Blizzard announced the pricing structure for the Burning Crusade last week, and while players were mostly expecting the large price tags for character boosting and collectible packages, they weren’t expecting the character cloning feature to cost nearly as much as it did.
Before the Burning Crusade arrives in World of Warcraft Classic in June, players will have a choice. They can either upgrade their current character to the Burning Crusade free of charge, or they can remain on the Classic Era server. If they want both, they need to pay for Blizzard’s character cloning service, which will create a clone of their character on both the Classic Era and Burning Crusade servers. And it’ll cost those players $35 per character.
Players balked at that price tag, which almost matched the price of the Dark Portal Pass at $39.99. For that price, you could start a brand new character at level 58 and experience the Burning Crusade in a new way–which likely doesn’t have as much appeal for a game literally built on nostalgia.
But after a week of backlash, Blizzard has finally backtracked on its initial cloning price. In a post made to the official WoW Classic forums, the development team explained that they may have priced the cloning service incorrectly by setting it near other prices.
“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,” the dev team wrote in their post.
“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.”
The new price–$15 USD per character–is less than half the original cloning price tag. That said, some players are still unhappy with the move, while others are accusing Blizzard of “anchoring,” a sales tactic where you begin negotiations at an extremely high price so that a somewhat high price seems more palatable.
WoW Classic players can clone their characters now ahead of the Burning Crusade’s arrival on June 1.