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

[User517849]

No you didn't.

- - - Updated - - -



Wrong.

Using real money to purchase in-game currency is the definition of P2W.

I explicitly mentioned how you could use real money to not purchase in game currency but still benefit by having more money such as more accounts, etc.

- - - Updated - - -

I think the issue here is that, and that's just speculation on my part, that could come across as endorsement of boosting by Blizzard.

While people generally talk about how Blizzard makes money from boosting, the flipside is that quite likely a lot of those boosting companies are neckdeep in RMT.
After all, those boosting companies take a sizeable cut for organizing that shit and i doubt they're just doing it to play WoW for free or buy stuff on the BMAH.

The endgame is basically that people:
-Buy Gold off some RMT site
-Purchase a boost at some boosting community
-boosting company sells the gold to RMT site
-Person buys gold again to buy another boost

When you talk about millions of gold per run from a single person, that's no longer financed by the WoW Token, you save hundreds of dollars by going off to RMT websites as far as larger sums are concerned, disregarding the cap on purchasing Tokens (altough you can bypass by owning multiple accounts, afaik).
However, don't take that as a hint that the WoW Token doesn't fuel the market, especially the lower priced Heroic and M+ are certainly heavily fueled by the WoW Token and also helped to grow to such an industrious scale.
And it also wouldn't surprise if some whales exist that use multiple WoW accounts to partially bypass the WoW token cap.

By doing nothing about the advertising, they already endorse it.

[Asrialol]

If you use the argument against boosting that a lot of people in this thread are using it's doubly ironic when you consider the WoW token literally buys you a subscription. The game is simultaneously bleeding subs and retaining subs thanks to the same feature!

Since Blizzard gets more money if people buy their sub with gold, I don't see why that is a bad thing for them.

[korijenkins]

Why would anyone care about boosting, so long as it isn't for real money?

Yes, you can buy in-game gold for real money, and I agree that is a problem, but I believe it should be examined separately from what people may choose to do with that gold.

That's literally the exact problem. Gold earning has been fucking hammered over and over again to get people to buy tokens for whatever they need.

[OrangeJuice]

I legitimately don't have an issue with boosting on its own. The issue I have is how rampant it is due to the inclusion of the WoW token; Players are essentially back and forth trading gold and WoW tokens between boosters and boostees at this point.

I have no issue with someone farming herbs for a month straight in order to earn their mythic kill grey parse; I have an issue that I could create a new account today and get the gold to do it a few hours later (with Blizzard's consent). Gold making has never seemed so meaningless.

Boosting will always exist, regardless of if it's permitted; But right now it's border-line encouraged by Blizzard.

I'd say its not borderline its definitively encouraged by Blizzard, since they've created tiered gear ilvls and the literal president advertises for them on his stream. Plus the fact 75% of LFG is still "WTS" despite having authenticated accounts that should be easy to ban, since the argument that they're "compromised accounts" is no longer true.

I don't see a single positive in boosting but at least a dozen negatives.

[Zelk]

That's literally the exact problem. Gold earning has been fucking hammered over and over again to get people to buy tokens for whatever they need.

Where's the gold coming from then?

[Relapses]

I don't see a single positive in boosting but at least a dozen negatives.

Removing boosting doesn't solve any of the negatives. It doesn't even remove boosting since players will still boost, they just won't call it boosting anymore.

[OrangeJuice]

Removing boosting doesn't solve any of the negatives. It doesn't even remove boosting since players will still boost, they just won't call it boosting anymore.

I didn't even list the negatives so how can you say that? All of the negatives I am thinking about are directly caused by boosting, so banning boosters/boosting would most definitely eliminate every negative that was caused by it. I'm confused why you'd choose to say this.

[Relapses]

I didn't even list the negatives so how can you say that? All of the negatives I am thinking about are directly caused by boosting, so banning boosters/boosting would most definitely eliminate every negative that was caused by it. I'm confused why you'd choose to say this.

Because it's proof that you're living in an alternate reality if you (or anybody else) think the idea of removing boosting would come close to fixing any of WoW's many problems.

[draugril]

Why would anyone care about boosting, so long as it isn't for real money?

Yes, you can buy in-game gold for real money, and I agree that is a problem, but I believe it should be examined separately from what people may choose to do with that gold.

Why would it be a problem if you are separating it from what people do with the gold?

[OrangeJuice]

Because it's proof that you're living in an alternate reality if you (or anybody else) think the idea of removing boosting would come close to fixing any of WoW's many problems.

But I didn't give even 1 example. You just said it wouldn't help any of them, without even knowing what 1 issue is let alone the entire dozen that I have just off the top of my head. And now you're shifting the focus away from the issues Boosting creates, to WoW's overall problems which is an entirely different discussion. Theres never been a more clearly defined example of you not knowing what you're talking about, so if anyone is living in an alternate reality its you pal.

[Cthulhu 2020]

I have known many people who have quit WoW over the years, and never has "disgust with boosting spam" been a factor. I am not going to argue that such players don't exist, but I doubt they're particularly prevalent.

Boosting has grown recently, and most people are just sick with the game. The integrity of raiding and raid gear going down the shitter has certainly been one factor for many people I've known. It's not been the cornerstone, nor has it been the straw that broke the camel, but it's a weight against WoW for them all the same

What accomplishments exactly? Bear in mind that when someone buys a boost they are getting other players to carry them through content. It's not the credit card that defeats the boss. It's those players that defeat the boss.

Furthermore, the vast majority of players who get "carried" through content aren't even using their credit card to do so.

"The credit card didn't kill the boss, the player did!"

I...

Just wow.

I don't really know how to respond to this other than I can't believe you ACTUALLY said something like this. Yes, of course, the credit card doesn't do the carrying. But the player's corpse gets dragged across the finish line by everyone else in the raid.

You also underestimate how many under table deals happen in the boosting community. Plenty of guilds just straight up accept paypal, and when a carry happens the player hands over a token amount of gold which is later traded back just so they can hide among all the other gold buyers.

Furthermore, credit card -> WoW token -> gold still ultimately counts as credit card.

Most people don't give a shit about boosting. It exists, they know it exists, and it simply doesn't affect them either way. This fixation on how boosting is hurting this game's integrity is a minority opinion, the importance of which tends to be exaggerated by it's proponents.

Sure, the few remaining players in the game I imagine have no issue with boosting, WoW token, bad design, sexual harassment, or anything else. So you're right on that count. There are people who still play Runescape, and 20 years from now there will still be people playing WoW.

Firstly, just because you can buy other stuff with the token doesn't preclude its use as a means of paying one's subscription. Secondly, no one said that the token was "the one thing saving WoW".

The poster I was responding to was trying to find some weird ass hypocrisy or maybe lack of consistent logic between the two statements that the WoW token is both simultaneously driving people away but was also super popular and bought a ton so that must mean that there are tons of people subbing through WoW token! Except for the fact that, ya know, a lot of that WoW token business goes into the store.

- - - Updated - - -

Removing boosting doesn't solve any of the negatives. It doesn't even remove boosting since players will still boost, they just won't call it boosting anymore.

Yep, and we should make theft legal too, because making it illegal won't stop people from doing it.

[Relapses]

Yep, and we should make theft legal too, because making it illegal won't stop people from doing it.

Boosting is not equivalent to theft. This is not an argument.

[Coldkil]

Removing boosting doesn't solve any of the negatives. It doesn't even remove boosting since players will still boost, they just won't call it boosting anymore.

That's basically the issue. I am against boosting because it simply promotes a way to play the game where you don't really have to play it, just pay someone to do it for you. Makes the average player worse and the actual interaction between player worse.

However it's just impossibile to remove it. Players are just hardwired to go the path of least resistance. What was cookie cutter builds became meta and now has become boosts.

EDIT: in an ideal world boosting won't exist, but reality is another thing.

EDIT2: the only real way to make boosting disappear is to make it just useless. Either content is so easy that you don't need people fight for you, or not give any power related reward etc. Basically, drastic changes in the endgame reward loop that we're never going to see.

[Loveliest]

Why would anyone care about boosting, so long as it isn't for real money?

Yes, you can buy in-game gold for real money, and I agree that is a problem, but I believe it should be examined separately from what people may choose to do with that gold.

Because it changes the dynamics and purpose of the entire game. Instead of ppl doing (to play / have fun), ppl just buy (to have). The more popular boosting is, the less ppl try to actually play and form communities.

Boosting also becomes the core purpose of big guilds. A job. Making money. Not playing. This in turn means that the boosting guilds will try to make it easier for themselves in the long run. Anything RNG will be condemned. Anything implying any type of grind will be condemned. Any type of bonus that would actually help lower progression guilds (like titanforging) will be condemned. And this all sounds great, right? But that only makes it so big guilds can be done as fast as possible so they can get to boosting. In turn, others will have less incentive to stick around. They might also hit a wall in their own progression because there are less nerfing mechanics based on time and luck. I mean an average group that never does mythic raiding and is around 235 ilvl can kill KT hc easily but can't touch Sylvanas hc. But it's fine, because you can buy a Sylvanas kill for the equivalent of 5$...

[OrangeJuice]

Now that Blizzard is profiting off of boosting, they have an incentive to create more or "better" boost-friendly content? Seems pretty obvious to me.

obvious to me too. It just means more systems that are tedious but simple enough to afk in a group for. More tiered content. More grinds. A bigger focus on crafting with inflated AH prices on matts. ETC ETC. I can see it coming already in 9.2

[ResentfulUK]

Boosting has - and always will - exist. The only difference is now the majority of the gold being used is at least generating Blizzard some money.

Doesn't mean it's not bots, stolen card details and such that still cause havoc but boosting isn't going to go away unless you make it against the rules which is just stupid.

While everyone here loves to just moan and whine, what are the solutions you could employ that keep "legitimate" boosting from the community while still hampering / preventing gold making enterprises that siphon off the gold to sell.

[Relapses]

But I didn't give even 1 example. You just said it wouldn't help any of them, without even knowing what 1 issue is let alone the entire dozen that I have just off the top of my head. And now you're shifting the focus away from the issues Boosting creates, to WoW's overall problems which is an entirely different discussion. Theres never been a more clearly defined example of you not knowing what you're talking about, so if anyone is living in an alternate reality its you pal.

I don't need to know any of the issues you have with removing boosting because removing boosting isn't a valid stance to have.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Boosting is not equivalent to theft. This is not an argument.

You're right, it's not equivalent. And I was not trying to equate boosting to theft.

It's a demonstration of how "We shouldn't make something against the rules because people will do it anyway" is a bad argument no matter what it applies to. Yes, people will do things if it's against the rules anyway. But it will still deter most people.

And nobody has really convinced me that boosting is GOOD for an MMO, especially when the main (and pretty much only) draw to WoW is its raid progression.

[Relapses]

EDIT2: the only real way to make boosting disappear is to make it just useless. Either content is so easy that you don't need people fight for you, or not give any power related reward etc. Basically, drastic changes in the endgame reward loop that we're never going to see.

If you go back a few pages, this was already discussed. Apparently the valid cure for boosting is to give everybody full Mythic BiS as a reward for typing in your username and password. And Mythic raiders will apparently be perfectly okay if the only thing they get for completing the hardest difficulty content in the game is a cool transmog. As somebody who remembers CModes and how completely ineffective they were as a motivating factor for people who play this game I guess I'm in the minority for calling this a very, very bad idea.

[Cthulhu 2020]

I don't need to know any of the issues you have with removing boosting because removing boosting isn't a valid stance to have.

"Your feelings aren't valid" Man for someone who is incredibly sarcastic about others trying invalidating the feelings of others, you sure are a... what's what H word? Hypocrite?

Blizzard COULD police it.

Also one of the main issues I'm hearing from people coming over to FF, there's an extremely common theme among a lot of them. They'd raid in normal and heroic for a bit, then several of their members would buy mythic carries and not come to raid any more. Most raid groups already have a hard time fielding enough to fill out a raid. The people who boost get their mythic clear and mythic loot. The rest of the people try to recruit until they give up. Some dump back into the cycle of looking for raids. Some just get sick of this and leave. This is not THE reason they quit, but it's one of the things that added to their frustrations. Finding consistent raiding groups in WoW is nigh impossible for many these days.

But yes, please tell me more how their feelings aren't valid. SarcasticWillyWonka.jpg