Burning Crusade Classic - Character Clone now $15

[Lorgar Aurelian]

I still don't understand how they are justifying a glorified copy/paste mechanism as a PAID service.

Look at it from there view people have been paying for one transfer or another at similar prices since wrath why stop now when they can make easy money?

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I think they did it on purpose for that sweet +PR
Release info about a stupid high service cost then "listen to feedback" and lower it

That would be a rather stupid plan as they’d get a ton of bad Pr first like they did and then even more bad Pr as people say they set it high first just to scam people with a discount.

Them sitting it near there other transfers prices (faction change 30$) and then listening to feed back and adjusting it makes a lot more sense given that they have been almost constantly listening to community feedback since shadowlands beta.

[GUZ]

1st one should be free...

[Dracullus]

I still don't understand how they are justifying a glorified copy/paste mechanism as a PAID service.

First, this is business, people are willing to buy, they will sell it. But they calculated with 35$ they lose many potential buyers and PR. It's not level boost that is kept on absurdly high price to avoid people buying it instead of playing game (talking about retail where it's unlimited), but still take money from whales that won't spend their time leveling anyway.

Second, I don't think me or you know specific details how this copy works. If it takes ANY effort or resources, it would be nightmare to copy millions of characters next week, where only likely small % of people actually will play character both in Classic and TBC. Any paywall lowers that amount significantly, more with every $ it cost.

It still probably will be engineering nightmare to move all these chars to TBC. When I think about it, probably works that way (correct me if they released specific info) - imo since 90+% rather move to TBC, they upgrade current server to TBC, it's Classic Era people are moved to new space.

[Drusin]

"We tried to get away with taking lots of your money..."

"lots"

lol

[kukkamies]

I like that there was the bitching thread about 35$ and so many people were saying Blizzard is right! Just pay up pig! It's completely reasonable to ask 305!

Looks like even Blizzard doesn't agree with those toxic guys.

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First, this is business, people are willing to buy, they will sell it. But they calculated with 35$ they lose many potential buyers and PR. It's not level boost that is kept on absurdly high price to avoid people buying it instead of playing game (talking about retail where it's unlimited), but still take money from whales that won't spend their time leveling anyway.

Second, I don't think me or you know specific details how this copy works. If it takes ANY effort or resources, it would be nightmare to copy millions of characters next week, where only likely small % of people actually will play character both in Classic and TBC. Any paywall lowers that amount significantly, more with every $ it cost.

It still probably will be engineering nightmare to move all these chars to TBC. When I think about it, probably works that way (correct me if they released specific info) - imo since 90+% rather move to TBC, they upgrade current server to TBC, it's Classic Era people are moved to new space.

Shouldn't be engineering nightmare at all? The transfers are completely automated, there's no human interaction. It's just copying data from one table into another table and checking if name is unique. If not give a name change.
Blizzard shouldn't be so incompetent a copy of character data is difficult when they've done it for a decade automatically.

[Sinaa]

Actually, what almost everyone is totally missing here is the point.

The real reason Blizzard is charging for cloning is that they 1) want to reduce server costs associated with maintaining Classic only servers by reducing the number of servers and 2) ensure that the Classic only servers are reasonably well populated with ACTIVE players (through merged servers - see other blue post regarding server "connections" for Classic Era).

While you might quibble about what the charge should be it had to be high enough to produce the intended effect - limited number of Classic Era servers with a reasonable number of ACTIVE players.

While Blizzard is no doubt profiting off both the charge and reduction in servers the actual intent was to keep Classic Era servers vibrant instead of being ghost towns.

I know that's not what anybody wants to hear but it's the truth.

If there was no cloning at all that goal would be perfectly accomplished. (And people would spend more time leveling in both games)

[Dracullus]

Shouldn't be engineering nightmare at all? The transfers are completely automated, there's no human interaction. It's just copying data from one table into another table and checking if name is unique. If not give a name change.
Blizzard shouldn't be so incompetent a copy of character data is difficult when they've done it for a decade automatically.

At least I admit I'm ignorant in this field and in the end just guessing. You sound like Karen that has no idea how things work, but still straight up calls everyone incompetent cause "it's so easy it's ctrl c ctrl v few numbers".

[kukkamies]

At least I admit I'm ignorant in this field and in the end just guessing. You sound like Karen that has no idea how things work, but still straight up calls everyone incompetent cause "it's so easy it's ctrl c ctrl v few numbers".

I actually just a month ago did do work with a database of 4,8 million entries. It took 2 hours to write the code, and 2 hours to fix it, to check the entries, edit and copy what needed. Then it took 2 weeks to run it because the external service for checking is pretty slow.
The problem was we had customers where they had many accounts with same email or connected to only one outside account causing some receipts, promotion info, customer service etc go to wrong place sometimes.

Simple copying is very easy to automate. We can even see proof that it is automated. When you buy a transfer on Blizzard's website it happens immediately, even during not work hours. On PTR realms it's also immediate, not handled manually.

[Kuvanet]

This is just a PR stunt. Let the sheep say “they do listen”. They knew the price was too much. They knew that people would rage. They knew...

[MrLachyG]

it's a good change, not that I will be using it because I am done with Classic. however IMO the prices for services are insanely overpriced. Race Change 34, Server Transfer 34, Faction Change 40, Name Change 13.50.

Honestly, they will make so much more money if they made those services between $5 and $10. I know the Blizzard response will be "well it's priced that way to de-incentivise people from doing stuff like server transferring to make gold off the auction house" but there is a simple solution to that: put a cap on it. 3 services per account per month

[erifwodahs]

This is just a PR stunt. Let the sheep say “they do listen”. They knew the price was too much. They knew that people would rage. They knew...

I mean if there was no outrage, they would have kept it for sure. That might have been "two scenarios" plan all along, but if they think that people won't be weary of that. Disappointment still remains.

[ClassicPeon]

"We tried to get away with taking lots of your money..."

"after players caught us with trying to get away with our initial established price... we decided to lower the amount of money we are going to try to rob you of"

"thank you for your feedback and look forward to receiving your credit card information"

The real take is probably something more like:

"our estimate is that we will sell so many more character clones that in the end, we will make more money if we sell it for 15 instead".

This isnt a "bend the knee" moment.

[kamuimac]

they just overpriced it - and people rather level up new toon them pay 35$ for clone

now at 15 $ - everyone will clone all max level toon - thats baicly almost free char boost for TBC realms

[Mrbleedinggums]

Shill harder. The game has a box price, a sub price, AND microtransactions. Having not only paid services but paid services with a price tag dramatically higher than genre average on top of 3 other profit streams is absurd greed and you know it.

/shrug don't like it? don't keep paying

[erifwodahs]

make your own game and then have people bitch at you demanding everything should be free, assuming you can make a successful game.

Dude, are you being paid? I mean why in the world would you defend Blizz? You think they won't make profit? Why would defend a corporation if you don't care about the price? I mean shit like this is what allows apple to sell screen stands for 2k or whatever that was.
It's like standing in the que to be beat up and just cheering at the thugs to beat the guy before you harder. You are next.

[Bigcountry11782]

To little to late blizzard.

[Thes]

Is the 58 character boost still a thing? I want a new class...

[Cæli]

wow unexpected
I'm fairly satisfied

[wowplayersareimbeciles]

lol 15$ for a database operation to run by itself and update some fields in some tables

wow players are as bad as apple users, you would pay money for the dumbest shit, you people deserve to lose your money

you don't even realize this is what blizzard wanted, for you to be happy for a glorified COPY operation in a database to cost the price of an entire month of sub

you fucking RETARDS.

[RamGuy]

I do agree upon all the prices being out-of-whack. But I don't understand why people expect this to be free? Why do people expect to be able to have their character exist in both The Burning Crusade Classic and Vanilla Classic at the same time? You either follow the natural progression and move over to The Burning Crusade, or you decide to stay with Vanilla as that is your thing. All of this is free.

It's only when you want to double-dip and have your character keep on existing in Vanilla-only while also having it progress into The Burning Crusade you have to pay. This all sounds very logical to me. Why would people expect to be able to clone their characters free of charge?

I still agree upon the original pricing being nonsense. I do also agree that even at 15 USD it's rather expensive for such a simple service. But expecting it to be free doesn't make much sense to me. I did never expect that I would be able to take all my Vanilla characters and clone them all so I have them both in Vanilla and TBC.