Several months ago, Blizzard made an offer to all pre-order customers of the next expansion Warlords of Draenor that many couldn’t refuse: Those who pre-order the expansion can boost one of their heroes to level 90. Many gladly accepted the offer.
Warlords of Draenor has already sold over 1 million copies. This makes WoD one of the most successful expansions in the Warcraft franchise so far, even as interest in the title has noticeably declined after 9 years. During the current content drought, 200,000 subscribers were lost.
Activision’s CEO Bobby Kotick described Warlords of Draenor in a presentation on the financial report of the software giant as “: (…) already one of the fastest selling expansions in the franchise’s history based on pre-sales”, thus one of the expansions in the entire Warcraft series that sold the fastest in pre-sales.
Blizzard’s Mike Morhaime added: “(…) that the incentive of being able to immediately boost one character to level 90 for those who do pre-purchase likely had a lot to do with driving sales.” From Blizzard’s perspective, the strategy with the free level 90 thus worked perfectly.
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[intense_testimony_text]Mein-mmo.de says:
Well, it is a bit disheartening when in-game things are so successfully used to influence the market in the “real world”. The idea of the free level 90 with the pre-order seems to have paid off for Blizzard more than well.
Evil thought: Those who try to exchange virtual money for real money as a player will be banned by Blizzard for it.
That there are hard marketing calculations behind decisions that have a direct impact on the virtual world and gaming experience has to be accepted. Nonetheless, we view “conveniences” or “special bonuses” in full-price titles with ongoing subscription costs with some skepticism. [/intense_testimony_text]
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