level-boost
Latest
How to learn what you're doing on a boosted 90
Look, it's okay to admit that in some cases, players who've pre-ordered Warlords of Draenor or even bought the level 90 boost are on level 90 characters that they don't actually know how to play. In some cases, this isn't the case -- if I used the boost, for instance, I'd probably know how to play that 12th warrior I boosted to 90. But if I were to boost my hunter, there would suddenly be 29 levels of huntering to absorb and take in, and if I were to use the boost on a rogue I'd hate myself for it and quit playing in a storm of recriminations. Also, I would have zero idea what I was doing on a rogue for the ten seconds before I realized what I'd done. Now that I've had my fun, let's get serious - how would I play a rogue at 90? Or a mage, or a priest, or another class that I'd never played before? Well, there are resources out there -- WoW Insider has a rookie guide, for starters -- and there are other sites like Wowhead and Icy-Veins that can and do give you an overview of what your new class does. There's also a very useful resource built into the game itself. Your spellbook has a great deal of information for you about what your class can do and how to go about playing it, that can get you pointed in the right direction to begin play. We're assuming you're a returning player who has not played in a while or a new player just getting started with this article - established players starting a new alt may already know much of this.
World of Warcraft's Warlords of Draenor is launching by December 20th
Just yesterday, World of Warcraft gave everyone a look at just how important reaching the level cap could be. Today, the game is opening up independent level 90 boosts for everyone via the in-game store, and they're still priced at $60 a pop. It's bad news if you have an army of alts you want to speed along to the level cap, but it's good news if you have that army of alts and more money than you know what to do with. A tutorial video is embedded just past the break to show you how to make use of this feature. Even if you're not up for buying one of the boosts, you might be looking forward to getting one along with your purchase of Warlords of Draenor. So when's that expansion actually coming out? According to the official site, it will be releasing on or before December 20th of this year, which means it's definitely coming out this year but leaves the field wide open in terms of when. Keep your eyes peeled for rollbacks on that date, as it's more likely that the expansion will be out long before the end of the year.
World of Warcraft's new Warlords of Draenor trailer wishes you were here
So your friends in World of Warcraft have finally convinced you to come back to the game. Great, but they're all Level 90 and you're Level Seriously Who Even Cares. They're decked out in epic garments while you're apparently dressed like some sort of drifter with plate armor. What are you going to do? How could you ever take part in their adventures? Well, you could buy Warlords of Draenor and just hit 90 immediately on the character of your choice. A dramatization of exactly that is available in the trailer just past the cut, with a Gnome taking the plunge and bypassing a whole lot of leveling content in the interim. Click on past the break to see it in action, and perhaps you'll be inspired to also vault past a whole bunch of leveling to get right to the top. [Thanks to Schippie for the tip!]
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!]
Warlords of Draenor: Character boost and Shadowmoon Valley gameplay footage
What we have here is video from today's Korean press event, showing footage of an orc warrior playing both on the Timeless Isle in the starter gear you get when boosting to level 90, followed at the four minute mark by a dwarf warrior running around Shadowmoon Valley on Warlords of Draenor's Draenor. We get to see the maps for several zones (most appear to be unfinished) as well as Draenor's position on the map next to Outland and Azeroth. We get to see several mobs, including a nether ray style mob, and the local draenei at the Temple of Karabor. Even better, we get extremely brief glimpses of new level 100 warrior talents! All in all it's pretty tantalizing, and perhaps they're further along than I would have thought - it seems more likely to me now that a beta is a month or two away than it did before I saw the video. Edited to add - The folks at MMO-Champion posted two more videos from the same source, Korean webzine Inven. You can watch them here and here. Thanks to Mintie for the tip.
Do not panic about paid character boost prices
As of this writing it appears that the paid character boost will be priced at $60. Since this was taken down quickly and with no comment by Blizzard, it seems fair to say the following: This was clearly not intended to be visible yet. No announcement has been made officially about the actual price. The pre-orders for Warlords of Draenor are not even available yet, so it's unlikely that the paid option will be sooner than those. In a general sense, this is a non-issue: no price for the feature has been established. We don't know what it will cost, only that when servers briefly came up Tuesday morning, it was visible at $60. I know this because I personally saw it. But that's all we know - that price might have been an internal joke, a default setting, or potentially the price we'll end up paying for the service. Until the actual price is announced, it's not worth getting upset over. In fact, even if the price was announced at $80, or $100, or even more, it's still not worth getting upset over. Here's why.
World of Warcraft instant level 90 boost price revealed at $60 US
There's a new addition to World of Warcraft's in-game shop today, and it happens to be the much-discussed boost that instantly takes a single character to level 90. The $60 US price tag, discovered by our sleuthy sister site WoW Insider, may come as good news or bad news to you, depending on your outlook. On the one hand, if you view the journey from 1 to 90 as a sacred rite of passage that should be held valuable, it appears that Blizzard values it at about the price of a brand-new video game. Not exactly chump change. On the other hand, if you were hoping to assemble a legion of 90s overnight, you're going to need some deep pockets. As WoW Insider notes, it's likely that the boost isn't intended to be available in the shop just yet since the Warlords of Draenor pre-order (which will grant the same instant-level-90 to those who purchase it) isn't available yet, and the WoW Insider staff member who discovered it only managed to do so between server restarts during today's maintenance. I suppose we'll find out whether or not it was intentional when the servers come back up later today. At any rate, there's no reason to think the price will be changed regardless of whether or not it's already available for purchase, so if you're in the market for some instant level 90 characters, start saving up now. [Thanks to WoW Insider for the image!]
Level 90 boost appears up on live servers for $60
While we were expecting that the level 90 boosts may appear sometime after the patch's launch, we weren't thinking that they would crop up today before the pre-orders even went out. And we certainly didn't think they would be priced at $60. It seems likely that this is not intended to be up yet, given that pre-orders are not live, so there is a possibility that this is a test number. A member of WoW Insider staff, Matthew Rossi, was able to log on and see this on his server, between restarts. Whether it will still be there when servers come back up later today remains to be seen. This is a far higher price point than many were expecting, but that can be viewed as a good thing or a bad one. A good thing because it puts the price on leveling at a point where the work that goes into a 90 still has value, a bad thing because it's expensive.
World of Warcraft to award instant level 90 characters with Warlords of Draenor pre-purchase
It's easy to kind of get stuck in the pre-expansion doldrums in World of Warcraft right now. Yes, you really want to have one more character up at the level cap, but you can't bear the thought of leveling any more. So what are you going to do? Well... you could just pre-purchase the expansion and get your instant level 90 character immediately, thereby saving you any more work leveling through the expansion and letting you just catch up a bit before its launch. All right, you can't do all of that right now, but the development team has confirmed that digitally pre-purchasing the expansion will give you your instant 90... instantly. No word yet on launch dates, but players can opt in for the beta testing right now via the Battle.net account management page. The company is also testing the idea of adding in the level 90 boost to the game's store, allowing you to bring as many characters as you want up to the cap without any fuss.
LotRO begins selling instant level 50 characters
After testing the waters of the beta server, Lord of the Rings Online has decided that the waters of level-booster sales are inviting enough to try out a limited-time sale of instant-level 50 characters. The new Gift of the Valar package is on sale in the LotRO store for 4995 Turbine Points. It not only raises a character to level 50 in a flash but will provide that character with level 50 gear, one gold, four ranks of each virtue, the riding skill, a goat mount, 25 mithril coins, and several other boosters. This pack will be available through December 19th in its initial run. [Thanks to Fredelas for the tip!]
The Soapbox: Instant high-level characters are a terrible, horrible, very bad, no good idea
While handing players the keys to a high-level character isn't something brand-new that studios are doing, it does seem to be more en vogue these days, from TERA to EverQuest II and now to World of Warcraft. It's a topic that has caused a lot of discussion and debate in the community, not to mention a lot of disquiet and dismay in my heart. In last week's Soapbox, Massively's Mike Foster advocated instant leveling by saying, "There is no downside to giving players a chance to skip to the start of new content." With much love and respect to my fellow Massively writer, I think Mike is completely wrong on this front, as are others that are giving a thumbs-up to any MMO that allows players to jump past content and into a high-level character. It has nothing to do with elitism and ego, as was suggested, but has everything to do with cheapening our mutual experience and the very foundation of MMOs. There are many, many downsides to this disturbing trend, and I need to get this off my chest so that at least I've said it somewhere.
Lord of the Rings Online 'currently testing' level boost feature
If you're a Lord of the Rings Online fan, you may have heard the rumor that Turbine is considering a feature that would allow players to boost a character to level 50 in exchange for Turbine Points, the game's real-money currency. Well, the rumor appears to be true. We've received confirmation from a Turbine rep stating that level boosting "is a feature that's been requested repeatedly since going free-to-play, and it's something [Turbine is] currently testing." That's all we know so far, but we'll be sure to keep you posted as new information turns up.
