At $60, World of Warcraft level 90 boost price is too expensive for China

Yesterday, news broke of World of Warcraft‘s latest in-game shop edition: a purchasable upgrade that instantly boosts your character to level 90 regardless of where you’re starting from. And what will this insta-leveling cost you? In the US, at least, the price is $60.

It’s not clear yet what the pricing of this will be for China, if it does indeed come to Chinese servers, but Chinese gamers are already balking at the price tag, which is equivalent to around 360 RMB. Thousands have already voted in a poll on Chinese gaming site 17173, with 82% of current respondents agreeing that the boost is simply too expensive.

Interestingly, though, 12% of respondents said the upgrade was actually too cheap, and they may have a point. Leveling from 1 to 90 on your own in World of Warcraft in anywhere from 60 to 300+ hours, depending on how hard you’re focusing on leveling. If you think of the $60 price as paying for your own time, then spending that money to avoid a few weeks of miserable power-leveling might well be worth it.

Even so, though, it seems unlikely that the level boost will cost that much when/if it hits Chinese servers. For one thing, at that price the official boost would be unable to compete with Taobao sellers who charge much lower fees to power-level your WoW characters for you, although they obviously can’t offer instant results. And although WoW has been milking Chinese gamers for a decade now, many of them prefer not to spend such a large chunk of money all at once anyway.