Welcome to another Mezzy Talks! This time I’d like to talk about the screenshotted price of $60 for the lvl 90 character boost, ahead of Saturday’s podcast.
So on Tuesday after patch 5.4.7 hit the US servers for a short while you could see the following in the ingame blizzard shop:
On first glance this seems a bit much doesn’t it? It doesn’t come close to any other blizzard service in terms of price. And as expected a part of the community became mad over the price. And I in return, am frustrated beyond belief with those very people who refuse to think it through. Why? Because it’s a perfectly reasonable, maybe even cheap price. Let’s break it down shall we?
The original concept of the lvl 90 boost and it’s intent
The original lvl 90 boost when it was presented at blizzcon was to give a chance for new and returning players catch up to the current content and play with their friends when Warlords of Draenor was released. You would get the lvl 90 boost with Warlords of Draenor, the expansion. Now a rightfully so good question came up, what will prevent people from buying multiple games (accounts) and the expansion along with it, to get an extra lvl 90 which they can then transfer to another account on their battle.net account? The solution blizzard presented and are moving forward with is the instant lvl 90 also buyable in the ingame shop as a service to prevent the mass influx of what would really be dummy accounts, just for the extra lvl 90.
The price
So without that solution, what would people have to buy to get an additional lvl 90 on top of the free one they’re getting when they buy Warlords of Draenor for their main account? They would have to buy:
- The battle chest, which is currently $20
- Mists of Pandaria, which is currently $20
- Warlords of Draenor, which will likely be $40 for the normal edition and $60 for the collector’s edition
So until Mists of Pandaria gets added to the battle chest, to get the extra lvl 90 on top of the one they’ll already get on their main account they’d have to pay $80 for getting another account up to Warlords of Draenor. But we’re not done yet! They’d still have to buy the character transfer to transfer the character to their main battle.net account. Which as of right now, costs $25. So now we’re up to $105.
Assuming MoP gets added to the battle chest pretty quickly it will go down to $85. And that’s just from all the things you would have to buy to get that far.
Compared to the current situation
Instead of having to do all that, people will get to pay $25 less than it would require without this service. Then add to that the fact they do not have to spend any time lvling a character up. Time after all, is also a different kind of cost. Which for an extra one on top of the original one you’re getting, would be fair to add in the price. Anyone who is whining about the current price has absolutely no right to. Not only is it cheaper than the alternative that would’ve been without the service, it saves you time if you really want another instant lvl 90. If you don’t want to pay for another instant lvl 90, lvl a character up like you’re meant to do.
In closing, the instant lvl 90 is meant to catch up to your friends if you’re returning to WoW for warlords, or if you’re joining as a new player so you can play current content. The character service is only a measure to make it easier for you to get another instant lvl 90 character if you really want to dish out the cash in favor of lazyness. It is not meant for everyone to massively buy lvl 90 boosts when they play new characters.