Originally Posted by
Cthulhu 2020
Several other games take a stance against advertising sale of boosts. If you WANT pay to win mechanics in WoW, that's your call.
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What are the negatives of taking a stance against advertising against boosting in game?
What are the negatives of punishing those who do it via player reports?
All I see from your explanations are "It won't stop boosting COMPLETELY, so why bother?"
It's like... "why make laws against murder, it won't stop it completely, so why bother?"
Reducing the visibility of boosting, as well as making it a black market transaction and activity will significantly reduce the incidence of it happening. I have no delusions that it will stop it completely, but you know it has become far more common since the WoW token. Blizzard has taken no stand against it.
As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I knew a Blizzard employee that worked as customer service on player tickets. They and everyone else they knew around the office multi-boxed in their free time. This was from BC til about Cata. To me, as someone who had a window in, knew exactly why Blizzard didn't take a stand against multi boxing until recently.
It's purely speculation, and I have no proof, but I'd put money in a bet that there are likely Blizzard employees who boost. And probably not just for gold.
On top of that, Blizzard knows boosting pushes token sales. You know it pushes token sales. Anyone who denies it is either lying or ignorant. That's not speculation, that's a fact.
The last 10 years of gaming have taught me, there are people willing to spend thousands, to tens of thousands of dollars on video games just for cool and flashy things, waifus, prestige, and everything else.
What's that saying certain political arguments always make... "Follow the money"?
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People keep thinking this "Boosting has always existed" argument somehow changes anything. It doesn't. Keeping boosting against the rules makes it much harder for players to participate in it. If you have to use Chinese gold sellers to get the in game money, then hunt around unofficial forums for dubious sellers that might just steal your money and run, people are far less likely to do it.
In Vanilla WoW, people bought boosts, sure. But tons of them also got hacked by visiting gold selling sites. Tons of them got their money stolen because many of the boosters were scammers.
Maintaining boosting as an activity that is against the TOS creates situations that deter players from doing it. If you can just pay Blizzard a bunch of IRL money IN GAME, get a ton of gold, and go to some official regulated boosting site that's out in the open, far more people are going to partake because of the convenience and safety of their account.
But I've thoroughly made my point. Boosting has driven a great many number of players away from the game. Players who feel like the integrity of the game is the lowest it's ever been with boosting now so common and easy to do. If people want to defend boosting in WoW, that's their right. And it's other people's right to quit.
BFA lost 44% of normal raiding players between 8.0 and 8.1
Shadowlands has lost 55% of normal mode raiders between 9.0 and 9.1
Ahead of the curve kills among raiding guilds is at all time lows.
Some of you may not like Bellular for revealing uncomfortable statistics. Some of you may dislike him for his views on maintaining the game's integrity. But he knows what he's talking about, and it's clear WoW is going in the wrong direction for maintaining players.
I'm not arguing that boosting has caused this drop, but it is certainly a factor that leaves a bad taste in many people's mouths, and adds to much of the discontent.
If this is the game you like, if this is how you want the game to be, have at it.