Warlords of Draenor, the upcoming fifth expansion for World of Warcraft, will be giving fans of the MMO something unique. Along with a swath of new dialogue options and quests to explore, the $60 chunk of content will include a single boost that will push a character to the level-90 cap. Instead of dumping hundreds of hours into making a fully loaded combatant, Blizzard is experimenting with offering its fans another way to reach the finish line.
However, any additional level boosts will cost subscribers $60 a pop, which seems pretty outlandish for what’s essentially a glorified microtransaction. Eurogamer recently spoke to World of Warcraft lead encounter designer Ion Hazzikostas about the gutsy move, which the developer sees a way of honoring of the leveling system.
"In terms of the pricing, honestly a big part of that is not wanting to devalue the accomplishment of leveling," 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 $10 or something. And then hardly anyone would ever level a character again.
"But leveling 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 am not an economist, I'm not the one setting the dollar value myself, but it's not the profit maximizing price. That was not our aim here."
The big test, though, will be to see if anyone actually buys one.
