The slippery slope has finally ended.

[videotape]

Yes it would appear as though the sky is falling. Surely this is the end of WoW, as foretold by the ancient prophecies.

After leveling a few dozen characters to various expansion level caps over the years, I can safely say that I see nothing wrong with the potential feature of selling characters. Leveling is not part of the game at level cap. Either you want to level, in which case you level, or you want to play level-cap content, in which case your only option is currently to first invest X hours leveling. Even if you've done it 20 times already.

I think it would be fair to add a constraint that players must actually level a character to level X before they can purchase characters at level X. Could take it or leave it though.

For the fuck's sake, it's a video game.

[arcaneshot]

I'm willing to bet the 90 will come with Timeless Isle quality gear, epic flying unlocked (including Northrend and Pandaria), and probably some gold, maybe 5k just to get professions started.

It's going to turn out similar to the RAF 80 boost. You got 280 flying, a full set of 20 slot bags, a full set of 232 items, and I think 2k gold. Maybe First Aid as well, but I can't remember.

And I remember people freaking out over those, too, but the reality was it didn't really matter because a) you had no professions, so the gold wasn't enough, and b) the gear sucked, so you needed to replace it all anyway, all of which was compounded by c) you had base reputation with every faction, so you had no faction discount to speak of. While Blizzard noted they were intending to force 90 boosts into a 'tutorial' zone before letting them loose on the world, the bottom line was unless you were prepared in advance your boosted character was hosed.

[Deleted]

Careful with that line of thinking on these forums, sine most rational people will mock you for making gross exaggerations.

hehe, this might go done as my post of the day

People really need to CALM DOWN!

[mistahwilshire]

Buying 90s in a level 100 expansion is objectively not pay2win. There isn't even an argument for it. It's simply not. It's a fact.

[Galluccio]

I did the recruit a friend program 4 times. I multi boxed. Three days later I had five level 85 toons. I think it's ok for returning players to have one level 90. I have 10 alchemists. I guess I could be profiting a lot but I'm simply not motivated to do that. I like leveling up toons and playing my main.

[Rumblecrush]

Buying 90s in a level 100 expansion is objectively not pay2win. There isn't even an argument for it. It's simply not. It's a fact.

So sell 522 gear since that's not end game either.


You're on your level 10 alt. A level 50 ganks you. You head to the shop, boost to 90, go back and killed the level 50. You paid. You became more powerful than him. You won.

[Pandamists]

Buying 90s in a level 100 expansion is objectively not pay2win. There isn't even an argument for it. It's simply not. It's a fact.

It wouldn't be pay to win even if it was 100, the problem is that it skips a staple of WoW for cash. WoW is known for it's end-game but the leveling 1 to max level should be a required, it's like earning it. That's not even the tip of the iceberg either.

[tankbug]

At this point it the game, it makes sense. You're not "winning" anything today by having a level 90 character, you're just barely catching up.
I can imagine that if I had been inactive for years and I wanted to check out if the newer additions of the game, it would feel hard to go through days of /played to get a taste. Maybe not a fair comparison, but think if you wanted to see the latest Batman movie, and had to start with the ones from the 40's and go through em all until you were allowed.

[Rumblecrush]

At this point it the game, it makes sense. You're not "winning" anything today by having a level 90 character, you're just barely catching up.
I can imagine that if I had been inactive for years and I wanted to check out if the newer additions of the game, it would feel hard to go through days of /played to get a taste. Maybe not a fair comparison, but think if you wanted to see the latest Batman movie, and had to start with the ones from the 40's and go through em all until you were allowed.

You pay for a power advantage over anyone below 90 that didn't pay. Oh but it doesnt count because it's not end game? What counts as end game? Full heroic warforged gear? So let's sell normal gear since it can be argued as not being end game

[mistahwilshire]

So sell 522 gear since that's not end game either.


You're on your level 10 alt. A level 50 ganks you. You head to the shop, boost to 90, go back and killed the level 50. You paid. You became more powerful than him. You won.

High end raiding and arena are the only tracked or ranked forms of competition in this game. It is literally impossible to be p2w until something is sold for cash that allows a direct impact on either of those.

Also you can't just make up selling gear to support your own argument, because that's not the reality. That's not what is happening. Stop making up fantasy just to support your own delusion. It's pathetic.

[vbshadow]

I just finished reading through the entire thread, and I don't anyone covered the whole part about where you actually have to pay money for this.

I imagine that a large number of people who play this game don't have the kind of money that all the people who are vehemently against not-yet-official-decision think they do. I know that I'm not about to fork over $30-40 for something I could casually do over the course of a week or so. If someone else does, so what? I had to option to do so, and I chose not to.

Everyone who thinks that this is going to ruin the economy somehow is leaving out the fact that doing so would be highly inefficient and very unlikely by the average person. Let's make a few assumptions:
This service will cost $30 (A fair, yes perhaps low estimate).
You only have 1 max level character and no others.
Since you are interested in taking over a virtual economy, you are going to purchase the maximum amount of characters you can. (49, across 5 servers)

That means you will have to put down a $1470 investment to acquire all these characters. Not to mention the fact that you now have to level the chosen profession on all these characters, and farm all the necessary materials required to craft the things you intend on selling on the auction house. This brings you to your endgame of.....making virtual gold?

The only group that this would actually benefit is gold selling companies.....who already use these exact tactics anyways, they just spend the 15 hours to level each character instead. In the long term, that adds up to a lot of total hours spent/saved leveling/vice leveling characters, which is made irrelevant again by the fact that they would have to pay to get there.

Overall it seems like a lot of work just to gain an edge on a digital market whose product is, well, digital.

Regardless of how you define P2W, it doesn't matter how much money you spend on whatever digital product they decided to sell, because in the end, there is no "winning." The only victory comes from the accomplishment of overcoming a challenge, or having fun with your friends. The former, you don't really achieve if you pay for all of your gear, etc, but you still had to possess the requisite skill. The latter, is still entirely possible with or without the existence of paid digital goods.

tl;dr: Spent too much time lurking and had to provide points for multiple arguments at once.

[coldrain]

I love how this announcement is made right after they removed phone support, anyone calling the 800# to complain gets an automated message telling them to visit the support website and hangs up on them

[Seriss]

Why are you so upset that you can give your friend a box of WoD and start the levelling process in Draenor IMMEDIATELY with them?

Would you rather stick them into Deathknell and tell them to get back to you as soon as they've reached lvl 100 on their own, at a point in time when you've already cleared the various flexible raid difficulties a couple of times and are trying the first boss on mythic mode already?

Would you rather explain to them every new ability they get - and possibly be annoyed that they're asking you all those stupid questions - or would you rather give them advice on how to play with a lvl 90 character of their class already a week before WoD goes live so that you can have fun levelling TOGETHER?

Leaving that aside... You say: People need to put effort into the game, levelling from 1-90 in several days. I say: I've dragged newly created characters through all of BC, WotLK and Cata dungeons to give them a quick boost to where they could enter Pandaria, leaving those characters with a played time of 2 days max from start to "finish". (And that's just because 1-58 is still faster by doing quests and picking up the dungeon quests for whenever you're told that a new dungeon can be queued for - the wait times are ridiculously low these days, seriously, it's that fast and that efficient.)

Do they learn rotations? Nope. Well, they do - if they seek out guides. The game doesn't teach them those. The game hasn't taught ME my rotations either when I started it back then when BC had just gone live. If you wanted to perform at the level that all those "elitist jerks" expect from you, you ALWAYS needed to look up guides if you wanted to perform so well that people would take you into the entry raids with you - and today, people will just kick you from LFR if you mess up too badly.

[Ryme]

The social evolution in this game is has never been more apparent for me than in this thread - a few years ago, the thought of selling character levels would be unthinkable, the uproar would be similar to the forced Real ID fiasco from many moons back.

Now, I'd say it's looking around 60-70% embraced on this forum - myself included.

Oh how the times change. I'm not sure if I'm sad or not.

[Deadite]

Buying 90s in a level 100 expansion is objectively not pay2win. There isn't even an argument for it. It's simply not. It's a fact.

You think they will be naked? They will be like Death Knights and get good enough gear to jump into WoD content. So as some one above said you start at the same time as Joe Blogs and he bought a lvl 90 and you did not. He clocks you walking about the Barrens when you are still only level 12 and he swoops down and kills you. How did he not buy the power to kill me? He paid to win.

Now go on a few weeks when i have hit 100 and i see Joe Blogs walking about Draenor. Yeah pay back time! Oh look hes been max level weeks more than me and has twice my stats with all the gear me farmed. His pay to winning will take weeks more to over come.

Now i know with so many Blizzard apologists on these forums it will fall on deaf ears but when the only relevant content is at max level then paying to get there faster is paying to win. Now i don't care either way if they sell lvl 90 chars but it is pay to win imho and it is rather disingenuous to say otherwise.

[Deleted]

Wouldnt mind insta 90 me self.
I get one for free with my WoD copy.

After having 9 lvl 90's i dont want to lvl a new alt to lvl 15 to be able to dungeon spam my way to 90 once more.

WoW isnt getting alot of "New Players" majority will be the people that still plays and some old wow players that come and goes with each expansion.
Dont see all the fuss about this, even if they going to sell 90's off the bat it wouldnt hurt my WoW experience.

Heck, insta 90's maybe the queue times gets lower or on my non-connected realm there will be more than a hand full of PUG's for SoO norm.

[mistahwilshire]

You think they will be naked? They will be like Death Knights and get good enough gear to jump into WoD content. So as some one above said you start at the same time as Joe Blogs and he bought a lvl 90 and you did not. He clocks you walking about the Barrens when you are still only level 12 and he swoops down and kills you. How did he not buy the power to kill me? He paid to win.

Now go on a few weeks when i have hit 100 and i see Joe Blogs walking about Draenor. Yeah pay back time! Oh look hes been max level weeks more than me and has twice my stats with all the gear me farmed. His pay to winning will take weeks more to over come.

Now i know with so many Blizzard apologists on these forums it will fall on deaf ears but when the only relevant content is at max level then paying to get there faster is paying to win. Now i don't care either way if they sell lvl 90 chars but it is pay to win imho and it is rather disingenuous to say otherwise.

DK gear wasn't good enough to jump in to anything besides leveling. There is literally nothing wrong with that.

There's a week or two until relevant raiding starts and until the arena season opens. If you aren't level 100 and ready to go in that amount of time then you're really not relevant in the games actual forms of competition anyway.

Also if ganking a low level character is considered winning to you then you're truly delusional.

[Tastyfish]

anyone who was half decent wouldn't care about buying a level 90 with crap gear, no gold, no achievements nothing at all except level 90

Rite?
Who cares. New blood that has not been pissed off from solo leveling 90 levels competing with max lvl characters for gathering nodes is welcome in my book.
( maybe the people who are crying actually are going to loose money in the power lvling market due to this.) lol



Secretly 80% of the people bitching are in fear that the new free 90s will out gear them, without having to fail for 8 months on reg Gar-Gar.

[Darthyogi]

You're on your level 10 alt. A level 50 ganks you. You head to the shop, boost to 90, go back and killed the level 50. You paid. You became more powerful than him. You won.

Yeah, you've won for the next ten mins it takes him to log on to PvP tricked out main, gather 4 of his equally geared buddies and camps your azz for the next 1 or 2 hours. Yup, you're winning all right.

[tankbug]

You pay for a power advantage over anyone below 90 that didn't pay. Oh but it doesnt count because it's not end game? What counts as end game? Full heroic warforged gear? So let's sell normal gear since it can be argued as not being end game

DKs start at 55, they have a power advantage over any other class at 0 days played. Fair? No. Problem? No.
Fresh 90 is today a good start for catching up, no one says anything about buying yourself through endgame content, getting a max level, max geared character. Anyways, everyone gets one boost for free, so it's not about money.