleted]

if it was more than $60 by any significant amount people will just do the free 90 on the expansion and transfer over, so they need to keep the price slightly lower.

as for under $60 more people would use it to the point where if it got too low people would use nothing but that.

so at $60 it gets rid of the need to circumvent the system to transfer over the free 90 from a second account, while being high enough to make people think twice about actually using it.

[Orlong]

All I see is a bunch of whiners who are too lazy to level a toon, and so they want Blizz to give them a level 90 one for peanuts since they cba to level one themselves. Personally, I wish they never offered even the free 90. ALL toons should be leveled from level 1

[Istypops]

Why so much butthurt? They set the price to 60 to not have everyone buy one and skip 75% of the game, but the option is there for people that really really cannot be bothered or anything. Nobody is forced to buy it, nobody is going to get affected by it. If the price were lower you would notice it much much more. Say if it was 25 everyone and their mum would buy one, resulting in many people playing a class they don't know. Dungeons will be a pain with healers not knowing half their spells and tanks not understanding the concept of damage mitigation and dps using spells not relevant to their spec.

Yes 60 is a lot, and the reason they give (lvl 1-90 is worth 60) is very much an opinion and everyone thinks differently about it. They want to discourage from people buying them too much but still have the option there for people who have way too much money to spend.

I'm not a big fan either but at least I think a little about it and can see the reasoning behind it rather than shout 'ermahgerd 60 derlersssss'. And people who claim P2W, just go away, this will be introduced with the new expansion where the level cap will be 100, youll be at the exact same point as everyone else...

Getting rather sick of all the wow haters that don't want to understand why Blizz makes these things, they want to have reasons to hate. I find that the biggest wow haters are players and ex-players that are disgruntled because Blizz thinks of the future rather than the past...

[mercutiouk]

Because ESO doesn't have this but 900000x worse.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-G4CFCU0fWM

That's what i call a fckn joke.

Blizzard's should have either made it they way they do or not offer a lvl 90 boost at all.

It's interesting that ESO get's a mention on most threads these days

[Tychus]

All I see is a bunch of whiners who are too lazy to level a toon, and so they want Blizz to give them a level 90 one for peanuts since they cba to level one themselves. Personally, I wish they never offered even the free 90. ALL toons should be leveled from level 1

Back in my day, we walked uphill both ways, in the snow, barefoot. That made being in school all the better. Now you kids use these fancy automobiles and get there almost instantly. What's the point of school when you can just drive there?

[Frozenbeef]

Blizzard sure do love their money don't they :s

[Deleted]

How about you all just go and level up now instead of wasting your time whining about a price a business has put because their biggest goal is to make money.