Blizzard is still charging 29 dollars for BC upgrade!

[luxlunae]

That seems pretty crazy to me. It really seems like they are ripping off new customers who will never get 30 dollars of enjoyment out of BC content they'll fly through in a week. For MBers, apparently it means I need to plan ahead (buy a battlechest) if I want to make a new RAF account permanent <.<

Am I misunderstanding something? Can you put lich king on a normal account?

[jinkobi]

Lot of things Blizzard does is way more expensive than it should be. Like subscription rates never going down...

You have to buy TBC- can't straight upgrade to WOTLK from vanilla I agree a rip off at this point in time.

[Svpernova09]

That seems pretty crazy to me. It really seems like they are ripping off new customers who will never get 30 dollars of enjoyment out of BC content they'll fly through in a week. For MBers, apparently it means I need to plan ahead (buy a battlechest) if I want to make a new RAF account permanent <.<

Am I misunderstanding something? Can you put lich king on a normal account?

No, you have to go Vanilla -> BC -> Wrath. Looks like retail stores are still selling it for $30 as well, so yeah, if you're planning on going to 80 the best way is a battle chest. You can buy a BC key from shattered crystal for $20.99 though. I've purchased from them quite often.

[Tonuss]

I think that you have to upgrade your account to tBC in order to upgrade to WotLK. I figure that they'll discount tBC further after Cataclysm ships.

Edit to add: from an economic perspective, keep in mind that lowering prices is a way to stimulate more sales. If sales volume is high enough, then there is no incentive to lower prices.

[luxlunae]

I think that you have to upgrade your account to tBC in order to upgrade to WotLK. I figure that they'll discount tBC further after Cataclysm ships.

I would have thought that too but clearly not. It still cost 30 dollars at the end of BC!

[Owltoid]

I think you'll see the total cost of the game to be around $100 if starting from scratch. Right now it's about $90 without using a Battlechest and I wouldn't be surprised for them to inflate it a little bit. I'm guessing that 1-60 will remain about where it is now in leveling time, BC reduced a bit, WotLK reduced a lot, and 80-85 be a little shorter than the current 70-80. Overall leveling time from 1-85 should be about 10% longer than the current 1-80.

Just my $0.02

[kate]

Lot of things Blizzard does is way more expensive than it should be. Like subscription rates never going down...

You have to buy TBC- can't straight upgrade to WOTLK from vanilla I agree a rip off at this point in time.

They won't cut the prices until subscription numbers start to fall off/new subscribers stop joining. I bet, though, that there will be a new battle chest once Cata comes out - and I bet it'll be $59.99 for Vanilla, BC & WOTLK - or at least I'm hoping so

What I did was wait to buy the packages until there was a really good sale (like I saw $5 vanilla a few months back so I bought a few boxes, and $20 TBC a few times, though I didn't buy 'em since they aren't really needed to abuse RAF). I figure, if I ever do decide to do more accounts, I have them cheap, and if I don't I can give them as presents or sell them easily. So if money is an issue, just wait for a good sale, and check Google shopping a lot

[kadaan]

New customers will probably buy a battlechest, not vanilla+BC separately. Most of the people who buy BC are people who haven't played in 4 years and only have a classic account. As a MB, why wouldn't you get a battlechest? If you're leveling another team with RAF and don't want the additional active accounts, just get them to 60 then paid transfer them to your main accounts for BC/Wrath content.

[kate]

New customers will probably buy a battlechest, not vanilla+BC separately. Most of the people who buy BC are people who haven't played in 4 years and only have a classic account. As a MB, why wouldn't you get a battlechest? If you're leveling another team with RAF and don't want the additional active accounts, just get them to 60 then paid transfer them to your main accounts for BC/Wrath content.

Well, this is purely anecdotal, but I just got 3 new people to consider playing, and every one of them said they only wanted to buy the main game because they didn't know if they'll like it enough to want the expansion. So I think there's still a market for the non-battlechest offerings.