Character Level Boost to 90 priced at $60

[Deleted]

I wouldn't use it even if it was £5 I would much rather level myself
what's the point in buying a game to start near the end

[Guyviroth]

This is just... ridiculously stupid.

Why would anyone pay $60 to boost to level 90 when they could buy 4 months of game time and hit level 90 within the first month?

[Notos]

$60 seems a bit high considering RaF is much cheaper and doesn't have a toon limit. Ah well, not like I need it anyways.

[Splatter]

Price seems a little... exorbitant. You'd be paying more for a character than the price of the game (on a new account)!

how do you work that out? battlechest $20 usd, MoP $20 Usd, WoD $??. USD (Probably $40).

This is just... ridiculously stupid.

Why would anyone pay $60 to boost to level 90 when they could buy 4 months of game time and hit level 90 within the first month?

Thats exactly the point. Its for people who would rather pay for convenience for the hassle of leveling yet another toon. No one is forcing you to level this way, dont want to pay? then level the toon yourself.

[Franzy]

Seems reasonable, $5 extra compared to server+faction change ($55).

[Doomchicken]

I am so fucking proud of blizz for this, Great job (No really). For all of the people complaining about how everyone would just buy a level 90 this price severely reduces the amount of people buying it.

There's that. Also, I'm not sure if people realize this or not, but until the service becomes live they actually can change prices. They could make it cheaper or they could up the price more. Seeing a screenshot of $60 bucks means nothing other than right at this moment it may be $60, not that it WILL be $60 by the time it comes out.

[Deleted]

Price seems a little... exorbitant. You'd be paying more for a character than the price of the game (on a new account)!

Well i wan't planning on boosting chars.. not even the free one. However if i would.. i wouldn't do it for 60. No way.

[Aqua]

Heh. Interesting. Out of reach and a serious waste of money. Okay then. We'll let blizzard deal with all the fraudulence and credit card mess that goes on behind scenes then. Because only that and a few brainless rich kids would even consider this.

[Deleted]

Expect Blizzard's explanation/reasoning: "We have decided the price to be high, so that it's comparable to buying a new expansion and merging two accounts. We wanted to give an opportunity for people who wanted to do this as seamlessly as possible, therefore Character Boost has been added to the Shop so that you won't have to buy another expansion (if you are just after boosting one of your characters to level 90). We think that the price is fair for people that are willing to spend this kind of money on leveling their character quickly, but it's high enough that this should not become a default way to level all of your characters. In the meanwhile, for people that cannot afford or are not willing to purchase additional Level 90 Character Boost we have started to release a series of leveling guides on our Website, which you can check here: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/128...-1-5-2-15-2014. Meanwhile, happy adventures in Azeroth."

NOTE: Above words are my own, not Blizzard's.

However, if there will be a Blue Post about this, I expect it to be something very similar to what's been written above. And even if it does appear in this form, those points still stand:
- the transition from buying only cosmetic goods to allowing things that actually will improve your character progression has been made
- it is being advertised as a way of solving an issue, that has been created by Blizzard themselves (character boost given with expansion -> "people would buy new expansions just to boost their alts" -> add it to the store). "Getting right into the action" for people coming back to WoW has suddenly become a serious problem, not seen in previous expansions. For a way of justifying the decision, refer to this blog post explaining everything nicely: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/124...port-1-16-2014
- there are many, many (many..) other ways of solving the 'issue' above, first being removing the expansion boost completely (in the name of repeated so loudely "if we don't like the idea, we scrap it and start over again"), putting some form of restrictions on account merging with boosted characters, making a boost available only to returning players with an account inactive for X amount of time until Y days before expansion release etc. etc. I've thought about this only for 5 minutes and Blizzard is quite a big company, full of talented people that would figure something out for sure.
- there's a big emphasis put on microtransactions since the start of this expansion (with changes being deployed around mid-expansion, pretty quickly one after another since then): in-game store available on live since Dec. 10th 2013 (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/119...ame-12_10_2013), another shop button added on character selection screen on Jan. 30th 2014 on PTR, live today (http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/...-Tweets-RoS-CE) but this one being taller than the other and with bright yellow border to make it tempting to click and hard to miss, Blizzard Gear Store opened on Feb. 11th (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/128...ning-2-11-2014), character services in form of Character Boost (for now) have been added to the store, live today as well. And I'm not sure if I haven't missed something.

I'm not trying to say that the price is high or low. Not going to say that I like it or not (even though I will never buy one myself). It just saddens me, because the direction in which the game is going is very clear now. My prediction is that we will see more of this by the end of the year. And no, I'm not blaming Blizzard - they just the same as any other company, the reason for their existence is making money, and that's what they do. In the meantime, they keep on making awesome content that keeps me playing constantly for quite some time now and I most likely won't stop playing any time soon. Will WoW go Free-to-play in my opinion? Openly - probably never. Quietly being transformed to a form of 'Free-to-play with monthly subscription fees' - it's already getting really close to it. And subscription fees are too big of an income to simply let it go away.

PS. And I'm not even sure why I'm posting in a thread from a frontpage. This post will sink in an ocean of posts from shortsighted people complaining only about price being too high or too low. Sadly.

[Binary Speaker]

Hmm while I personally have no issue I think 2 things should happen.
1) 5$ discount on it for each 90 you already have that aren't boosted. Up to 3 or so.
2) Can only use it once a week.
In all honesty only real use I see for it is if your raid group needs a role filled or something. Just my 0.02$

[Doomchicken]

While WoW saw a "slim" improvement to subscriptions during the last quarter (not that those earnings calls can be trusted 100%, mind you),.

It is ILLEGAL for blizzard to lie in their earnings calls.

[Wolfheart9]

Blizz announces level 90 boost.

Players freak, say it's pay to win (It's not), everyone will use it.

Players cry out to boycott the cash shop to stop it from becoming truely pay to win.

Blizz prices it at a point where not everyone CAN use it, will make less money off of it than if it was cheaper.

Players cry out that it's unfair and the price proves that Blizz is greedy and that no one will use it, thus matching their cry for boycott.

Blizz is an evil corperation.

.... Wat

[Deleted]

This is just... ridiculously stupid.

Why would anyone pay $60 to boost to level 90 when they could buy 4 months of game time and hit level 90 within the first month?

BEcause they are tired of leveling and fed up with the content theyve leveled through god knows how many times before.

I really cant understand why people even bother bitching about this. If you think its expensive, dont fucking buy it?

40 pages.. incredible...

[Puntar]

With what data do you make this claim? Are you sure it will discourage people from using it on all their characters? Because I just read a comment saying he will surely use it on 2-3 characters at $60 a piece ASAP. And as far as I know, the amount of money someone is ready to put in the game isn't an indication of his skills and ability to learn a new class. So free or not, a character boost will add max level characters, and I would assume that the skill ratio of these players will be the same as old toons.

Now, I guess that if it would be free, it would destroy the 1-90 content (make the whole world empty for good). But I don't think it would change anything else. The game is 10 years old and there are people who play since TBC that still suck balls, others that started in MoP and are on top. Remember that the 90 boost is meant to be for the next expansion where you will still need to level 90 to 100, so good players will have time to adapt, learn, and become good, bad players will remain bad, putting a high price on a boost won't affect their skills all of the sudden.

They have a financial analysis team that put the price up there, so for the profit, it's probably the best price point. For the respect they will get from their playerbase, not so much.

Financial analysis my ass!

Like that all WoW players live in US, Canada / Western Europe (UK, Benelux, France, Germany, Swiss, Norway, Sweden and Italy) with month salary of ~ $3500+ /€2500+. For those $60 looks like a small change.

In reality I suspect, most WoW players from other countries not listed above have way less of an income! For those $60 is a lot!

For once I hope Blizzard will not make another 1 : 1 conversion to Euro! As I posted this message $60 is equal to around €43.

[Wayne25uk]

Some morons on here....

They put it at that price to make it unattractive and a sort of last resort thing,they do the same thing with name changes and server transfers,because think about it if a name change was only £2 then they would be changing names every 3 seconds and that takes time and man power,but if they charge £60 then they will only get a few every day BECAUSE of its price,its both a good thing and a deterrent at the same time.

Some logic might be useful before you guys post you sound like whiny ass 3 year olds complaining that the sweets are 2 much and you cant afford them.

[jellmoo]

Okay. I kind of understand those that are arguing against this in principle. I think that they are naive and do not agree with their reasoning, but I can understand their perspective to a degree.

Those that are complaining about price though utterly baffle me. This is a premium service that is being offered and the high price point is a gate against abuse. Those saying that this requires little effort to implement are missing the point. Blizzard is offering people with limited time, that have been away from the game, that are curious about other classes, that just want a change an option to avoid the grind of levelling. They are pricing it so that it does not become the default method of gaining a high level character. They still want people to level, to be out in the game world. This is an option to avoid that. For people that want to skip 2 days of play time to get there.

This isn't pay to win. Not even remotely. This is just replacing a time investment with a monetary one. An option. If somebody values 2 days of their lives more than $60, then they have an option. Price it lower and we suddenly have even emptier levelling zones. Blizzard priced this perfectly.

[Issalice]

You do realize that this is a front page post right, Csnyder?

I'm glad it's set at this price. Discourages people from using it willy-nilly.

That's a good point, I never though of it that way to be honest. I never had a problem with it apart from people not knowing their class. But I will remain optimistic til I have reason to hate on it lol.

[IdTheDemon]

1. Go to a new realm with several friends and guildies

2. Buy a level 90 boost

3. Get to Ulduar

4. Kill 0 Yogg

5. Get Death's Demise

[acg137]

I posted this before way back when they first announced "buyable 90s"

This issue about "buying 90s" was brought up cuz of a possibility that a multi-account user (like myself) would have the benefit of having multiple free 90s.

But what Blizzard fails to check is the cost it would take for someone to maintain multiple accounts and the possibility of me just transferring all the 90s to just ONE account.

So why not set the price at exactly the price it costs a person to Buy a new WoW account -> MoP expansion -> Warlords Expansion -> Character Transfer to another account (for the benefit of everyone let's assume it's just character not even realm/faction) - it should be at about $100. Add $10-20 dollars to the mix as a "penalty" of some sort for relying on buying a 90 instread of leveling and there $120 to buy a 90; it may be available but it also acts as a deterrent from buying multiple 90s

(well either that or each account is locked to buy just ONE 90 -> in which case the same rule applies for multiple account owners)


Personally given that price point... I'll probably buy 1-2 90s on top of a free 90 - well primarily to play with some friends on the Alliance.

[Teebone]

This is re-affirming my belief that a 'Free-to-Play' announcement is not far away...