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Blizzard To Sell Level 90 WoW Characters For $60
An anonymous reader writes "After their online store accidentally spilled the beans last week, Blizzard has now confirmed plans to let players pay $60 to boost one of their World of Warcraft characters to level 90, the current cap. At Blizzcon a few months ago, the company unveiled the game's next expansion, Warlords of Draenor, currently in development. When it comes out, they're giving every player a free boost to 90 in order to get to the new content immediately. They say this was the impetus for making it a purchasable option. '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.' Why $60? They don't want to 'devalue the accomplishment of leveling.' Lead encounter designer Ion Hazzikostas said, '[L]eveling 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.'"
On one hand, I can appreciate that people who just want to get to endgame content may find it more efficient to spend a few bucks than to put a hundred hours into leveling a new character. On the other hand, I can't help but laugh at the idea that Blizzard will probably get a ton of people paying them to not play their game.
Pay an additional $50 for the new Starcraft III game and you can tell your friends you have completed the game without even playing it once.
Once upon a time WoW was worthy of the gaming geek... now it's watered down drivel complete with kung-fu pandas... who even plays this any more?
[L]eveling 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.
I don't know anybody who values 100s of hours of their time at $60. They might not want to diminish that effort, but they have a poor way of showing it. If I played WoW, I'd be insulted.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
When it comes out, they're giving every player a free boost to 90 in order to get to the new content immediately. (...) They don't want to 'devalue the accomplishment of leveling.'
So... buy WoW, create lvl 1 character, buy expansion, instant level 90? Sounds to me like you don't have to accomplish much...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I played World of Warcraft on and off for a few years. I was a pretty hardcore player from the launch of Burning Crusade through to near the end of Lich King and came back casual for a while for late Cataclysm and early Pandaria. I know the game pretty well and have friends who still play it.
So I can say with confidence that you would be absolutely mad to pay for a boost up to level 90 with prices like that (and if you are a new player, mad to pay at all).
There are two types of people now who might be starting out at level 1; new (or returning-after-a-gap-of-years) players starting their first characters, or veterans levelling an "alt" (a secondary - or indeed tertiary or beyond - character).
If you are a new player, then going through the level-up process is important and you should not skip it. First of all, this is where you learn how to play your character. Most end-game content involves group-play and if you have a brand new player at the level cap staring at a hotbar full of unfamiliar abilities, it will be a long time before you are actually competent enough to play alongside others. The level-up process, during which you are introduced to abilities one or two at a time, takes you at least part of the way along that learning curve for your character. It also exposes you to a lot of the game's lore, if that's your bag (I always found WoW's lore a bit boring and juvenile, but some people like it).
And if you're a veteran player, then there are lots and lots of things you can do to accelerate the level-up process for an alt without handing over real-money. I levelled up three alts while never taking them out of "rested" state (meaning they were getting double xp from kills). Heirlooms allow you to boost the rate of xp gain even faster, to the point where 1-80, by the launch of Pandaria, was just stupidly fast. I doubt even a brand new character takes over 100 hours of game time (or indeed, anything like it). Alts certainly take much less.
So yeah, I can't imagine Blizzard would have too many takers for this. Or at least, I hope they won't.
It's tremendously awkward to tell someone that you should buy two copies of the expansion just to get a second 90.
A bit of searching shows that in the past WoW expansions were introduced at $40, so why wouldn't a player opt to buy the expansion twice rather than buying the level upgrade for a second character?
Note that the pricing for this expansion hasn't been published yet, but I doubt they're going to price it at $60, since people expect a full game for that price.
Unfortunately this means that Blizzard will benefit from making the leveling content as boring as possible. I always considered that the fun part of the game, the rest is just a repetitive cycle of running the same dungeons over and over.
Perhaps a better way to look at it is: UO made huge news when it broke 200k (final peak was a bit more) geeks with accounts; EQ upped that to 500k (final peak was a bit more) geeks/fantasy rpgers with accounts; WoW opened up MMO's to anyone that wanted to play, not just the geeks/rpgers/hardcore gamers... and hit what12 million? I'd suggest that instead of blaming WoW for the bad things they merely imported from their predecessors (and FYI: it was much, much, much worse in EQ, if you don't already know that first hand), you might give them a little credit for making it so that all games have a vastly larger MMO player base now days.
Don't get me wrong, i enjoyed WoW for the couple years i played larger because of a few friends playing, and because i'd come off a 6 year stint in EQ. It was nice and slow and overall somewhat entertaining. EQ (if you didn't play it) on the other hand, felt like a 17 hour a day job, with a root canal appointment during lunchtime, crammed into 3-4 hours of playtime (by the end of my playing days of it). UO, well... it's summed up with just one word: griefers.
Each of those three had it's merits, and each it's detractors, but you have to see them as the stepping stones of the industry and realize that each was designed to take time to play; that was how the companies made money. The richness of content is somewhat subjective though. If they didn't have enough content, they wouldn't have had people continue to pay to play them (see SWTOR), and while they were filled with bugs and bad juju that sometimes popped up, they had enough merits that people tolerated the few issues (see Age of Conan and Vanguard).
For the issue at hand, i think the one line pretty well sums it up:
I can't help but laugh at the idea that Blizzard will probably get a ton of people paying them to not play their game.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
I dunno, I kind of like it. I have 11 level 90's, but I'm not addicted.
I could give it up any time. Seriously.
No, really.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
'Why $60? They don't want to 'devalue the accomplishment of leveling.'
Could also be regarded by many of us as...
"Why $60? $60 for every new character pushed to 90 (which will take probably less than 1/2/3s CPU time from WoW Servers) is sweet."
Every day I am more amazed of the new ways to take money from people for things that are virtually worthless. Like calling a script to change level to 90, change attributes and award skill points / gold / whatever.
BTW: I dont think most people nowadays really enjoy grinding and leveling on a 8 year old MMO. I played WoW 4 or 5 years ago, and it already felt like wasting time just to get to Level 80, where all the current end-game content was happening. As for the items and stuff you get on the way... the gold you get will be a little amount compared to Max level and the equipment will be useless after you get a couple of levels more.
Vendetta Online has a system of license levels which unlocks content, but combat success is 90% skill and 10% equipment (after the first couple of levels which probably take an experienced player less than an hour). Smart use of low level ships/weapons in the hands of a skilled player will kill a relative noob with top-notch gear every time.
What I'm trying to say: levels aren't really the problem, making "level" the most important determiner of success is the problem.
Dear WoW players. Do you remember when the DKs came to be? And how everyone was moaning how, by definition, everyone who had no idea what to do seemed to play a DK?
The reason was simply that DKs started out at level 55. These people did not, like everyone else, start out small with a handful of skills, then get a few new ones every couple levels, with plenty of time to get to know them and get comfortable with them. No, they got everything dumped on their head at once with almost no time to find out what to do and how to play because, well, how would they?
Remember those raids in BRD (for the non-players, that's the first place where those DKs would get to play with the other kids in earnest) were a bit like, as a well known person put it, "a toddler driving a Leopard II tank with a faulty differential lock into a bicycle race of bi-polars"? They had no, zero, zilch, idea how to play their character.
And now, kids, it's like that all over again. Only much, much WORSE. Remember those moans you breathed whenever someone acted like he had no idea what to do, the comment "fuck, did you buy your char on EBay?" in chat? What used to be mostly unlikely will now be very likely: Someone dropped some coin to get a char they have no idea how to play with.
The group finder just got much, much more fun. To watch. Certainly not to play.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I think we are just seeing the prolonged lifecycle of a MMORPG. Most either fizzle and die, or last long enough that they have to start going through these hoops. I think WoW is just one of the biggest/longest so we are seeing some of these ideas for a first time or at least publicized in a grand fashion. Every iteration has made the game easier and easier for players, pushed the upper levels, and introduced things that make players who played the first iteration sound like grandpa (we used to have to grind for days for a single level, up hill, both ways). This is just another step where content is being added, so how can you get the most out of it (business need)? You let players just jump right to it! It bugs me, but as someone working full time with a family, I can see how players may appreciate it.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
Anyone using group finder would tell you that this is already the current situation. Since your time, raids akin to LK BRD have been nerfed to the point where the gameplay resembles Dance Dance Revolution. Where thinking of others is punished. Where strictly adhering to a constantly changing theorycraft published for you by some grognards in Kansas is the only way to play up to snuff. Where teamwork is so unnecessary that it is nearly impossible to Leroy a group (even the healer has to be incredibly off his game to create a wipe.) Where deviating in any way from a prescribed sequence of buttonpresses with slightly random variation will send you to the bottom of the Recount list for DPS.
In sum, there's an idiot in every group anyway, and it doesn't matter because you have to play like a robot anyway.
P.S.: actual robot play is banned, meaning you MUST screw up regularly.
The real problem then is all the interesting content is end-game.
Guild Wars 2 has an interesting take on it - your level is scaled down to the area you're in, and because of this players who've progressed past an area somehow can still go back and enjoy the content. You even get experience/drops that are useful to you.
You can't really do that in WoW, you'll insta-kill everything and get nothing for it.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
On live, level 90 is the cap. The for-sale 90s are intended to be brought to the new expansion, which goes up to level 100. Since all the content is at level cap, this move makes some sense. The summary should at least mention that level 100 will be the cap when these things are for sale. Pretending that "the game is the experience of leveling, after which you have won" can be forgiven, but leaving out the actual level cap? Shenanigans.