Blizzard defends $60 World of Warcraft character boost: ‘Don’t want to devalue leveling’

Last week, it was revealed that boosting additional characters to level 90 will cost players $60. Though the Warlords of Draenor expansion offers one free character boost to anyone who pre-orders it, Blizzard will allow you to boost additional characters through the in-game store; however, the price associated with boosting raised some eyebrows.

Speaking to Eurogamer, Blizzard lead encounter designer Ion Hazzikostas explained the purpose of offering a separate boost through the in-game store, while justifying the cost.

"We realized as soon as we came out with the Warlords Of Draenor boost to 90, we knew that there was going to be demand for more than one," Hazzikostas said. "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.

"In terms of the pricing, honestly a big part of that is not wanting to devalue the accomplishment of leveling," he claimed. "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," Hazzikostas concluded.

With Warlords of Draenor upping the level cap to 100, are you willing to pay $60 to boost additional characters to level 90?