[GameSpot] - Blizzard Reduces Price Of WoW Burning Crusade Classic Cloning Fee After Player Outcry

[343iBot]

Blizzard has announced it will be drastically reducing the price of World of Warcraft Classic's upcoming character cloning service following player outcry. The price to copy an individual character so it can be played on both WoW Classic Era realms and upcoming Burning Crusade Classic realms will now be $15, down from the original announcement of $35.

All existing WoW Classic realms will be automatically converted to the game's Burning Crusade expansion with the arrival of the Burning Crusade pre-patch on May 18. On that day, players will have to choose on a per character basis whether to play on Burning Crusade servers or to transfer to Classic Era realms which won't progress to the game's next expansion. Cloning a character for the associated fee allows that character to be played in both versions of the game.

In a post on the official WoW Classic forums, Blizzard outlined their original reasoning for the $35 fee. "This service--providing a player with a second copy of a character in a different game--is new for us," the post reads. "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."

The move comes after sustained player outrage over the $35 price tag. As many players pointed out, $35 is only $5 short of the price of WoW's entire latest expansion, Shadowlands. Many WoW Classic players have spent thousands of hours playing their characters, and while many will want to move forward into Burning Crusade Classic without looking back, there are plenty of others who would like to keep a foot in the door of the original version of WoW Classic should they ever want to return to it. For those players in particular, it felt as if Blizzard was holding their characters hostage for a $35 ransom.

While cutting the cloning fee by more than half certainly relieves a pain point many players had with Blizzard's recent Burning Crusade Classic announcements, the game's shorter than usual pre-patch and controversial new microtransactions still have many in the game's community unhappy ahead of Burning Crusade Classic's June 1 release date.

View the full article