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

[Log Cabin]

They did. And then the gold sellers would do shit like this:



As has been mentioned, repeatedly, it's the buyers who are the problem. The market for gold buying will exist even if Blizzard somehow achieved 100% removal of all gold selling spam.

I find that less annoying then trade spam to be honest,

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They didn't "join them," though. The token has always been between players and doesn't introduce any new gold to the economy.

I suspect it actually introduces a absurd amount of gold into the economy though in a round about way. Those hundreds of bots you see in low dungeons (still mostly tbc ones and I admit I am unsure why... I think vendor value?) Tell their items to buy and sell tokens as well as selling blizzard game keys as third parties via the gift system.

I don't believe they add as much gold as the WoD garrison for a benchmark but it likely is at least comparable.

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The anti-booster logic is this: Boosts are expensive for most players. Tokens can cover those expenses. There is a constant stream of spammy boosting ads in chat channels in-game. Therefore: Everyone is buying tokens and boosting is out of control.

I don't know the numbers but I doubt that that last step is true. But it's the only conclusion you can come to if the agenda reads "Boosting is killing the game."

As I said a few posts ago, I doubt that all that many people have an opinion about boosting per se but would be happy if the spam stopped. If it did I imagine this topic would also die away in a short amount of time. People are reacting to what they see and coming to not-quite-logical conclusions about everything they can't see. In any case, boosting isn't against the rules.

A pretty fair amount of people boost. I am a part of a few discord servers and have an extremely high raider and pvp raiding so outside of level boosting I have access to each post looking for carries. This is only for NA I have no information on EU

The most popular big communities get roughly 2-3 thousand boost requests a week for pve content. With smaller ones like getting 300-500 though the prices remain more or less identical.

PvP boosting is almost always a 1 on 1 negotiation with a whale and prices range wildly the only streamlined version of pvp boosting is 1800.

I would hazard an educated guess that roughly five thousands boosts are bought every week in wow with the most popular run being bought a mythic 14. Most people buying boosts are BR players and without going through more then a hundred orders it looks to be roughly at a 2/3 breakdown between them and na players.

How many of those are token sales is something that I can only speculate on but given the condition of the characters being boosted alongside them almost uniformly having no time invested in the character I would hazard a guess the vast lionshare buys tokens.

With all that said if it was pushed underground by blizzard and hidden away I doubt anyone would care all that much. The issue is its in everyone's face constantly.

[Ethas]

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.

So much this. There is nothing wrong in gdkp runs. In fact they are perfect way for people to gear up if they don’t have a guild or cba to create resume for a game just to join a bunch of loosers. I’m surprised they died out.

[Sorrowseer]

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.

I am sure these top execs who get stupid salaries really need jimmies pocket money for a boost... so evil... fml

[Zyky]

Why do people think that this "point" means anything?

It doesn't matter where it came from, if I am able to buy gold with irl money than the games economy is fkd up. Full stop.

The gold comes from somewhere, it's not magically appearing. The amount of gold you can buy may SEEM limitless, but in fact it is not.

[MrTarget]

People like you aren't the problem. The problem is that there are people that want stuff that they are unable to achieve themselves and are willing to pay for it.

So... What? So what?

Isn't that kind of how everything works? And again, why does it matter to you what someone else does with their money? How does it actually affect you on any real level?

[Chakah]

The anti-booster logic is this: Boosts are expensive for most players. Tokens can cover those expenses. There is a constant stream of spammy boosting ads in chat channels in-game. Therefore: Everyone is buying tokens and boosting is out of control.

I don't know the numbers but I doubt that that last step is true. But it's the only conclusion you can come to if the agenda reads "Boosting is killing the game."

As I said a few posts ago, I doubt that all that many people have an opinion about boosting per se but would be happy if the spam stopped. If it did I imagine this topic would also die away in a short amount of time. People are reacting to what they see and coming to not-quite-logical conclusions about everything they can't see. In any case, boosting isn't against the rules.

I think you are mixing the anti-token and anti-booster positions. They are distinct.
I hate boosting per se. It corrupts the game for everyone. It was a bad thing before tokens and it is worse after.
I don't hang out in cities all that much, but I moved trade chat to it own tab - poof, spam is gone
I have LFG addons that hide/remove almost all of the WTS posts, so I don't really care about that either.

What I care about is that people find that matchmaking is harder due to people having ilvls greatly disproportionate to their skill level.
What I care about is that raiding is harder because boosting is removing some of the incentive to form a more long-lasting community.
What I care about is my "accomplishments" being watered-down by people who "cheated" their way past the effort normally required.

Boosting didn't used to be social acceptable - and it still shouldn't be. Blizzards now infamous policy announcement of allowing 'gold-only' advertising wasn't the start of the slippery slope, but it sure did reduce the friction.

/hraumph

[MoanaLisa]

I think you are mixing the anti-token and anti-booster positions. They are distinct.
/hraumph

Just about every argument against boosting has listed out the evils of the token. They are separate but not that distinct.

[Raelbo]

You have no clue how new gold is generated in the game, do you? Because if you did, you would never make such an ignorant assertion.

Since when was the ability to acquire gold in-game contingent on generating new gold?

Besides which, the fact that the gold you obtain via token is paid for by other players pretty much dictates that said players have a large amount of gold relative to the token value anyway.

[Xath]

Accessibility was wildly different and it was against TOS not to mention

It was never against ToS to boost for gold EVER. What was that had a blind eye turned to it until the token was rmt boosting.

[Redshirtz]

Gold-selling is bad. Boosting is bad.

Wait. There is money to be made. Lets add tokens and make boosting okay with it.

Good.

[Deneios]

The gold comes from somewhere, it's not magically appearing. The amount of gold you can buy may SEEM limitless, but in fact it is not.

Yes the gold that bots havent been able to sell to customers or accounts that are compromised can be laundered through tokens to gift codes to be sold on G2A or kinguin. I wouldnt be suprised if gold sellers have huge stocks of gold left from WoD days.

This means the gold inflation is bigger problem and wow needs a gold reset or bigger gold decay. Now the gold sinks are the stupid expensive mounts and BMAH and hardly any casual or "normal" player is going to touch those.
Token was suposed to be the gold normalizer. But its ineffective because the base pool of gold in the market is too big along with the inflow compared to outflow.

[tomten]

I have yet to understand if the problem is the constant spamming or the boost concept itself or else.

I never cared about ads for example, for me it’s annoying because there are chances that a boosted can run my runs.

I couldn't care less how other spend their time in the game. If they want to buy something? Let them, that in itself doesn't affect my play time...
The constant spam is extremely annoying and is ruining whole aspects of the game... It also makes me hate both boosters and boostee and the whole boosting community and anything related to it... That can't go on...
If you know how to use rio, you will never get someone boosted and if you still do, its a you problem.

[Xath]

You are arguing my point for me lol. RMT ruined it all which is boldened greatly by the token and blizz balance.

? the token made it so that blizzard cracked down hard on rmt multiple top world guilds have gotten six month bans since the token was implemented previously they didn't care

[T-34]

So... What? So what?

Isn't that kind of how everything works? And again, why does it matter to you what someone else does with their money? How does it actually affect you on any real level?

I guess I didn't express myself clearly enough: I don't care much about boosting either way. Or rather I find people that buy a boost pathetic losers, but I can just ignore them, so it doesn't really affect me.

What I was trying to get across is that if someone wants to combat boosting in-game then the way to go is to name, shame and ostracize those that get boosted.

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It was never against ToS to boost for gold EVER. What was that had a blind eye turned to it until the token was rmt boosting.

There was no "blind eye turned to it" at any time. It has always been allowed in WoW to provide services/goods of any kind as long as the payment is done with either in-game gold/goods or services.
And that goes for any game that is multi-player.
Even the much beloved totalitarian state-simulator, FFXIV, clearly allows boosting for in-game goods/gold/services.

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Gold-selling is bad. Boosting is bad.

Wait. There is money to be made. Lets add tokens and make boosting okay with it.

Good.

Blizzard has never considered boosting "bad". It has always been allowed.
What Blizzard hasn't and still doesn't want to get involved in if there is a dispute between buyer and seller.
Don't spread untruths.

[Xath]

I guess I didn't express myself clearly enough: I don't care much about boosting either way. Or rather I find people that buy a boost pathetic losers, but I can just ignore them, so it doesn't really affect me.

What I was trying to get across is that if someone wants to combat boosting in-game then the way to go is to name, shame and ostracize those that get boosted.

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There was no "blind eye turned to it" at any time. It has always been allowed in WoW to provide services/goods of any kind as long as the payment is done with either in-game gold/goods or services.
And that goes for any game that is multi-player.
Even the much beloved totalitarian state-simulator, FFXIV, clearly allows boosting for in-game goods/gold/services.

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Blizzard has never considered boosting "bad". It has always been allowed.
What Blizzard hasn't and still doesn't want to get involved in if there is a dispute between buyer and seller.
Don't spread untruths.

The blind eye I'm talking about was to RMT basically every top 20 guild in the world was doing RMT boosting until the token was added and then blizz started cracking down hard on non gold boosts.

[Merie]

Token price is controlled by players, not Blizzard. The price of the token is directly proportional to the demand for it.

Yep. When the gold price of the token quadrupled right after Blizzard announced they were going to allow the token to be used not just for sub time, but for anything, the timing was probably just coincidental. It's not like Blizzard's policy changes actually does anything to ever shift the trajectory or perceived value of the market or anything.

[Mitak]

I think this about the principle.

Back in the day before the Btoken, people were also boosting, but they had to either earn their gold or buy it via 3p websites, which was against TOS so you risked a ban. It was much less common and most people used hard earned money to get a boost, which is within the game RPG element if you will. The game still stayed a believable game, the magic was still there.

Its a bad look today as the CEO advertises boosts while at the same time Blizard sell you the means to buy them. This is like a local government that used to forbid gambling but now allows it because they run the casino.
This just ruins the thin "RPG" magic veil and more players see the bare bones mechanics where anyone with cash can become from 0 to mythic geared hero in no time or effort. There is no fear of ban anymore, you are free to "progress" with your cash.

That as well as other such changes erode the playerbase. The more it erodes, the more the devs will be pushed to sell more to the current base in order to balance profits. In short preditory tactics, even subtle, lead to thinning of the playerbase, which leads to more predatory tactics to milk whatever is left, the modern lifecycle of online games.

[chiddie]

I couldn't care less how other spend their time in the game. If they want to buy something? Let them, that in itself doesn't affect my play time...
The constant spam is extremely annoying and is ruining whole aspects of the game... It also makes me hate both boosters and boostee and the whole boosting community and anything related to it... That can't go on...
If you know how to use rio, you will never get someone boosted and if you still do, its a you problem.

Knowing how to use rio is quite useless when 9 runs on ten you do are others’ keys

[tomten]

Knowing how to use rio is quite useless when 9 runs on ten you do are others’ keys

Ohh, you dont make your own runs? Then you have no right to complain. Even then, you can still join, browse people, get a general feel and leave if you dont like it.
9 out 10 runs I do, is my own and my own key. Never have issues. Only when i ignore it and gamble on people because its middle of the night have I had couple of issues but even then, rare.

[chiddie]

Ohh, you dont make your own runs? Then you have no right to complain. Even then, you can still join, browse people, get a general feel and leave if you dont like it.
9 out 10 runs I do, is my own and my own key. Never have issues. Only when i ignore it and gamble on people because its middle of the night have I had couple of issues but even then, rare.

I ran (yes, ran, stopped playing in May, was tired to run the M+ wheel) others’ keys basically because you can’t choose the dungeon you wanna try and because having to check manually every single applicant is a job in the job.

I have enough of my normal job, if it’s not “boom I’m in” it’s not for me. That’s also why basically in games I hate everything that needs other people involvement to be completed.

Just resubbed, will probably unsub again in January when I’ll realize how insane the Korhia grind will have to be in order to get decent gear.