Whatever your thoughts on microtransactions, DLC, and in-game purchases, I have a feeling you'll be hearing a lot of talk about this new offer from Blizzard for World of Warcraft. The developers have released an instant level 90 character boost in World of Warcraft, allowing you to bypass all the expansion content, for $60.
The booster, when used, instantly makes whichever character you choose a level 90, the new cap. You can then apply your traits and skills without having actually played through the content and are given good enough gear to get by at that level. The boost also is included if you pre-purchase a copy of the Warlords of Draenor expansion.
That's a lot of money for a level booster-the cost of a whole new game. Now, I suppose it's someone's prerogative if they don't want to play the content themselves, or go through leveling a character again if they've already hit the cap with another, but it just seems extremely costly. Blizzard's reasoning?
"In terms of the pricing, honestly a big part of that is not wanting to devalue the accomplishment of levelling," lead encounter designer Ion Hazzikostas told Eurogamer. "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."
In their eyes, Blizzard is doing you a favor if you've put a ton of hours in the game-they don't want you to feel like you wasted time and could have just spent $10 instead of countless hours levelling your character to the cap. That's fair enough, but the $60 price tag is still ludicrously expensive in my opinion, and I have a strong feeling there's a pretty high business incentive to catch "whale" spenders with one or more boost purchase.
Offering the boost separately from the expansion was something they felt they had to do, because people would likely want more than one and telling them to buy two expansions to get a booster would have been "tremendously awkward". The level 90 booster is available now, and Warlords of Draenor launches this Fall. The official tutorial video for how to access your the level boost is below.
