Power Leveling through BlizzardFollow

I think that was the point of the thingy Rhode linked though. They would have people buying 5 game copies, getting 5 free 90s and then transferring them to one account. This was the lesser of the two evils, or something like that.

I think Blizzard really missed a golden opportunity with Cataclysm, the whole theme of which was radical change. Instead of giving the old content a new paint job, they should have ripped it asunder and gone radical. The problem of too many levels and outdated content has been around for a while now. We've talked about it here before, it's a design flaw and logical outcome of the whole vertical progression scheme. It's not a new problem. It's a turnoff to existing players...even those that enjoy leveling. But even worse, it has to be a deterent to new players. I think with the jump to 90 and the pay to 90, Blizzard is just acknowledging what everyone knows anyway. They're just seeing it as a way to make money off the problem. Whatever. If people will pay it, then more power to them, I guess. I'll take a free 90, but no way in hell I'll ever pay $60 (or, any other amount) for a boost.

You misread.



To which I responded:

I've followed this thread since I heard about the boosts, but as usual with cash shop items, I couldn't bring myself to get all that worked up about it. I don't really care what other people want to spend their money on in a fake world, or begrudge them whatever they wish to buy from a company they pay regularly to entertain them. I don't generally feel like it affects me. (And even with this, I'm not sure boosted 90's will add a noticeably higher level of incompetence to pugs than we already have, because the saturation point has been reached, you know?) And I have myself bought pets and account services.

As for boosts to 90, without regard to a payment model, I'm all for that. Some of us have been playing for the better part of a decade, and IMO there should be a mechanism for us to bypass replaying content for the umpteenth time. But if that was really Blizz's motivation, they'd provide that mechanism in game, wouldn't they?

I don't know, something has changed my attitude this week as I've read their announcements and looked at the big picture. $60 - the cost of an entire new game - for a boost. $50 - more than they've ever charged before - for an expansion. A year plus - longer even than ICC by the looks of it - of subscribing to no new content whatsoever. (Possibly because my sub is paying, in part, for them to develop cash shop items that they will then turn around and charge me for...) Taken as a whole it just makes me feel... milked. And nobody wants to be a cow. Not even cows, I bet.

It's not that I don't get the economics or that Protein would call me a hippie. They're in business, and they should sell products for whatever the market will bear. I as a customer am just reaching my limit on seeing this all as a value proposition. I'm not going to storm or rage or campaign against it, but I am going to stop paying for it, as a customer should when a product becomes pricier than they value it at.

I intended to cancel my sub this month anyway, and I've long since given up the illusion that canceling my WoW sub is ever permanent. ;) What all this will probably do is keep me away longer, playing ESO maybe longer than I would have otherwise (no idea on that, you never know if a new game will keep you entertained for 3 months or 12), until at least say the holiday season, when WoD goes on sale for $20. If I want a boost, I imagine there will be sales on those at some point too, as there have been on other cash items in the past. Basically, they need to bring their prices back down to a point where I feel their product is worthwhile.

I don't know, I don't understand the angst about it being in store. A few people will use it as a catch up mechanism, as intended. It starts costing money when a person wants to go Pokemon and collect the FotM set, something that wasn't intended. For one or two characters beyond the first, the cost is steep but probably not much more than you'd end up paying through other legitimate methods. For most players, they have multiple characters at 90 or close enough to make little difference since 85 to 90 will probably get smoothed out just as older content has been.

I understand your point about costs, Teacake, but WoW is one of the only things in my life where the cost has held stable over the years and it seems likely that the same holds true for Blizzard. I suspect the guys doing the grunt work coding at Blizz expect a bigger paycheck now too. The cash shop, for all the indignation it seems to induce, has probably saved us from worse. I pay the same price for one minute of game time that I did when WoW released here, and any other money I spend is a choice. I don't have to pay to skip content because that issue is moot, I'm at the point where the only reason for me to level the Nth toon through old content is an occasional fit of nostalgia.

Make it a gold cost? No thanks. I don't want to have to spend as much time grinding gold as I would have spent blasting through LFD in heirlooms. Make it a quest? It already is a quest, a long chain that starts at level one, you keep picking up new parts of it as you level, and it ends when your XP bar won't fill up any more. A slightly different spin on that wouldn't make it any more palatable for me -- I've already gone through the DK start enough times to know that feeling. No, I'm happy enough that I can look at the transaction and decide if the cost up front is worth the value of my time and the money I'd spend for game time.

483 in every slot I think.

Wow, that's one heck of a boost.

I suppose that solves the problem where your DK gets to the cap and can only make a copper breastplate, but wow.

I have a RL friend who used the boost, and he kind of wishes he would have done it differently. See he didn't know about the 60+ and the instant 600 profession skill. He, stupidly imo, used it boost to get a 90 druid. He has an high 80-sumen druid already that he was leveling.
As for the gear, it is all 438, so below LFR? (or entry lvl LFR for MSV?) He had basically already had a full TI leather set (for the other druid) ready to go, so he as of yesterday when I logged on to get my Hearthstone mount, was already up to 498 and marching through LFR on his day off work.
The boost helped him get his 2nd 90, to help with crafts for the guild (we started on a new realm months back).

As for me, I'm still planning on using it on a Shaman. But I'll wait until I can pre-order a physical copy due to my enjoyment of art books, mouse pads, other goodies that come with physical CE.

Just popped in to say that anyone who doesn't think the ability to boost to max level is a competitive advantage is insane; we had progression issues for about a month because we didn't have enough resto shamans back in tBC. It took us ages to level up or recruit enough. Having an instant max level button would have been a big boon to us.

It doesn't matter that leveling is foolproof. Challenge in WoW, such as it is, is entirely team-based, and this is a clear advantage in terms of group logistics.

That aside, making gold in WoW has always been foolproof, too - it just takes time. I always assumed we had, as a community, an opposition to RMT/gold-buying based off some kind of principled opposition to buying power - even the kind trivially acquired through in-game time expenditure. I guess you guys just didn't like it because Blizzard banned it, huh? Disappointing.

Edited, Mar 14th 2014 6:47am by Kavekk

Actually, I think you'll find they introduced clam stacking towards the end of tBC. Clams stacked back then, too, and good thing because those naga on BE Civil War Island sure liked to drop them. Ammo and pet food were early Wrath, IIRC.

Gearing up takes less time than gearing up + leveling; and, if you've got a guild to power run you through instances, gearing up takes less time than leveling. I'm not sure you read my last post carefully, because I'm talking about this being a competitive advantage to a guild for the purposes of raiding. That is, allowing class flexibility amongst your core raiders. It does this throughout the entirety of an expansion.

It's not about one player being the first to level cap; obviously it doesn't much help there.

Good luck with this. I tried to get that point across, and all I seemed to get in response was "lol leveling doesn't matter."

Except, you know, it does... if you want that class at cap... and you don't have it at cap already...

With the crunch to HP, the next move is to crunch levels. Just get rid of them. You progress by doing content. All the boost atm does it let people see the end game content of an ending x-pack. When WoD goes live, the boost means you get to skip 90 levels of old boring *** leveling to get to the new quest to start the days of questing to get to cap.

It won't be a big thing in raiding guilds. You shave a few days/weeks off leveling? Awesome.
As a guild that means you can resume progression...after you spend time gearing that new character to be decent at w/e content.