They didn’t want people buying multiple copies of the expansion just to secure another boost, as that would be ”tremendously awkward” to tell fans. $60 ‘is fair’.
”We realised as soon as we came out with Warlords of Draenor boost to 90, we knew that there was going to be demand for more than one,” said Blizzard’s Ion 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.” The character boosting service was eye-spied as part of the upcoming new patch that features in-game purchases.
”In terms of the pricing, honestly a big part of that is not wanting to devalue the accomplishment of levelling,” he continued. ”If our goal here was to sell as many boosts as possible, we could halve the price or more than that - make it $10 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.” Blizzard feels $60 is just right for boosting.
“I am not an economist, I’m not the one setting the dollar value myself, but it’s not the profit maximising price. That was not our aim here.” There has been murmuring of discontent among the World of Warcraft community that levelling will become a thing of the past with the option as many will take it over spending hours grinding.
”The intent here isn’t to create a world where no-one levels,” he said.
”It’s just to allow people who want to purchase additional level 90s, maybe they want a second or third alt and they don’t have time to level it themselves because they have a family or etc - it’s to allow them to do that.”
Blizzard is yet to formally announce any European pricing, but let’s hope they don’t get silly with €60.
