Blizzard don't ban boosting because THEY are the boosters...crazy

[Cthulhu 2020]

It's not like YouTube's algorithm which encourages negativity would possibly have any impact on the conclusions he's looking to draw.

Bellular is probably more hopeful for WoW than the vast majority of content creators. He's also the most realistic and most constructive about it. He's looking to fix the shit hole state that it's in now through open dialog and discussion, as well as criticism of areas that greatly need improving.

You can see him as negative, I see him as the most based and positive individual who isn't huffing copium that still wants WoW to succeed. He states multiple times in all his WoW videos that he hopes WoW improves and succeeds. Some people want WoW to continue down the path of ruin because they believe in every decision Blizzard makes. Others gave up giving constructive criticism years ago because they know Blizzard doesn't give a fuck.

And as I said, just because you hate his opinions and conclusions on some things doesn't make the statistics in the video wrong.

Shadowlands was lauded as being better than BFA, and yet has seen a sharper drop off in nearly every single metric in terms of player engagement. Not just in percentages but in raw numbers as well.

That you think this is merely about "reinforcing hatred for WoW" shows just how fast you're ready to write off any kind of criticism. Of course, you never actually add anything to a conversation. Because that's why you're here. Not for any kind of constructive conversation, but to paint everyone as a hater whose opinion is invalid because they dared to speak poorly about WoW.

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which are you against? boosting or advertising?

Maybe try answering the question instead of going on a tangent about how other games stand against ADVERTISEMENTS. So I'll repeat, what EXACTLY do you want blizzard's stance to be?

Both. I'd say that was pretty obvious if you read my post.

[Elbob]

Both. I'd say that was pretty obvious if you read my post.

Ok so next, define what makes a boost a boost.

What line must be crossed? When does a run change from some one just being carried to being boosted?
Is it just the transfer of gold? What about GDKP runs?
If gold is traded at all is it suddenly boosting? What about tanks the sell 5 man q's is that boosting?

You have to define your line.

[Relapses]

Bellular is probably more hopeful for WoW than the vast majority of content creators. He's also the most realistic and most constructive about it. He's looking to fix the shit hole state that it's in now through open dialog and discussion, as well as criticism of areas that greatly need improving.

You can see him as negative, I see him as the most based and positive individual who isn't huffing copium that still wants WoW to succeed. He states multiple times in all his WoW videos that he hopes WoW improves and succeeds. Some people want WoW to continue down the path of ruin because they believe in every decision Blizzard makes. Others gave up giving constructive criticism years ago because they know Blizzard doesn't give a fuck.

And as I said, just because you hate his opinions and conclusions on some things doesn't make the statistics in the video wrong.

Shadowlands was lauded as being better than BFA, and yet has seen a sharper drop off in nearly every single metric in terms of player engagement. Not just in percentages but in raw numbers as well.

That you think this is merely about "reinforcing hatred for WoW" shows just how fast you're ready to write off any kind of criticism. Of course, you never actually add anything to a conversation. Because that's why you're here. Not for any kind of constructive conversation, but to paint everyone as a hater whose opinion is invalid because they dared to speak poorly about WoW.

Did... did you even read my last post?

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It's telling that in his response he completely ignores the fact that this is Blizzard's own data, instead pivoting to yet another attack. It's the Trump play, never admit error and attack attack attack, even if those attacks contradict something they said previously.

Did I ever say it wasn't Blizzard's data? Are... are you actually reading anything I'm writing?

[Cthulhu 2020]

Ok so next, define what makes a boost a boost.

What line must be crossed? When does a run change from some one just being carried to being boosted?
Is it just the transfer of gold? What about GDKP runs?
If gold is traded at all is it suddenly boosting? What about tanks the sell 5 man q's is that boosting?

You have to define your line.

I can define my line so you can make some arbitrary argument about how I'm wrong.

Actually putting my opinion out there is far more than 95% of people on this forum do. Most of the time they like to sit back and shit on your opinion or try to look for some kind of contradiction so they can call you a hypocrite. Either that or look for some other thing to dump on, like claiming you're just a "hater" so your post doesn't matter and no matter what feedback and criticism you give is invalid because you're a "hater". Most of these people are never willing to put their own opinion up because they know there's someone waiting to dump on them.

As someone else said, that's their only strategy. Attack, attack, attack. They're wimps that shrivel at the idea of having their opinion criticized.

As someone who's gamed since Atari and NES, I appreciate good old fashioned "earn it yourself" gameplay that doesn't involve playing with pixel stocks (playing the AH) but actually doing the content yourself.

Were you dead weight and effectively carried, or were you doing the fight properly?

If you were dead weight, did you pay in game money or real money for the run or the gear? If so, you were boosted.

If you weren't dead weight but still paid, why are you paying?

The WoW token makes boosting exponentially worse because it adds an officially endorsed avenue for people to pay real money for gold, which in turn gets them boosted, gear, or whatever they want to buy.

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Did... did you even read my last post?

Yes, did you?

I'm calling out a useless grifter whose only purpose in life is to farm YouTube clicks for producing one mind-numbingly stupid "DAE WoW ded gaem" video after another.

You either haven't watched many Bellular videos, or you've gone into every single one with the mindset of "MAN THIS GUY IS JUST A HATER THAT WANTS TO DUMP ON THE GAME" and deliberately missed the point of every single video. It's obvious that Bellular cares more about the overall quality of WoW as a game than pretty much every stan on this forum who are trying to dump on people they've identified as "haters".

[MoanaLisa]

Ok so next, define what makes a boost a boost.

What line must be crossed? When does a run change from some one just being carried to being boosted?
Is it just the transfer of gold? What about GDKP runs?
If gold is traded at all is it suddenly boosting? What about tanks the sell 5 man q's is that boosting?

You have to define your line.

Strip away all of the emotion from this and it becomes clear that there are sometimes items from professions that 'boost' a player's power that are usually purchased through the Auction House—although there's nothing to stop players from dealing one-on-one with each other. It used to be the same with enchants. The gold goes to the player who made the gear and sold it. Players who don't have a lot of gold might buy gold through the token system to procure said better gear. This is apparently perfectly fine.

Boosting in which a player pays someone some gold (not through the AH) to procure better gear is a cancer in the game even though the financial transactions mechanically are the same. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever and never really has.

So I suppose the AH is 'the line' even though Blizzard is OK with anything else that involves the simple exchange of gold for an item or service. People want to make the token the villain here but this sort of transaction has always existed in this game (and most other MMO's).

I will say it again: Where and how people get their gold, as long as it's done without using 3rd party gold-selling sites, is nobody's business.

[T-34]

make content accessible to bad players

I would love to see WoW with content only of the difficulty of LFR and normal dungeons
It would probably make millions re-sub again /s

[Raelbo]

Well, you get the same loot, the same mount, the same title, the same achievements. Now because anybody can swipe credit card and get these things, they lose a lot of value, don't you think?

No, I don't agree, sorry. Your argument is entirely inadequate to substantiate this assertion.

Let's start by looking at what gives these things "value".

• There is the prestige of having these things
• There is the sense of personal accomplishment
• There is what the gear can help you do
• There is a degree of progress you achieve in terms of completing things like achievements and mounts. One could regard this progress as having value.

Next, let's look at what causes these things to lose value:

• The prestige of having visible gear/mounts from the latest hard content does depend on how many people have it. So the more people that get it the less it becomes worth
• A sense of personal accomplishment pertains to how difficult something was to acquire at the time you did it. No one can take this away from you.
• Gear loses value when it is replaced by better gear. Gear as a ticket to getting into pugs loses value the more people have better gear than you.
• The difficulty of obtaining mounts and achievements affects their value

Now let's look at how anybody being able to swipe a credit card affects these things:

• The prestige of defeating hard content diminishes over time regardless of whether some people are getting boosted or not. By the time boosting occurs, enough people are going to have those achievements, mounts, gear etc that a few more isn't going to make a material difference.
• Sense of personal accomplishment should not be affected by people who get carried through the content 3 months down the line. And if it does, that is your personal issue which you shouldn't blame on anyone else
• The value of my gear in terms of what I can do with it has nothing to do with what anyone else has. Regarding its value in terms of getting me into groups, boosted players typically are trying to catch up, they almost never end up overtaking those who actually did the content themselves.
• The value of hard to get achievements is always going to diminish over time as you become better geared. Boosted players obtaining those things doesn't make these these things easier to get, it's just an indication of the fact that they are easier to get. Cause and effect.

The fundamental flaw in your argument is that you're assuming that boosting is the cause of these things. But in reality it's only a tiny part of it. The fact is that as time goes on, more and more people are going to complete content with or without boosting. At worst boosting simply accelerates the process a little bit. You argue that anyone can swipe their card to get gold to buy a boost. This is true but also pretty meaningless considering that anyone can acquire that same gold in-game without swiping their card. And when you consider how the token system works, it follows that for these players to acquire their gold via token, that there must considerably more gold than that already in the economy.

What would make your argument valid would be if everyone could swipe their credit card and achieve these outcomes. But we both know that cannot happen. First off, not everyone can buy tokens, the feedback system governing the price prohibits it because every token sold for gold requires someone else supplying the gold. Secondly, the number of players able to provide a boost is finite.

Killing bosses early looks fun and at all on wowprogress but outside of that?

Well, you're the one talking about "value". And it is pretty clear that any "value" attached to these accomplishments is tied directly to when they are achieved.

boosting has a huge negative impact

A baseless assertion that you've made on the basis of a flimsy argument. Come back with a better thought out argument and I'll consider it.

and provides no benefit.

If this were the case then it would not exist. People simply don't spend money or devote time and effort to things from which they derive zero benefit. So the fact that people are prepared to spend money to buy boosts demonstrates that they derive benefit. And the fact that other players are prepared to put time and effort into boosting other demonstrates that they derive benefit.

[Relapses]

You either haven't watched many Bellular videos, or you've gone into every single one with the mindset of "MAN THIS GUY IS JUST A HATER THAT WANTS TO DUMP ON THE GAME" and deliberately missed the point of every single video. It's obvious that Bellular cares more about the overall quality of WoW as a game than pretty much every stan on this forum who are trying to dump on people they've identified as "haters".

I can't think of a single valuable thing his videos which explore engagement in SL via Blizzard's APIs have brought to the discussion table. The game is in a bad spot. I know it. You know it. Everybody playing SL right now knows it. We don't need a new video every other week to confirm it. If he cared about the state of the game more than clicks he wouldn't keep making the same fucking video.

[MoanaLisa]

Let's start by looking at what gives these things "value".

• There is the prestige of having these things

Next, let's look at what causes these things to lose value:

• The prestige of having visible gear/mounts from the latest hard content does depend on how many people have it. So the more people that get it the less it becomes worth

Now let's look at how anybody being able to swipe a credit card affects these things:

• The prestige of defeating hard content diminishes over time regardless of whether some people are getting boosted or not. By the time boosting occurs, enough people are going to have those achievements, mounts, gear etc that a few more isn't going to make a material difference.

Blizzard likes to talk about prestige within the game. It's mostly BS. Prestige is overrated and has little value unless one is streaming to a YouTube audience. There are a lot of reasons for this. The main one is that no one outside of a very small circle of friends or not-quite-strangers knows much about other player accomplishments and they care even less. Most characters are 100% anonymous and 'prestige' doesn't apply. It's a hit to the ego for a lot of people but it's true. The days of standing around a city and gawking at players' raid gear and mostly over and have been for years. Hero worship among players is not a thing unless one has a popular YouTube channel.

To me the best reward is the self-knowledge that X or Y was accomplished in a fair way (which is why I don't participate in the boost economy at all). Most people apparently don't care much about that either. I think that's OK. Everyone is entitled to value what they get from the game in their own way.

[shise]

I got banned for paying for boosting.

How so? I keep reading that buying boosts is ok with gold. Or do you mean actual money?

Even if its real money, I don´t even see how could they possibly track that down. I guess you can be unlucky.

----------------

I don´t think boosts are a big problem now a days tbh. Not when you have something as M+ giving the highest gear equipment... something that should only come from raid fights. I find that far worse.

If you fix that, you will also fix boosts all together.

[Baroclinic]

This again. Christ. How does their little boosting scheme hurt you in the slightest, even if someone did it for real $?

Honestly, I don't see where it is even anyone's business what transactions happen outside a game someone paid a subscription for. ITS A GAME!

Suppose I had my daughter pick flowers for me while I'm at work, or my friend from work complete a tower for me? How would that be wrong?

In which case, what real evil is being committed by these "boosting communities". You are in no way forced to buy their services.

[niztheundead87]

imagine using a clickbait content creator as reliable source

[Kallisto]

As someone who's gamed since Atari and NES, I appreciate good old fashioned "earn it yourself" gameplay that doesn't involve playing with pixel stocks (playing the AH) but actually doing the content yourself.

I wouldnt be so quick as to point out that era as earn it yourself Tbh. Majority of games were stupidly hard for no other reason than being Arcade ports. Basically games built on the concept of "You died, cough up whatever the arcade demands." type of money drain to funnel from the players.

[potis]

How so? I keep reading that buying boosts is ok with gold. Or do you mean actual money?

Even if its real money, I don´t even see how could they possibly track that down. I guess you can be unlucky.

----------------

I don´t think boosts are a big problem now a days tbh. Not when you have something as M+ giving the highest gear equipment... something that should only come from raid fights. I find that far worse.

If you fix that, you will also fix boosts all together.

Its not luck, when reports poor in, they randomly check some things, all it takes is a chat line to get you incarcerated.

I know many cases where people got banned for 1-2 months for being in a group with a RTM booster, because 1 person was being paid $ and the other 3 didnt know about it and they were simply given some gold for their trouble as always.

They do check, but they do a half assed job there also, just banning everyone in the group.

Or, there are opposite cases, where someone told someone else they paid to get boosted, and they reported that person, they checked who did the boosting, and thats how you get found out usually.

[Jamais]

The game is in a bad spot. I know it. You know it. Everybody playing SL right now knows it.

Did you write this because some posters here label you as a shill and blizz defender, just so you appear more neutral? Because you don't need to do that, your posts are quite realistic and objective.

I have been called a shill several times even tho I've quit WoW 3 times for a longer period of time due to design decisions, and it was in Cata, WoD and Legion. Always politely wrote in feedback after unsub what I thought was wrong, and moved on with my life. And funny thing is, I've always viewed Blizz as what it is - a company, not my friend. My passion is WoW, not Blizzard.

After I quit, I didn't go on a forum rampage telling everyone else how the game is bad and they should feel bad for still playing it, like many posters here do.

For some reason, I've decided to post here today, after abstaining from these forums for a few months, since almost nothing of value is it be found here.

I suggest you try and do the same, this negativity can really get to you.

[Raelbo]

The WoW token makes boosting exponentially worse because it adds an officially endorsed avenue for people to pay real money for gold, which in turn gets them boosted, gear, or whatever they want to buy.

I disagree.

First off, there is zero evidence indicating what percentage of boosting is paid for by token gold. Secondly, how people pay for something has very little to do with why they are doing it.

Tokens may give some players the ability to buy boosts, but they aren't what drive the practice. As long as you have people wanting to be boosted and people wanting to boost, there will be boosting. This is part and parcel of being an MMO.

Tokens are simply a convenient scapegoat in a typical anti-Blizzard narrative, but they really do contribute very little to this alleged "problem" (if you can even call it that) of boosting.

[Clozer]

But in reality it's part of it.

All this wall of text to come to the same conclusion. Boosting decreases the value of those things.

[Raelbo]

All this wall of text to come to the same conclusion. Boosting decreases the value of those things.

If you can't even correctly comprehend a basic argument which someone took the effort to structure in a clear, logical and concise structure, it's no wonder you make such silly arguments to start out with.

And I shudder to think about your ability to tackle anything if you're struggling to get through my "wall of text".

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Blizzard likes to talk about prestige within the game. It's mostly BS. Prestige is overrated and has little value unless one is streaming to a YouTube audience. There are a lot of reasons for this. The main one is that no one outside of a very small circle of friends or not-quite-strangers knows much about other player accomplishments and they care even less. Most characters are 100% anonymous and 'prestige' doesn't apply. It's a hit to the ego for a lot of people but it's true. The days of standing around a city and gawking at players' raid gear and mostly over and have been for years. Hero worship among players is not a thing unless one has a popular YouTube channel.

Oh I totally agree. However there are some people resident here on MMO-C who seem to think it's important, so that is why I addressed it.

To me the best reward is the self-knowledge that X or Y was accomplished in a fair way (which is why I don't participate in the boost economy at all). Most people apparently don't care much about that either. I think that's OK. Everyone is entitled to value what they get from the game in their own way.

Again, totally agree. If anything, simply knowing that many other players need to rely on a boost to get through things I managed to achieve on my own merits only makes me feel better about those accomplishments.

[Cthulhu 2020]

To all of those who claim that boosting is a very tiny percentage, let me ask you one thing:

Do you think the boosting spam in trade chat means that there's more boosters, more demand for boosting, both, or neither?

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I can't think of a single valuable thing his videos which explore engagement in SL via Blizzard's APIs have brought to the discussion table. The game is in a bad spot. I know it. You know it. Everybody playing SL right now knows it. We don't need a new video every other week to confirm it. If he cared about the state of the game more than clicks he wouldn't keep making the same fucking video.

This video is probably one of the better ones. As I said, you just haven't been watching enough of them. That and the ones you do miss, you seem to hyper focus on only the negatives and the positives simply go over your head.

Even a fraction of the changes in the video above would make the game better.

But I'm getting to the point personally where I'm so jaded that I do not foresee Blizzard improving WoW any longer. It seems their business model is honing in strictly on the whales and the hardcore players that service the whales. WoW subscriber numbers are down the shitter, engagement in WoW is down, but profits are up??? How does that happen? An increase in store sales or an increase in token sales, or both. As far as I'm concerned, Blizzard are going to continue to follow the money.

[Sansnom]

It's really no better than mobile games these days, pay-up to be able to compete, how low the mighty have fallen, greed knows no bounds...

I have not played any mobile games so cannot really compare. But with boosting, you need others people who have already cleared the content and are sufficient enough in their ability that they can carry one passenger and not be affected by it.

So the idea of pay-up to be able to compete doesn't have the same ring to it. In reality, the team is being handicapped. So can one really say the "passenger" is really able to compete in such a scenario?