The World of Warcraft community was up in arms last week, when WoW Insider spotted a level 90 boost item available briefly in the in-game store for $US60. Speaking to Eurogamer, lead encounter designer Ion Hazzikostas says the high price tag was established to ensure Blizzard didn’t “devalue the accomplishment of levelling”.
The power-levelling service killing item is being introduced to the long-running MMORPG in response to the one-time level 90 character boost included in the upcoming Warlords of Draenor expansion pack, said Hazzikostas.
“It’s tremendously awkward to tell someone that you should buy two copies of the expansion just to get a second 90. That’s odd. So we knew at that point we were going to have to offer it as a separate service.”
So Blizzard decided to introduce the ability to purchase an automatic level 90 character boost, setting the price for the upgrade to $US60. This made people angry for multiple reasons. Some say the price is far too high, though still much cheaper than the average third party power levelling service — a quick Google search shows prices set in the $US200-$300 range.
Others say the ability to instantly purchase a level 90 character will keep players from levelling altogether, creating a game full of max-level characters and emptying the areas where players in the process of reaching the cap would play.
Hazzikostas says that’s exactly what Blizzard is trying to avoid.
“In terms of the pricing, honestly a big part of that is not wanting to devalue the accomplishment of levelling,” Hazzikostas said.
“If our goal here was to sell as many boosts as possible, we could halve the price or more than that – make it $US10 or something. And then hardly anyone would ever level a character again.
“But levelling is something that takes dozens if not over 100 hours in many cases and people have put serious time and effort into that, and we don’t want to diminish that.
It’s a classic dilemma Blizzard has faced with World of Warcraft — trying to please several different groups of players at once. Some want a lower price. Some fear the boost entirely. Others are looking forward to the chance to skip the fluff and get straight to the end-game meat.
It’s impossible to predict how such a diverse player base will react once the service is fully available. Is Blizzard doing the right thing at the right price? We’ll have to wait and see.
Comments
68 responses to “Blizzard Explains World Of Warcraft’s $60 Level Boosts”
Looks like WoW is adopting the Pay2Win strategy. Who needs to know their class? $60 will do the trick, and someone DPSing at 500 DPS (instead of 60 – 90k for a fresh 90) will be the norm. You grind from 1 – 90 because that’s how you learn to play your toon.
That might be how you learn to play your character, but it’s a bit naive to think everyone learns to play the same way you do.
No, that’s how is works in general: Learning by doing.
How do you learn to speak, to write? By doing, as you grow up. It is like a time warp: Imagine you age instantly from being born to 21 years old – you don’t know how to walk, to balance, to speak, to behave in society, because you missed the whole growing up part.
“No, my way is the only way and anyone that says differently is wrong”.
As they say, for many people this will be for a second character.. Meaning they already know how.. If people want to disadvantage themselves in skill by just doing so without any experience, that’s their own choice.
By the general community of WoW I am sure you will still have plenty of people to yell at for doing the wrong thing while in raids and rage at. lel.
By the same token, this IS still a pay to win strategy that will wreak havok with the WoW economy.
$60 will buy you a max level Alt which you can choose 2 professions for and cap straight up. This will interfere with the WoW economy in that it’ll become easy to get alts to use daily cooldowns (multiples) and not need to interact with other players for mats/crafting/components.
As a long time WoW Gold Goblin myself, I can certainly attest to the fact that $60 cash for an instant crafting Alt is worth it’s weight in gold (pun intended!)
There realistically is no “win” in WoW.. Which is what makes it so pointless to sink years into..
But.. If anything, this just controls WHERE you play to me. If anything, winning would be beating the quests in the areas you can now go, and hopefully getting rare/ultra-rare drops.. Unrelated to leveling.
For me, it’s great because I MIGHT enjoy playing WoW short term, and would want to do so with my friends.. But don’t want to spend a year or so just getting to a point where I can play with them…
I guess not having to endlessly grind is in a way paying to win.. in that you don’t have to waste your whole life. Especially since, let’s face it, people just grind to the highest level anyway since there’s little point investing time or resources into low level gear. The real game is the end-game content and I think most long term players would admit this.
Not entirely correct:
1) This is NOT pay to win. As @tikanderoga aptly put it: “Learn by doing, not by skipping” (paraphrased). All you’re doing it spending 4 months of extra game-time (4 months of $15 = $60) to have a 90 instantly. And those who buy a 90 boost, aren’t likely to spend less than 4 months playing WoW.
2) You only get the professions to 600 if the character you’re boosting is over level 60 (basically a bonus to anyone who’s been playing for the past 8-9 years)
3) You still need to level the crafting to 675 (most likely) at 100 to be of any use late game
4) Who’s to say they’d keep the mats for themselves, more people putting items on the AH is beneficial to almost everyone
1. It’s not a max level alt, it’s level 90. The max level in the expansion is 100.
2. It’s not an instant crafting alt. You still have to level your professions. You only get 600 crafting if the character you’re boosting was already a certain minimum level (60, I think).
All the money gained from quests is taken out of the economy as well. This will also combat gold sellers/illegal third party companies which in turn affect the gold market through inflation.
From what I understand, you’re given some gold. Even so, there’s very little gold movement below level 90 anyway – most people don’t buy gear while they’re levelling, since it gets replaced shortly anyway. I have a heavy presence in two crafted goods markets on my server and the vast majority of sales are to 90s.
QFT. Good luck buying crafting materials and equipment upgrades at-level on a lowbie character.
You’d have to grind for days to buy a stack of wool or bronze bars, and FORGET buying a green item that’s priced at hundreds of gold for peoples’ transmog sets.
The economy does not give two shits about sub-level-cap.
So you wanna tell me, playing a mage is the same thing as a druid? And playing a deathknight same as a rogue?
I’ve been playing a mage since Vanilla, and I had a bad awakening when I started playing a priest. Both casters, but heaven and earth to play.
No, you’re right, i’m sure you need to be forced to play a year on each character. And all players can and should just shut up and like it.
This is a choice. If you WANT to, you CAN. As I say, i’m sure the hardcores amongst the WoW community can still rage just like they do at lvl 90’s who got there the regular way.. And life goes on.
Yay, Sarcasm, hasn’t seen that in a while.
I see the option it gives – give money to Blizzard instead of some shonky 3rd party leveling service, and people skipping the old content so they can enjoy the current one.
And if people are just noobs in groups because they can’t even be bothered reading google, because $60 was more convenient, then they will end up getting kicked for slacking.
I’ll kick you from my party, then you wont get any blackjack or strippers.
http://is.gd/AJ3Lib
You’re still projecting your own style of learning onto other people. Not everyone learns the way you do. Some people learn by studying all the abilities and then testing out rotations on the training dummies. Like I said above, it’s naive to think your way is the only way.
It’s pretty much the same thing, honestly. How much difference is there between cat-form druid DPS and a rogue? I’ve played both and I’m telling you – not much.
Some of the toys and tricks in your toolbox will be different, but the basics of copying a cookie-cutter rotation from a website and practicing it will be the same. The basics of being a ranged DPS, melee DPS, or tank/heals will be the same. Some classes like Pally and Hunter are laughably simple insofar as your only real limiter is cooldowns.
Levelling might teach you what a rotation IS, but nothing about having the perfect one. Especially since you’ll want to change it every time you get a new skill. Good play at group level is full of things you NEVER learn in levelling. It’s about threat, about not standing in fire, it’s about timing your burst and cooldowns. And the fact is, levelling DOES NOT TEACH YOU THAT. Leveling doesn’t teach you jack shit about clipping your DoTs, because there is no consequence – it’s pathetically easy. You could damn near auto-attack your way to 100. You don’t learn the important things that the NIMBYs whine about. Other players in the raid or your guild teach you those things.
Last time I levelled a mage in Northrend, I did a dungeon run with a level 77 paladin tank who was wearing cloth and leather, because they had the highest green numbers.
If you can’t learn that shit from 1-77, you won’t learn it from 1-100. Levelling doesn’t teach you what you need to know about grouping and threat and focussing on a pure tank/dps/heal role instead of the hybrid tank/heal/dps combination that soloing forces you to be.
I haven’t played wow for years so something drastic may have changed, but when I did, google was far more important then experience when it came to learning the game. It did a terrible job of explaining how to play a class properly.
It’s improved a bit since then, they list the core abilities for each class and spec, but it’s still a trial and error process that many people aren’t good at. For those that learn by study instead of by repetition, Icy Veins and Ask Mr Robot tell you all the numbers and priorities need to know, Tankspot and Elitist Jerks have all the theorycrafting if you want to know why those numbers and priorities work.
I’m pretty sure it’s not even possible to do 500 DPS naked and unarmed as a level 90 character.
There are plenty of people who reach the level cap and have no idea how to play their class.
all people need to do is read a few guides and work out rotations or priorities its not difficult.
this might have been true during classic or BC where there was a crapton more skils and a lot of useless ones, and information wasn’t as readily available.
now I can get addon that will essentially tell me what buttons to press for almost any class, and there are countless guides around telling you how to play
They are still going to have 10lvls to learn their stuff. And what difference does it make to you if they do poor dps? Its not like its all that hard to spot a bad raider who doesn’t know their stuff.
If you cannot tell how good a player is within the first 5-10 minutes of playing with them then you yourself are a bad player. Also it is not pay to win, this feature is largely for veteran players who don’t want to spend 2 weeks leveling a new character, and it takes maybe 10 minutes to get good which a class/spec I do not see the issue.
I agree that you should learn and level up the only good thing out of this, is players like myself who HAD a lvl 70 toon and stopped playing years ago I went to play and my toon is GONE I was pissed all the hours I put in gone so I would love the boost I DO WISH they only made to cat. Exp lvl 80 that way you don’t go right into end game and must do some quests
Or, you know, it could just be a good old cash grab by Blizzard…
I mentioned in the previous WoW-related article, I have no problem with this. People have been finding ways to ‘pay to boost’ characters since the RAF program first appeared, and I can understand why Blizzard wants to provide a way for people to bypass 9 years of outdated content.
I can also understand why some people are uncomfortable with the idea, but at the end of the day it doesn’t affect me if other people buy a level 90 boost. The biggest argument on the WoW forums seems to be that it devalues the effort the rest of us put in to level our characters, but that argument relies on the notion that ‘getting to level 90’ is some sort of universal prestige instead of a personal accomplishment. Really, another player boosting to 90 doesn’t change the fact you levelled your character up normally, and any sense of accomplishment at having done that isn’t diminished by what other people do unless you let it.
The problem is that it’s a M*M*ORPG. The asterix’d “M” is for Multiplayer. You are in competition with other players. I have 11 90’s, and I have played WoW for MANY hours since release. Blizz have constantly made it easier to level… reducing the amount of exp to level, ways to increase exp gains(Elixir of Ancient Knowledge, heirlooms, RAF 300% exp gains, free level grants 1 for 2 RAF), and the WoD announcement of a “free” 90 and now this. So how does this affect me?
This affects me because I put in HUNDREDS of hours, years of my life, to get my account to the position that it is. I’d say my account is/would have been worth thousands of dollars. I have all professions, and despite this, I’m nowhere near the richest person on the server. I get undercut on the AH, I have ppl swoop down to steal my herbs/veins/etc, and I have to put in time and effort as I always have to afford the things that I want such as expensive mounts that cost buttloads of gold. So if someone previously had one toon and say skinning/mining, they’d have to buy herbs. Now BOOM everyone can be self-sufficient and create a surplus so long as they have some real-life dollars. It’s like if you spent a decade of your life working your butt off to become a doctor, specialised in a few areas… then all of a sudden they change the rules so that anyone could buy the same qualifications for $5k. Suddenly, everyone is the same, and the work was for naught because any extra value that you had is lost due to the market being flooded. It is in fact WORSE than pay to win, because they have changed the rules from an equal playing field to pay to win, which takes a chunky crap on the loyal fans that have put in the work.
I grinded for the Winterspring Frostsaber for many weeks when it was hard, and they changed that to be doable in a two or 3 day grind, and it wasn’t as bad as this… because THAT was a personal accomplishment, and vanity only.
Why do you think that the amount of effort you put in to get 11 level 90 characters is relevant to anyone but yourself? How does it affect anyone else’s gaming experience that you levelled 11 characters without using RAF or other long-available paid experience boosts? Did you use RAF?
Does the fact one other person on the server has a level 90 character change the fact you spent hundreds of hours having fun playing a video game? Ten other people? A hundred? Five thousand? How does other people having level 90 characters diminish the enjoyment and experience you got while levelling your characters?
If you had fun in the process, then how other people got their level 90s should be of no consequence to you whatsoever. If you didn’t have fun in the process, then you should be asking yourself why you did something that wasn’t fun in the first place. Levelling isn’t a chore that ‘I had to go through therefore everyone should have to go through it’, it’s something you do for fun and as long as you had fun, nothing else can take that away from you unless you choose to let it.
It’s relevant because like I said, it’s an mMorpg, and it has competition. It’s not Final Fantasy VII. In FFVII, you can invest buttloads of time and anything that you accomplish is for your own e-peen… just you and the game. WoW on the other hand, has auction houses to sell stuff in game, and your account has “value” according to what it has and can do. Example… a mount costs 108, 000 gold. You have a max-level herbalist, and with the current market you might be able to sell herbs for 40g/stack. You still need to put in work to navigate the market, but you basically need to sell 2700 stacks in order to get that mount. Suddenly, the game becomes pay to win, and the ratios all change. Someone who was buying those herbs now can instead buy themselves a herbalist instead… so your lost customer has potentially become a competitor! Say the stacks are now valued at 20g each… so you need to work twice as hard and sell 5400 stacks to get the mount.
I have used RAF once when a friend of mine wanted to play… I xferred a druid to another server to re-level another druid on my server. It’s very cheating and diminishing of the extraordinary effort that I had done with my army, but you still have to play every toon.
And WoW… is so often NOT about fun. Yes parts of it is, but the answer is that in order to accomplish things, the only legitimate way is to DO the chores. Like camping Aeonaxx for the Phosphorescent Stone Drake, or flying mindless loops of Uldum for the Mysterious Camel Figure, or killing thousands of fireflies for a pet, etc, etc… I have done so many grinds and camps it’s ridiculous.
I am against it because:
1) I’m against Pay to Win games, and this is worse as I have invested years in the game already without knowing this is what it would be like.
2)It makes my gameplay experience worse due to the effect on the economy
3)Least of all, it diminishes my outstanding achievement, like allowing sports enhancing drugs in the Olympics or selling profession degrees. These things would not be acceptable in their respective worlds, and are a slap in the face for those that worked hard to legitimately achieve their goals. You may drive behind the athlete while he is training and troll/heckle him with “but didn’t you have fun training and getting up before dawn to do so?”, but I think even you have to appreciate how he’d have respect for his legitimate competitors, and disdain for his market being flooded and value diminished.
People do that now, how does a paid level 90 boost change that? They still have to level their professions (unless they boost a character that is already a certain minimum level, 60 I think), they still have to go out and spend time harvesting resources. You have a problem with them having a level 90 crafting alt, why does it matter how they got it?
This is a bizarre thing to say. The reason you play WoW is to have fun, yet you do things that you don’t have fun doing…why? You say it’s to ‘accomplish’ things but what exactly are those accomplishments? You now have a shiny mount or pet you didn’t have before? But if you didn’t enjoy the process of getting it, why do you care about the accomplishment? What value is there in accomplishing things you didn’t enjoy in the first place?
It sounds to me like you’re more interested in being seen as accomplished by other people than you are in spending your time doing things you actually enjoy. You mention you have 11 level 90 characters – why? Was it to have fun, or was it so you can say ‘I have 11 level 90 characters’ and hope other people will recognise your hard work and effort? You say you camped Aeonaxx and flew loops for hours looking for the camel statue, but why? You clearly didn’t enjoy the process of getting them so why did you spend time getting them, except to be able to equip them in front of other people and say ‘Look, I have this rare mount that was tedious to get’ and hope they’ll recognise your patience and persistence?
If the only reason you’re doing those things is for recognition and apparent esteem amongst other players, that’s your prerogative, but I think it’s the wrong reason to play games like WoW and you’re always, always going to end up disappointed.
1. What do you win by paying? What advantage do you have going into Warlords of Draenor content that other players don’t have? You keep saying this boost is ‘Pay to Win’ but you’re not winning anything and you’re not getting a material advantage over another player.
2. If another player puts the time into gathering herbs, why shouldn’t they be allowed to sell them for whatever price they want? Why does how they got to level 90 matter in the slightest? I said in another post, I have a heavy presence in two crafted markets, I’ve got a few hundred thousand gold, and a universal truth of the WoW AH is that it’s extremely volatile. People crash prices all the time, whether because they think the prices are unfair, or because they want to push a camper out of the market. Most glyphs on my server are selling for under 30g each right now, for example. This is just the nature of the auction house market, if it’s ruining your AH experience then the AH may not be the minigame for you.
3. Garbage. Your achievement is personal, the only person who cares about it is you. You have your own view of your achievements that nobody else can change unless you let them. xxLegolasxx buying a level 90 hunter doesn’t diminish the fact you spent your time levelling up 11 level 90 characters on your account in the slightest.
Your comparison to athletics is surely a joke. Competitive athletics is a profession, whether athletes enjoy their profession or not is secondary. WoW is not a profession, it’s a game. Having fun is the sole purpose of playing WoW.
If you’re using the game to show off virtual accomplishments and try to attract praise from other players, you’re going to be extremely disappointed when you discover how valueless that praise actually is. If the game shuts down tomorrow, what value would all the accomplishments you achieved but didn’t have fun doing be worth to you, or to anyone? Not a thing. But if you spent the last 9 years playing the game to have fun, at least you can point back on those 9 years and say ‘I had fun’. And having fun is worth something.
It is far easier to level professions than it is to level a character. With a 90 character, you can fly around at max speed and powerlevel a profession like mining… you get points from smelting, mobs ignore you, you can get a glove enchant to harvest higher level stuff, etc. You are also repeating questions which I have answered.
The same reason that millions of other WoW players do. Because that’s the way the game is DESIGNED. Low drop rates. Daily quests. Rare Spawns. If you want the result, you take the path… whether that path is good or bad. Why do you clean your toilet? Because you want a clean toilet. Not because you like cleaning toilets. Or maybe you do… but most people don’t. Why would you cook? To enjoy the finished meal. You might enjoy or dislike the process of cooking.
1) I’ve mentioned ad nauseum the effect of farming alts and flooding the market.
2) If another player uses steroids and wins a race at the Olympics, and the Olympics are okay with it, why shouldn’t they be allowed to keep the medal over an athlete that trains without performance enhancing drugs? Sure it’s “officially” okay, but it’s not okay to a lot of other people. Do you think I’m the sole voice in the wilderness? No. Many fans are.
3) My achievements are personal. They’ve backtracked on heaps of these, like the Winterspring Frostsaber and Insane in the Membrane. I don’t care if ppl get that in EZ mode now. I know that I did that before it was cool. But you have NO freakin’ idea about WoW if you think it’s all fun in the sunshine. Because cupcake… it’s not. Maybe you’d like it to be, but it’s not. I’ve had fun at times but WoW has also been one of the most mind-numbingly frustrating games that I’ve played. I’ve barely touched it the last few weeks tbh.
And no, my comparison to athletics is spot on the money, and applicable to many other areas. Why should someone who has put in the hard work have their reward trivialised by someone with a wallet?
I’ll give you this advice: if you continue to uphold your in-game accomplishments as important and esteem-building despite not enjoying the time you spent doing them, you’re setting yourself up to be constantly disappointed. Basing your esteem on the accomplishment of in-game tasks you don’t enjoy participating in and that can and do change at the drop of a hat is not only unreasonable, it’s unhealthy. If you’re considering quitting the game because of this, I would say that that’s probably for the best.
This has nothing to do with esteem Mr Freud. WoW is a complex mixture of fun and a time-sink of tediousness. The amount of time required to farm enough gold to buy an expensive mount is bad enough, it does not need to compounded by more competition brought upon by Blizzard being greedy.
So are blizz selling gold yet?………….
I have no issue with this. $60 is a chunk of money, and enough to discourage many players, but if you really want to level up an alt then you can do it and be done with it.
I would hope that many new players would not buy a level 90 boost, without at least levelling for some of the game. Who knows though! Who knows!
I’m so glad i quit before all this shit started happening. God i miss wow so much some days but then i see shit like this.
WoW is in it’s latter stages before Blizzard move ahead with the next MMO (project Titan) scheduled for 2016.
WoW will very soon reach that magic 100 level cap and after that, the game will be stagnant until it’s eventual death at whatever Blizz has coming next.
This is simply milking the last few drops of the franchise before it ends.
Not really that big a deal, it’s been several years now since BC which was probably the height of popularity for this game. They got a small spurt with Pandaria, but it’s clear they’ll never hit that height they did with BC ever again with World of Warcraft.
It WAS a great ride though… some of my most fond gaming memories ever come from that game (and I’ve been gaming over 3 decades).
But all good things must come to an end…
As sad as it sounds, but this sums it up the best.
I don’t think they will make another expansion after WoD, already they are grasping for straws with Pet battles and the likes just to keep people playing.
~7 million subs disagree with you.. Even if that number was around ~1million, it’d still disagree with you
I know what you mean, and I agree with the numbers – the content is really shallow and most of it just turns into a massive Rep grind (i.e. timeless isle). People usually come to play for content, which is lacking atm big time. Adding a new raid with new bosses with more HP and more & better gear than before isn’t really new, it’s just more of the same. Old boss: 400 mil HP, drops item level 500, new boss has 500 mil HP, drops item level 520. So what?
I really enjoyed the TBC and WOTLK content as well as Vanilla, but after that, the numbers just ramped up, but the content stays pretty much the same.
The fight mechanics are different for nearly every boss fight, and most of the fights in MoP raiding are unique.
It sounds like you’re burnt out on the fundamental formula of button-bar MMOs – what you complained about with bosses is the same as with every other mob in all of these kinds of games. I can empathise with that, but that’s a personal thing, not a flaw with the game design.
Yeah, you are probably right about that – seen it all, done it all, been a raid leader for many years, guild master of a raiding guild, I think I just became a broken veteran who plays the game because I like it, but not because of the content. Atm, I really enjoy pet battles, but even those get very much simplified – Anubisath Idol – Sand storm – wear it down, repeat.
I can appreciate that, for sure. I’ve gone through stages where I’ve been burnt out on the game too, and I crave something, anything, as long as it’s different and fresh. I definitely get where you’re coming from there, I just don’t think it’s the game that is the problem, I think it’s just sometimes my tastes change.
Also incorrect. Blizzard developers have stated before that this is not the last expansion. I believe the quote was: “If people keep playing this game, we’ll keep making content”.
They also pulled people off the Titan dev team and put them back onto WoW for Warlords.
Don’t see this as a big deal. I’ve recently leveled up 3 new characters in my last foray into WoW and it took me about a week to go from 1-90 on each character. Arguing that it will leave starter zones is pointless as they already are empty. I literally did not do a single quest in outland or northrend as I just spam instant dungeons queues while watching tv shows in the 10 minute queue time. Leveled is already broken and nothing is difficult while leveling anymore.
Umm, people seem to be forgetting that Level 90 won’t be max level when this feature launches.. This lets you skip the old content and level through the new expansion with the rest of the population.
10 levels that you can’t fly through with heirlooms and RAF is a fair amount of time to learn the very basics of a class.. Nobody learns how to raid or dungeon or be a good member of society with their class whilst leveling.. Calm down :\
Yeah. Boost to 90 isn’t winning the game. It’s a ticket to the stadium.
I think you misunderstand “This”. You automatically get one level 90 with the Warlords of Draenor expansion. THIS lets you create an ARMY of level 90’s for $60 each. I have 11 90’s, and what has taken me years to do, can now be done officially with real life dollars, including the benefit of professions. Nobody likes pay to win, and changing the rules to pay to win is even worse if you are one of the people like myself who has put in years of effort. It’s very trolly, like if you worked your ass off to get a profession degree to earn $20k more a year, only to finish it and be told that anyone can get the same thing for $100. Too late, you’ve already invested your life.
As long as you’re enjoying the results of your effort (eg. you have a job requiring that degree), why does it matter to you that other people can get to where you are faster? You already got what you wanted.
Because it’s a slap in the face, and supply/demand means that if you flood a market, you won’t be getting that extra $20k/year.
How is it a slap in the face, exactly? You set yourself a goal, and you got what you wanted, why do you care how hard or easy other people have it? It doesn’t affect you.
WoW isn’t a job, it doesn’t have saturation. Supply and demand doesn’t apply, there’s no demand cap that prevents you from playing the game if there are a lot of other people who also want to play. You can enjoy WoW whether there’s 1000 people playing or 12 million people playing. And frankly, the fact you even compared WoW to getting a job says a lot about the way you view playing the game in the first place.
It DOES affect me. Like I said, supply/demand. I put in an enormous amount of work to get my account to the productive condition that it is. If the market suddenly becomes flooded with paid 90’s that can mass produce, it hurts my economy. Maybe you’ve never played WoW or D3, but that’s EXACTLY how it works. Supply and demand applies a LOT.
And WoW can be IMMENSELY grindy, monotonous and chore/work-like if you want to accomplish some things. For example, killing thousands of fireflies for a low drop rate pet in Zangarmarsh. Mindlessly clicking thousands of casts to get Old Ironjaw. Camping multiple spawns of the extremely rare rare spawn Aeonaxx or TLPD for weeks in order to get a rare mount… and these are not isolated occurrences… this is what WoW is. I could literally give dozens of examples. Some things like the mounts are bop and it’s the only way you can get them. Some things like the firefly pet are boe. You could maybe buy the pet for X amount of gold… but with how hard it is to acquire, you are going to spend a lot of gold, and how are you going to get that gold in the first place? That’s right… you need to grind, or buy gold… and then that’s gold you don’t have to spend on other things. If you played WoW seriously, you’d know most of this. So you’re either trolling or ignorant it seems.
Lastly, how is it a slap in the face? As Hazzikostas said: “But levelling is something that takes dozens if not over 100 hours in many cases and people have put serious time and effort into that, and we don’t want to diminish that.” Dozens or over 100 hours. Let’s say 24hrs and 100 hrs for brevity’s sake. At $60 per character, that equates to a player’s time being worth 60cents to $2.50 per hour. I can tell you, that if you’re going to put a pricetag on my time, it’s worth a LOT more than that. Even minimum wage is a lot more than that.
I addressed most of your responses in my reply to you above. You’re still comparing the game to a job, putting a dollar value on ‘your time’ and comparing to minimum wage? Once again, WoW is not a job, the time you give to entertainment purposes has no inherent value. In fact, in most of the world through most of history, you pay to be entertained, not the other way around.
It is a lot of work, unless you count clicking a fishing bobber thousands upon thousands of times as fun, and killing thousands of fireflies fun, and running the same instance hundreds of times for a mount fun, and staring at a screen for hours upon hours for a rare spawn to spawn fun, and [insert 100’s of other examples here]. With a job, you do work which may or may not be pleasant to get a reward. It doesn’t have to be money, you could be salary sacrificing for a sweet ride. With WoW… oh look it’s the same thing. A lot of people don’t like their jobs but they want the payoff. With WoW… oh look it’s the same thing!
Edit: post is too big so I can’t reply with a new one. Answer: Because it’s a mixed bag and I take the good with the bad. I’m not the only one who thinks this way, it’s not a revelation.
@gwenclone Stop and listen to yourself for a moment. You’re engaging in hours upon hours of leisure activity you clearly don’t enjoy. Why?
Why is this game still Pay-2-Play?
Why would it change? It has more than 7 million subscribers.
I’d be kind of pissed off if there was a cash shop in my Pay-2-Play game
If it’s only cosmetic items, I’m not bothered by it. The level 90 boost is functional, I made an individual judgement call on that one. That said, if they start adding anything that bypasses current content (like current level gear), then I’ll have a problem with it. If it’s only getting people through old content faster and stops at the entry point to current content, I’m not too concerned.
There have been functional things in there for a while, with character transfers, too. This is just another utility. It’s baffling that people put so much stock in it and get so offended.
It’s just like when those idiots complained about being able to get mounts at level 20, because GOSH DURNIT, I had to wait until 40 for my mount, in my day! And I had to walk uphill in a ten-minute corpse-run after a MC wipe. In the snow. BOTH WAYS. Because anything less ‘cheapens my achievement’. Idiotic.
It is only the stupidest line of argument ever. Motherfuckers, if things were so good because they were hard when you did them, I wanna these assholes running around with 16-slot bags only, pots stacked to 5, a bag-slot reserved for every dungeon’s key, no flying mounts, and only being able to visit each flight-master stop-by-stop, not knowing if they link in a chain to your eventual destination. One-hour hearth cooldowns and countless hours spent levelling a weapon-skill before you could actually use it effectively.
True, I didn’t think to include the services. I wouldn’t put them on the same level as the 90 boost, the services don’t really give an advantage or disadvantage in-game as such. The 90 boost is certainly an advantage if you don’t want to spend the time levelling, but as you said above somewhere, it only gets you a ticket to the match, it doesn’t win anything for you.
I have been playing WoW on and off since launch. I came back recently (after trying to avoid the Kung fu panda expansion) to prep for the upcoming expansion. With all the new changes and updates even playing my main toon was a new learning experience that required a bit of research and play time. All the new stuff reduced me to an utter newbie anyway, so I am happy for those that want an insta 90 to go ahead and drop the cash.
Obligatory ” I miss WoW before Cata” post.
Think my main is still level 80… or was it 70.. I can’t remember lol
I for one, am very happy that blizz has done this. finally I don’t have to level and go through the crap of leveling. especially the WOFLK zones..eeeeewwwwww
Who needs to play games? You could just pay the people who make them to play the game for you, because then you can… brag about it? Play the very final content? Sell it to other people?
I never realised just how obsessed some WoW veterans were until I read the comments on this article…
“HURR DURR OTHER PLAYERS SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED TO PLAY THE WAY THEY WANT THEY HAVE TO PLAY THE WAY I PLAY AND LEARN THE WAY I LEARNT AND SPEND 2109430917402194 HOURS IN-GAME JUST LIKE ME OTHERWISE THEY ARE NOOBS AND BADS AND I’LL RAGE AT THEM BECAUSE MMOS ARE A COMPETITION EVEN WHEN IT’S JUST PVE LEVELLING AND WE’RE NOT ACTUALLY COMPETING BUT IT’S STILL A COMPETITION AND I HAVE TO WIN I HAVE TO BE THE BEST AND LET EVERYONE KNOW HOW MUCH GREATER I AM BECAUSE I NEED TO JUSTIFY HAVING WASTED SO MUCH OF MY LIFE GRINDING IN THIS OBSOLETE GAME”
why do people care so much? how is this any different from the thousands of people who have paid for leveling services or gold or profession leveling. nothing will change….
“….the high price tag was established to ensure Blizzard didn’t “devalue the accomplishment of levelling””.
I’m sorry…what?
Is it just me, or does that read exactly like a contradiction in terms? The mere act of flogging a pre-made 90 for money is doing exactly that: a blatant devaluation of leveling entirely!
I don’t even want to think about the plethora of 6 year olds that have already taken over a once great game since the majority of intelligent adults left in droves with Cata – but temper-tranrum 6 year olds running around with a shiny new lvl 90? Ugh.
I think there should be a way to distinguish yourself from a boost character. Things like boosted toons can’t get dragons til they hit a benchmark. I play clash of clans and it’s cool to see people with high level bases. And you can check thier profile and see if they put the time in or boosted. I started playing wow again after 8 years away and my main was a lv32. I got him up to lv 70 in less than a week. I was having fun again but I’m struck with the feeling that there are no achievements in this game that have a long lifespan. This game needs accomplishments that do not become obsolete. Boosted characters remove a social hierarchy that provides entertainment to both new and old players. Old players get to have pride in their accomplishments and new players get something to aspire to. There is no point to wow but the leveling system used to do a good job of suspending belief and making you feel that there was. Blizzard broke the leveling system. They didn’t worry enough about veteran players achievements.