Why doesn't blizzard crack down on boosters abusing lfg?

[Lochton]

Because of tokens, more people have more gold because now the people who hoard gold can use that gold for game time and the people who don't want to farm gold can just sell tokens. So tokens have a direct impact of boosts because now more people can afford them.

People could always afford boosts.. Prices just went up higher because of the token, nothing more. The amount of boosts has only become more visible now, yes, but the situation of boosting for gold has been drenching the game for over a decade - it is just now that more see it, and more earn on it.

[TheRevenantHero]

People could always afford boosts.. Prices just went up higher because of the token, nothing more. The amount of boosts has only become more visible now, yes, but the situation of boosting for gold has been drenching the game for over a decade - it is just now that more see it, and more earn on it.

I played WoW since Wrath until SL. The boosting situation right now is the WORST I have ever seen in the game. Tokens gave hoarders the option to buy game time with gold so they do. And the people who sell the tokens then use the gold being milked from hoarders to buy boosts. As a result, the game is utterly saturated with boost advertisements. There's more ads for boosts in game than there are for just regular runs.

[exochaft]

They do care long term but yes short term they are raking in money. Long term it is not sustainable because boosting undermines progression for legit players. The reduced pool of players also makes it less fun for those that did boost so it is a vicious cycle. Less players available leads to more players feeling they have to boost as there are less players to group up with and progress gear wise. Rinse and repeat.

I'll be the pessimist and surmise that even in the long term they don't necessarily care about boosting, as long as the WoW tokens get purchased in the end. However, as you alluded to, boosting is a symptom of a larger problem with the game: if the fun and enjoyment of the game goes down (especially in relation to the content being boosted), the boosts will increase. In the end, your game will ultimately suffer if you can't fix the fundamental problems of your game that make boosting so desirable.

Truth be told, I don't really care about player boosting in isolation, but in conjunction with the current state of the game it's pretty bad. As a restatement of what you said, players aren't leaving the game because of boosting, boosting is going up because players are leaving the game. Faction/population imbalance between servers still causes issues, the game doesn't really promote socialization as much as it used to, and the game content itself has been increasingly designed in a fashion that would promote boosting versus putting in the effort to organize a group for said content. Simply put, WoW has become much more of a chore than an engaging, social gaming experience for many players.

Another aspect is that the player mentality has drastically shifted over the years, and the experiences on classic WoW servers is a testament to this. People who are willing to put in the time and effort to learn and clear the hardest content in the game are becoming a dying breed. Players want instant gratification or don't want to have to dedicate a lot of time towards the only content in the game that actually is rewarding. This goes hand-in-hand with game design trending downward in quality when you leave out the top content, which only a tiny fraction of the population even attempts. This is just a recipe for boosting to skyrocket, as there's no other choice for some people.

As it stands right now, the ultimate WoW-killer is and always will be WoW itself, and the rampant boosting is just a sign of WoW inflicting more damage on itself.

[dacoolist]

Right click, report: advertisement

One: it removes it from your view

Two: once blizz gets enough hits on certain accounts it does affect them. Sure it takes a lot but if someones posting in lfg that you can get a carry by subscribing to twitch.tv/b00st or some ridiculous ch and not see that as real money… idk what is lol.

[TheRevenantHero]

Right click, report: advertisement

One: it removes it from your view

Two: once blizz gets enough hits on certain accounts it does affect them. Sure it takes a lot but if someones posting in lfg that you can get a carry by subscribing to twitch.tv/b00st or some ridiculous ch and not see that as real money… idk what is lol.

It removes it from view for like....10 minutes. Then it will show up again later when the player posts another ad in trade chat.

[Coldkil]

How fucking hard is it for people to type in "/leave trade" my god?

There is literally NOTHING else in Trade chat ever. So if you don't want to see boosting shit just leave the channel.

Boom, your problem is solved.

Funnily enough you didn't read anything about the thread lol. We're talking about people advertising boosts in the LFG tool which is both non allowed by Blizzard (but also does nothing against it and doesn't allow addon filtering) and annoying as hell since using the tool means having to manually report/hide the plethora of useless "WTS" groups.

[Garymorilix]

The thread is about the LFG tool, not trade chat. Both the subject and the first post of the thread indicated this. No one is complaining about being held hostage in trade.

Except, the topic is about Looking For Group system, not trade. Advertisement is meant to go there in the first place.

Funnily enough you didn't read anything about the thread lol. We're talking about people advertising boosts in the LFG tool which is both non allowed by Blizzard (but also does nothing against it and doesn't allow addon filtering) and annoying as hell since using the tool means having to manually report/hide the plethora of useless "WTS" groups.

I indeed only read a few posts here because this thread is stupid.

Why are people so worked up about this? Who cares?
You can just ignore those listings... They are pretty hard to mistake for actual groups.

People always find something to complain about, geez...
The most minor of inconveniences at that. Pathetic.

[Coldkil]

I indeed only read a few posts here because this thread is stupid.

Why are people so worked up about this? Who cares?
You can just ignore those listings... They are pretty hard to mistake for actual groups.

People always find something to complain about, geez...
The most minor of inconveniences at that. Pathetic.

Thread is stupid = i must post to tell people! Well, i took the bait.

You can just ignore those threads...they're pretty hard to mistake for actual interesting discussion.

[Etamalgren]

You can report those groups for selling boosts, and it not only removes it from your list permanently...

Uh... not quite. It only removes them from your list until you log off and log back on again.

So if you encounter that 5 day old ad, report it, then log off and log back on again... Guess what, that 5 day old ad is back.

[Crimson Spears]

It doesn't work like that. Gold value is dependent of effort that is required to earn it in game and everything scales with it. While token is literally auto scaled with demand/supply.

Boosts on the other hand are purely demand driven. You cannot artificially create demand on boosts out of thin air. Just like you won't make millions selling broken toilets.
There has to be actual value in that.

And if gold is harder to earn, price of boosts goes down (deflation) because ultimately the only reliable variable to compare service price (at least in WoW) is time spent.

In other words, your understanding of economics is lacking.

The only direct impact token has is that some people that used to buy gold off 3rd party now buy them from blizzard and blizzard takes a cut. There might be a bit more people buying gold now but there are also way less amount of people playing.

Much much much more impact on the boost demand is that now you get mount for KSM. And you can expect even higher demand now that it requires doing both tyranical and forti.

No, not at all.

I used to sell mythic and before that heroic carries did so for a decade. The amount of people who bought gold from third party sites was rather rare. A lot didn't want to risk getting banned most sales came from the same server auction house players.

The token EXPLODED carry services. Hell before it was released the idea of a heroic carry was something kinda laughed at. People thought it wasn't worth their time and CM mode carries went for a fraction of what mythic 15 carries to comparatively.

Deciding to embrace gold selling has been a massive negative to the game and no I don't believe dragging along the F2P characters was anywhere close to a positive trade off.

- - - Updated - - -

It is a bit silly to say there has been zero evidence to suggest they taken action. While some of those links are just statements the wowhead one at least references the reddit article of my last post. Where a person, and a reference to others in a "wave", got banned for advertising in-game.

It is no where near enough but there is still stuff being done. I like what the one customer service rep said in one of my links. It isn't as simple as zapping them with a lightning bolt. Blizzard is slow to respond to a lot of stuff. I wonder how the pandemic impacted the hacks and other teams related to what action happens in cases like this.

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...group/906002/9
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...sing/847237/16
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wo...inder/993728/4
https://www.wowhead.com/news/blizzar...-320341?page=7

I don't care. It isn't hard to not care about token responses when group tools are near unuseable.

They need to get off their lazy asses and actively sort the problem out. God forbid but that might include actively moderating aspects of their game instead of passively doing it once a week at best.

[Steelangel]

Why would that undermine progression for legit players?
Any competent player can get keystone master with a group of other competent players.
Any competent player can with his guild of competent players get cutting edge.

Nobody who is competent, I am not saying good, just competent, can easily find other competent people to do the content in-game. And such people neither need nor desire a "boost".

KSM requires competence. I would say that AOTC requires competence.

Cutting Edge (like Gladiator) requires you to actually be "good".

[Azerox]

Because they don't want to pay GMs. Same reason they got rid of master loot. Same reason botting is out of fucking control. Pure greed.

Yep its total anarchy atm. All for the token/moneysss.

[panda040]

All it would take is one intern banning people spamming WTS groups and they could easily make the system far more useable without their games grouping tool resembling a gold selling site.

Why don't they do it?

Promotes the sale of their in game wow token as well as various other reasons other posters have stated...

[Yooginava182]

Because Blizzard doesn't give a flying fuck about WoW anymore. Just look at the quality of Shadowlands.

This. Blizzard hasn't had any real competition over the last few years ( Final fantasy is on the rise ). They got cocky with their product. They believe that no matter what they do, they will have people pay the sub / buy the expansion. Even if it is just half assed / kicked out the door before its even ready.

Hopefully now that there is the competition, we will see better gameplay / story out of wow.. But trusting blizz to do just that.. Well you're shooting yourself in the foot.

[Beefhammer]

Advertising for them on the group finder tool is against the rules.

https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/187406

Advertisements are not allowed in the Group Finder. The Group Finder is intended to help players find active groups that are being formed and advertisements make it difficult to find relevant groups.

I'm sure he's just here complaining about it. If he'd report it as it happened maybe something would get done. Every day I report aim assist users and toxic players in OW and every day I get a stream of thank you for helping us catch and ban someone notices. From my experience, many just complain and don't bother to take that easy step of reporting. After all, it's not Blizzards job to sit and monitor chat. But it is ours to let them know.

[rhorle]

This. Blizzard hasn't had any real competition over the last few years ( Final fantasy is on the rise ). They got cocky with their product. They believe that no matter what they do, they will have people pay the sub / buy the expansion. Even if it is just half assed / kicked out the door before its even ready.

WoW is almost 17 year game. The problem isn't that Blizzard is cocky or think they can do whatever they want. The problem is there are tons of ex players, tons of recently quit players, and tons of unhappy players. Tons of current players. Tons of happy players. The problem is everyone wants the game to be designed for themselves personally. Gameplay and Story has been on par for what it ever was. Games change and players change. There are certainly some problems with Blizzard but most of the time the stuff is over blown and exaggerated for the dramatic effect.

[kaminaris]

No, not at all.

I used to sell mythic and before that heroic carries did so for a decade. The amount of people who bought gold from third party sites was rather rare. A lot didn't want to risk getting banned most sales came from the same server auction house players.

The token EXPLODED carry services. Hell before it was released the idea of a heroic carry was something kinda laughed at. People thought it wasn't worth their time and CM mode carries went for a fraction of what mythic 15 carries to comparatively.

Deciding to embrace gold selling has been a massive negative to the game and no I don't believe dragging along the F2P characters was anywhere close to a positive trade off.

You completely forgot that people used to buy carries for money (they still do). Because why buy gold when most people sell boosts for money anyway?
Gold was mostly only used to buy some cosmetics/consumables.

That was the reason why you think it "exploded", because some of the people who used to do that, now convert it to gold. I know people who work for such industry.

Token simply made it visible for everyone.

And you still don't understand that in order for boosts to be popular (high demand) is that there has to be a value in rewards.

Do you buy/sell boosts for ragefire chasm? No because its extremely easy and has little value.
Would people buy m+ boosts if there would be absolutely no rewards whatsoever for doing so? Highly unlikely
Would people buy m+ boosts if difficulty would be on par with normal dungeon (literally cannot fail)? Highly unlikely


Now the real reason why boosts exploded is basically because of ever growing difficulty, having more rewards from it (seasonal mount), higher time consumption (timegated gearing).

[Garymorilix]

Thread is stupid = i must post to tell people! Well, i took the bait.

You can just ignore those threads...they're pretty hard to mistake for actual interesting discussion.

It would be borderline impossible to find actual interesting discussion here.

I come here to look at the sheer amount of stupid complaints specifically.
People never disappoint.

But sometimes I just gotta write something to represent reality a little bit. That's on me.

[Unholyground]

They would be better off making the game better and going buy to play (buy the current expansion and get unlimited game time), tokens have slowly been ruining the game.

[rhorle]

They would be better off making the game better and going buy to play (buy the current expansion and get unlimited game time), tokens have slowly been ruining the game.

That wouldn't remove boosts or the token though. Tokens exist to combat gold sellers and those will still exist with buy to play. The token would just be shifted to something else other then game time (or Blizzard would offer a subscription model for extra perks). Boosts would still exist as long as people have gold and want to by pass time and effort required for things.