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WoW Classic Character Cloning Price Reduced to $15

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Blizzard is lowering the price of the WoW Classic cloning service from $35 to $15, in response to some fairly heavy community criticism on the decision.

Blizzard Logo(Source)

Salutations, WoW Classic players! We’d like to inform you about a course correction we’re making.

When you log in to WoW Classic after the patch next week, each of your Classic characters will choose between staying in Classic Era (version 1.13) and progressing to Burning Crusade Classic (version 2.5). For those who want to play a character in both versions, we’re offering a service to purchase a character clone in the other version of the game.

This service – providing a player with a second copy of a character in a different game – is new for us. Our original concept of the value of this service was largely based on how we price other optional items and services. We want players who choose Classic Era realms to feel as though their choice comes with the possibility that they’ll be able to build relationships and guilds with other players they can count on.

However, over the last week or so, we’ve gotten a very large amount of feedback from the community, and we’ve decided to lower the price. A lower price will likely still accomplish our goals with the new service, while allowing many more players to explore the option of playing characters on both Classic Era and Burning Crusade Classic realms.

After careful consideration, we’ve decided to lower the price of a cloned character in WoW Classic to $15.00 USD ($20.00 CAD, $20.00 AUD, $24.00 NZD). You’ll see the lower price in-game when the service becomes available next week.

As always, we deeply appreciate the passion and thoughtfulness of the WoW community. We play WoW alongside you, and we can’t wait to join you next week on Classic Era realms, in the Burning Crusade Classic pre-patch, and as we step through the Dark Portal with you in June.

Thank you very much,

– The World of Warcraft Development Team

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Good course correction, let's see some more positive responses in the comments. Whether you like $15 or not, they dropped $20 off the price because they were asked to make an adjustment. Give credit where credit is due.

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Blizz takes a lot of heat from people that don't like that they don't cater to their every demand, but they really should get some credit here. They listened to the public and they brought the price down by a ton. Some people still won't be happy with this, but seeing as you don't even have to buy classic games, they need to make some money somewhere to keep being able to make and support this content.

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Still not acceptable for me. This service requires no overhead and should be free imo.

I am betting they priced it high at first on purpose for this specific reason, so they can pretend to be the good guys by lowering the price at the last minute. 

Sorry to be that guy. Hope you guys have fun with Classic. It's not for me with their current business model.

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Can people please move along and stop whining about this now? Let's have high hopes for TBC and enjoy the damn game!

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1 hour ago, Devylknyght said:

Still not acceptable for me. This service requires no overhead and should be free imo.

I am betting they priced it high at first on purpose for this specific reason, so they can pretend to be the good guys by lowering the price at the last minute. 

Sorry to be that guy. Hope you guys have fun with Classic. It's not for me with their current business model.

It has a price because it cost Blizzard to maintain the BC and classic world servers. If every one could go to BC and stay in Classic, that would double the overhead for Blizzard. Applying a prohibitive cost prevents cloning for being the default, and causes people to think about how like they are to play both, how valuable the cost would be.

 

The cost at 35 was to high, and punished dedicated players that want to play multiple characters across the expands. Lowering it by over 50% keeps its utility to discourage cloning as a default, but is not as our punishing to players planning to transfer multiple toons.

At the same time they can't offer a "transfer all my charectrs for X$"  because they don't want to maintain all those servers, so they only want the charectrs most likely to be active players so you end with 4-5 high population servers with high user activity, not 8-10 servers with above average population and average to low activity.

 

Because unlike in modern all existing charectrs just come along, the clones require new servers exist on, and thus maintain.

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44 minutes ago, Novax73 said:

It has a price because it cost Blizzard to maintain the BC and classic world servers. If every one could go to BC and stay in Classic, that would double the overhead for Blizzard. Applying a prohibitive cost prevents cloning for being the default, and causes people to think about how like they are to play both, how valuable the cost would be.

 

The cost at 35 was to high, and punished dedicated players that want to play multiple characters across the expands. Lowering it by over 50% keeps its utility to discourage cloning as a default, but is not as our punishing to players planning to transfer multiple toons.

At the same time they can't offer a "transfer all my charectrs for X$"  because they don't want to maintain all those servers, so they only want the charectrs most likely to be active players so you end with 4-5 high population servers with high user activity, not 8-10 servers with above average population and average to low activity.

 

Because unlike in modern all existing charectrs just come along, the clones require new servers exist on, and thus maintain.

They are already cloning the characters, whether you pay or not. They just lock the character on the option you don't choose until you decide to pay for it. So it is actually costing them more in development time/money to implement this pay to unlock system. 

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23 minutes ago, Devylknyght said:

They are already cloning the characters, whether you pay or not. They just lock the character on the option you don't choose until you decide to pay for it. So it is actually costing them more in development time/money to implement this pay to unlock system. 

The cost does not come from the cloning that is obviously free. The cost is mating the server  now that it exists in BC and Classic. That could potentially double their servers, and the cost is in maintaining them. Not the cloning it's self, the downstream effects.

Once you select the version you want if you don't pay for the clone, it gets deleted. And then in a year then will condensed servers based on population.

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2 hours ago, Novax73 said:

The cost does not come from the cloning that is obviously free. The cost is mating the server  now that it exists in BC and Classic. That could potentially double their servers, and the cost is in maintaining them. Not the cloning it's self, the downstream effects.

Once you select the version you want if you don't pay for the clone, it gets deleted. And then in a year then will condensed servers based on population.

cloning... mating... Let's do it like they do it on the Discovery channel?

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2 hours ago, Yridaa said:

cloning... mating... Let's do it like they do it on the Discovery channel?

Getting woody now!

Will we get new HD machinimas? Bring back Nymh!

 

side note, I did not expect this to happen, I didn't think they'd cave on this. Glad for the players that they have. Here's hoping they think about readdressing some other service fees. Overall they're just too high for what they are imo. Good steps so far, and well done community that did complain.

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Lets make a super high price for a no-cost feature, then, after they complain, we lower it to high price, and they will be happy - Market, 1800.

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It should have been this way from the beginning. They don't deserve to be praised for this. This was a strategy to get the community to be okay paying a cost for cloning at all. Of course let's not forget the disgusting pricing on the "collector's edition" that many people are going to forget due to this "win" distraction. It took an entire community of complete outrage to get them to do the semi-right thing. They wanted to test how greedy they could be, now suddenly they're the good guys because they decided to not screw us nearly as hard. Some people... Ah but poor blizzard won't be able to afford to maintain their servers without more money than a $15 subscription from the players that would be actively playing on them, because somehow in some magical fantasy world that alone isn't going to net them a profit.

Edited by Meril
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I have to agree that this feels pre-planned and scam like.    We already pay $15 a month, Millions of us, which should (and is) ridiculously above the needs for supporting servers and such.     They also make bank on pets, server transfers, character boosts, wow tokens, books, and all the other merchandise including expansions.    Making something a ridiculous price and then "seeing the light" and lowering it to a less poisonous level is old school sham marketing.

Remember back in the day when our $15 subscription paid for in game (not books) lore that made sense, actual people and not automation in customer service, and so on?    

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1 hour ago, Migol said:

Remember back in the day when our $15 subscription paid for in game (not books) lore that made sense, actual people and not automation in customer service, and so on?    

This is fair, except:

  • Monthly subscription is still the only requirement for access to now three different games and all the collectables within (minus expansion cost and the occasionally shop-exclusive mount). These days, you can even convert game gold into game time, thus essentially eliminating even the monthly subscription fee.
  • Character cloning was not a service originally offered when expansions rolled over, as such it cannot be compared to other traditionally included services.
  • The cost of a service has two goals: to make money for the game, yes - but also to discourage people from bogging down customer support staff with an endless string of consequence-free decisions to race change, server transfer, etc. Free cloning would just mean everyone would do it when only a small percentage of the people would actually need or want to maintain their character in both eras. A price tag both drives profit and ensures that time/server space/resources are not wasted giving away a free item that people will essentially disregard afterwards without any investment.
  • The subscription model that WoW helped perpetuate to great success is the reason that monotonizing exists in the first place. We paid for the game, then we paid to play it, then we paid for expansions to play more, then we paid for extra cool stuff in the game and for our real world. It's our fault, we bought in from the beginning and now we're upset when we look around to see what happens when you vote with your dollars. This is like faulting Disney for putting out another Star Wars show or release a new Iron Man toy. Plain and simple: cash grabs like this exist because they work, because people either expect to or have no issue spending money for a "better" experience.
Edited by durdyenglish
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18 hours ago, Devylknyght said:

Still not acceptable for me. This service requires no overhead and should be free imo.

I am betting they priced it high at first on purpose for this specific reason, so they can pretend to be the good guys by lowering the price at the last minute. 

Sorry to be that guy. Hope you guys have fun with Classic. It's not for me with their current business model.

They have to maintain a dedicated server to keep up the classic era and you "think" it should be free? Does the maintaining cost comes out of your pocket? Don't start with "cloning is free in ptr". They are not taking money for cloning, they are taking money just once to keep your character which you might never touch again in a dedicated server. And it requires maintainance. 

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1 hour ago, Elevendk said:

They have to maintain a dedicated server to keep up the classic era and you "think" it should be free? Does the maintaining cost comes out of your pocket? Don't start with "cloning is free in ptr". They are not taking money for cloning, they are taking money just once to keep your character which you might never touch again in a dedicated server. And it requires maintainance. 

"just once" per character. and on top of the subscription we already pay for them to "maintain their servers". It's all good. Like I said, I hope you have fun. I am going to sit this one out. 

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3 hours ago, durdyenglish said:

Monthly subscription is still the only requirement for access to now three different games and all the collectables within (minus expansion cost and the occasionally shop-exclusive mount).

I'm confused, but what are those games?

 

I only see world of warcraft shadowlands, and 2 semi-abandonware's version of world of warcraft that are more than 15 years old with 0 new things.

 

I feel it should be acceptable to 'pay a monthly fee' to play the overall games, if they're worth my money and time, but all this monetization, for the simplest things, feels for me 'lets fix the problems we just did made to get some money on people who already invested a lot on us to feel bad for not doing it'.

Edited by Elfomal
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Wanna make a 15 dollar fleecing seem like a good idea,  do the Blizz approach and say it's gonna be $35 they reduced it later and watch everyone praise you.  It's still a rip-off yet now cause it's less of a rip-off all the sheep are happy and going "yay Blizz cares"

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It's fascinating that this trick worked so well. I applaud you, Brack. I didn't think he had it in him to do something as risky as this. How to make people defend you sucking money from them 101. It is quite an interesting thing to see.

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On 5/14/2021 at 5:28 PM, Migol said:

We already pay $15 a month, Millions of us, which should (and is) ridiculously above the needs for supporting servers and such. 

yeah servers are not that expensiv keeping blizz at a whole alife and running is very costy

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