Ion Hazzikostas explains level 90 boost pricing
WoW Insider posted last week about the level 90 boost that appeared momentarily on live servers during maintenance, and now Eurogamer has had the chance to discuss it with Lead Encounter Designer Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas. Ion had this to say:
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 1. 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.
When pressed on the price, he responded as follows:
In terms of the pricing, honestly a big part of that is not wanting to devalue the accomplishment of levelling. 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.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.
Ion's explanations make sense, but it does not alter the fact that $60 is a huge amount of money, more than almost anyone ever thought the service would cost. Ion's interview with Eurogamer certainly implies although doesn't confirm that the $60 price point is correct, or at least was intentional at the time.
[Thanks for the tip, silvertongue0!]
