STOP making the game for the top 0.01% of the players! It’s killing this game

[Loveliest]

That's a random thought which is wholly improvable.

The community killed the quality of the community. If the token didn't exist, there'd still be just as much boosting... you'd just have to contend with a lot more Chinese gold selling spam on top of everything else.

Pretty sure ppl would not have bought as many boosts if they had to do it illegally. It was very tempting for example to go buy a hc Sylvanas boost on TN EU for 50k gold (yes, that cheap) instead of bothering with progress with your guild. When you have everything right in front of you and there are NO downsides, not even potential ones, no risks, why not do it. Buying illegally would be a risk and at least some would be deterred.
And tbh when blizz introduced that they also started designing limited time rewards for raids that you wouldn't be able to farm later even with 1% drop chance. So you feel tempted to do it just for that. Started with Garrosh heirlooms (that was the big boom) and continued with mounts for end hc raid. After Garrosh, ppl were selling boosts for everything, remember how ppl were buying boosts for just doing a CM even untimed for that one piece of loot in wod?

[crusadernero]

I agree with you. The constant escalation of difficulty has made me skip even LFR outside of one run to clear the "kill the end boss" quest. LFR is just too much of a slog to waste my time with now.

Same here. I do LFR once to complete the story quest and never enter it again. I'd rather skip raiding an entire tier than clear LFR regularly.

[Celement]

Not really. If anything, getting mythic ilvl is pretty easy via m+ and now we have all sorts of ways to bypass raiding. To me it seems people actually want to keep others away from loot because they don't do the same things in game.

I mean, i fully agree that reaching high skill levels and beating the hardest challenges needs to be rewarding, but ilvl is something that's completely broken and irrelevant right now as an indicator of the objectives someone has reached. Just check PvP gear for DF - when you buy it it's automatically max ilvl because it simply doesn't make sense to be otherwise.

To me this kind of players are the first very willingly to ditch any kind of group activity if max ilvl gear was rewarded from WQs for example. And if gear power is actually taken out of the equation, suddendly your ability to beat content is completely dependant on personal skills. Which will make a lot of people unable to beat ceratin encounters.

WoW need to fundamentally change from it's current model for that to work. I know a 15 is roughly on par with a heroic raiding and vastly over rewarding for its difficulty but there are still layers of difficulty in the game.

There is a reason why 11-14 keys are such a miserable experience and the ease of gearing plays into that.

[Vitinariy]

There is a reason why 11-14 keys are such a miserable experience and the ease of gearing plays into that.

Yes - bad players are the reason, but there's no game in the world that can eliminate bad players. Or, better say, there's no game that would want to do that, because they still need money from said players.

[Celement]

LFR exists to justify the time and resources devoted to creating raid content. That's it. The bean counters basically told Blizzard to find a way to get more players engaging with raid content or else to cut back on it in favor of content that more players engage with. It's all about numbers.

And in WoD when Blizzard tried to nix the tier gear from LFR, and participation in it tanked, they did a quick about face and put tier back in.

So long as X amount of people engage with LFR, the bean counters will be happy. If LFR dies, so does raid content as a whole.

I mean its already dead... tier lured in raiders for a few weeks but the place was abandoned quick.

- - - Updated - - -

Yes - bad players are the reason, but there's no game in the world that can eliminate bad players. Or, better say, there's no game that would want to do that, because they still need money from said players.

True but if we are to get rid of gear progression we really need to have a two tier difficulty system. One for narrative and one for progression play.

[Ashana Darkmoon]

I agree with you. The constant escalation of difficulty has made me skip even LFR outside of one run to clear the "kill the end boss" quest. LFR is just too much of a slog to waste my time with now.

Biggest issue with LFR is that after a few weeks it's either all pretty weak players or someone's 4th alt. Early on in this tier, it was actually really fast (especially on Tuesdays) because better players had a reason to do it.

I recall back in WoD when they added valor and only let it drop from LFR and mythic dungeons (to coerce better players to do it). I hated it at the time as a raider but it surely made the experience better for people who enjoy LFR.

Hard to find a solution to this. This tier seemed like the best but you can't really ask players to do it forever.

[Coldkil]

Ya I think ppl quitting after 1 month anyway is a dif convo. I was just talking about the balance of activities. I know the 3-4 months gearing cycle works for me personally as an m+ player and was curious why it's not a similar cycle for casuals too

Yes and no. For sure people leaving is due to multiple factors. But one of them is the fact that in the last expansion the whole focus of the game was to keep people online via mandatory chores, that weren't fun but you had to do to stay on par.

It's fun that a 3/4 months cycle is fine for you - m+ is the least timegated content wow has, you can literally spam them as much as you like and pugging is very easy (in terms of accessibility, not success). I would be fine with a 3/4 months cycle of atvthe emd of it given enough commitement fron players you could get to ilvl cap whatver content you did, even world quests.

And yes. Content is really umbalanced in terms of rewards. World content is unrewarding, casual content is neglected, m+ give much better rewards for easier content compared to raids (both quality and quantity). Reason why i'm in favour of a ilvl cap at 15s/hc woth world content catching up to that later during the tier (maybe when the .5 hits).

That would make also obsolete stupid catchup systems that need to be implemented evey patch because people have no way to get there without them.

My wet dream would be to have mythic raids work like the mage tower. Always scale you down, and it's always a challenge. If people can't farm them the expansion after, is not a problem - make those reward count.

[Relapses]

Pretty sure ppl would not have bought as many boosts if they had to do it illegally. It was very tempting for example to go buy a hc Sylvanas boost on TN EU for 50k gold (yes, that cheap) instead of bothering with progress with your guild. When you have everything right in front of you and there are NO downsides, not even potential ones, no risks, why not do it. Buying illegally would be a risk and at least some would be deterred.
And tbh when blizz introduced that they also started designing limited time rewards for raids that you wouldn't be able to farm later even with 1% drop chance. So you feel tempted to do it just for that. Started with Garrosh heirlooms (that was the big boom) and continued with mounts for end hc raid. After Garrosh, ppl were selling boosts for everything, remember how ppl were buying boosts for just doing a CM even untimed for that one piece of loot in wod?

Again, this whole argument hinges on this presumption that boosts are only ever paid for by people who buy tokens (or previously bought Chinese gold). It completely bypasses the very real fact that new gold is generated all the time and there are various ways for players to generate their own wealth. I won't deny it happens but I'm disinclined to believe the commonly presented argument that the token alone is what has caused boosting in this game to become as prevalent as it is.

[Gorsameth]

Again, this whole argument hinges on this presumption that boosts are only ever paid for by people who buy tokens (or previously bought Chinese gold). It completely bypasses the very real fact that new gold is generated all the time and there are various ways for players to generate their own wealth. I won't deny it happens but I'm disinclined to believe the commonly presented argument that the token alone is what has caused boosting in this game to become as prevalent as it is.

I highly doubt that the people that boost who earn their own gold is enough to sustain the boosting 'industry'.
I've played with to many people who had trouble paying for even just their repair bills for me to believe that.

Those who are 'wealthy' in WoW are a tiny tiny minority.

[Deadite]

Again, this whole argument hinges on this presumption that boosts are only ever paid for by people who buy tokens (or previously bought Chinese gold).

That part there is why i think your reasoning is suspect. Your average Joe player would never be stupid enough to risk their account by buying from some dodgey gold seller site imho. They can buy all the gold they want from Blizzard in total saftey and legally. No risk with a click of a button.

[arkanon]

That part there is why i think your reasoning is suspect. Your average Joe player would never be stupid enough to risk their account by buying from some dodgey gold seller site imho. They can buy all the gold they want from Blizzard in total saftey and legally. No risk with a click of a button.

From other players, not blizzard.

[Relapses]

Those who are 'wealthy' in WoW are a tiny tiny minority.

And those who consistently buy boosts are a tiny minority, too. People just see a bunch of advertising for it and assume that "everybody" must be doing it.

[Echo of Soul]

From other players, not blizzard.

No Blizzard buy gold off players and then sell it to other players for more than they bought it for.

It's like buying milk from the store. If the store didn't buy the milk from the farmer you would have a real hard time buying that milk.

I'm the end it doesn't matter. You can buy gold directly from the Blizzard store for real money and then buy boosts which makes WoW one of the most P2W games on the market.

[Kyriani]

The only time I buy a boost is when there's a mount I want from one of Blizzard's stupid FOMO BS drops from a final raid boss that gets removed when the next expansion launches. Because of the limited time nature of such mounts, if I like the look of it, and I can't get it with my guild (it's not always possible for me to tag along in a raid when there's real raiders who wanna raid), then I'll pony up some gold to get a quick kill for it.

I have about 16 lvl 60's at the moment and make roughly 600,000 gold a month doing nothing but mission table gold missions, the weekly anima reservoir quest, and callings on my main at the very least. Occasionally I do callings on alts if it's quick and convenient to do so and I pick up the odd paragon chest as reps tick over. I spend about 150-200k a month on game time depending on token prices, though I try to buy several tokens when the price is low. I have never spent real money to buy a token to sell for gold. It has simply never been necessary.

Any gold I spend in game is almost always for transmog. I don't piss it away on high ilvl boe raid drops that become irrelevant with the next patch/xpac (unless it has an appearance I really like >_>). At the end of the day, I have a lot more gold coming in than I have going out, so I tend to accumulate gold that I sit on until such time as there's something I need/want to spend it on, which tends to be rare.

[Relapses]

No Blizzard buy gold off players and then sell it to other players for more than they bought it for.

It's like buying milk from the store. If the store didn't buy the milk from the farmer you would have a real hard time buying that milk.

I'm the end it doesn't matter. You can buy gold directly from the Blizzard store for real money and then buy boosts which makes WoW one of the most P2W games on the market.

Psst... the gold the token provides you comes from players. Blizzard doesn't generate any gold through the transaction. Other people are essentially paying Blizzard a $5 premium on their sub for the service of getting it paid for via in-game currency.

[Echo of Soul]

Psst... the gold the token provides you comes from players. Blizzard doesn't generate any gold through the transaction. Other people are essentially paying Blizzard a $5 premium on their sub for the service of getting it paid for via in-game currency.

You can buy gold with real money directly from the store, end of story. Where it comes from, how it's made, completely irrelevant.

[VMSmith]

You can buy gold with real money directly from the store, end of story. Where it comes from, how it's made, completely irrelevant.

One way to look at it is that people pay gold to Blizzard for something of monetary value, and Blizzard has paid people that gold for their actual money. The token is just the vehicle that Blizzard uses to facilitate both transactions and muddy the waters. Basically Blizzard is selling Player A's gold to Player B for money and giving Player A a 75% cut of that sale.

And that's even ignoring the fact that Blizzard creates the gold in the first place and controls it's influx into the game.

[Biomega]

You can buy gold with real money directly from the store, end of story. Where it comes from, how it's made, completely irrelevant.

That's not how it works, though. You don't buy gold from the store. Very explicitly not. You buy a TOKEN from the store, which you can sell to other players for THEIR gold.

Tokens don't generate gold. They don't create an influx of gold into the economy. They only shift wealth that already exists.

All the gold in existence is generated from in-game activities.

[Echo of Soul]

That's not how it works, though. You don't buy gold from the store. Very explicitly not. You buy a TOKEN from the store, which you can sell to other players for THEIR gold.

Tokens don't generate gold. They don't create an influx of gold into the economy. They only shift wealth that already exists.

All the gold in existence is generated from in-game activities.

IT. DOES. NOT. MATTER.

If the gold is generated, made from alchemy or stolen from Jeff Kaplans grandmother it does not matter. You pay real money to Blizzard, you end up with gold in game, that's all that matters.

[jeezusisacasual]

Some of the issue is how much harder raids have become for a larger portion of the players. When raids started focusing more on pass / fail mechanics on the individual people got frustrated and quit and in some cases mid pull. The game is to hard from heroic onward along with larger time commitments being required also with the research required from not only the fights themselves but also a gear and logistical standpoint which adds to much complexity. Perhaps expansions should reset the level of difficulty ( i am not talking about Molten core here either ) but to a comparable level with gradual increases like 2-3% harder etc.

Also the fact that raiding is a mess in general and does not scale well either. This is another reason why the entire bring the player and not the class was a better period in wow since it allowed you more freedom to complete an encounter again this is not stated for every single encounter but there are a few that makes it a night and day difference. When i started being happy i cleared a raid not because of some personal achievement but a feeling of thank fuck i dont have to do that again then it was time to realize that it just was not worth it at all.

When comparing Mythic plus to Raiding is so different, you gear slower in mythic plus which is fine since i can do it whenever and at my own pace with a very healthy pug scene ( i pugged KSM as a Brewmaster this season ) with gaining some points even in a failed key plus you will get your item from the vault and its a no brainer. If things like the Creation Catalyst continue to be apart of the game and hell even if it isnt there will be no real reason to raid unless its your thing which is about time honestly. The other aspect is that i refuse to deal with the mindset that raiding has created since Warlords, that sorta attitude and unwillingness to teach and help people grow as a team and now its expected for them to already be a master of all things whatever their class is which honestly is absurd.