Boosting communities gone?

[PaladinBash]

If they wanted to stop boosting, which would be great and I'd love it, they just gotta ban people buying it and selling it. That easy. Same with hackers, same with botters, just permaban them all on sight. Easy fix, works just fine, the only people against it are parasites that do that shit anyway and they out themselves whenever they argue these things aren't shit for the game because they benefit from it.

They don't though. They aren't going to. I'd like it but I won't get my way and all the gloating scums that do this shit will continue to gloat as the game gets made worse but it's already so bad so I really don't care anymore. I imagine Blizzard feels the same way and is just trying to scrape a few more pennies out of it.

[TheRevenantHero]

Boosting is massive within other MMORPGs, and they take as much action as Blizzard, even if they claim they do more. Blizzard permanbans gold sellers and RMT boost sellers, but not organized gold boost sellers until recently, as that is a new field with new rules, others just permabans the RMT and don't care about the rest, and know they'll remake an account again, they don't care. I've played enough MMORPGs to know that much, doesn't matter what PR smile, or well-written forum post any developer makes.

That is what I'm saying. Blizzard I would almost dare to say, is currently the only company that takes up against organizations for boosting for gold, like communities/companies - overall assessment. I know SE is working on it too but in a minor way.

We're in a whole new field here.

lmfao no they don't. Blizzard barely does anything to put a stop to the majority of them. Mainly because they participate in it themselves. Sure, it's prevalent in all MMOs but WoW is some of the worst I've ever seen since the devs just don't give a shit. Why would they take action? The current WoW lead is a boost seller themselves.

[MoanaLisa]

If they wanted to stop boosting, which would be great and I'd love it, they just gotta ban people buying it and selling it. That easy. Same with hackers, same with botters, just permaban them all on sight. Easy fix, works just fine, the only people against it are parasites that do that shit anyway and they out themselves whenever they argue these things aren't shit for the game because they benefit from it.

OK, how exactly do they determine that if the RMT is done off-site? Let's keep in mind that straight "You help me and I'll give you some gold" is perfectly OK and within the Terms of Service. And when Blizzard fucks up—and they will because no system like this is perfect—how do you imagine people will get their account back?

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lmfao no they don't. Blizzard barely does anything to put a stop to the majority of them. Mainly because they participate in it themselves. Sure, it's prevalent in all MMOs but WoW is some of the worst I've ever seen since the devs just don't give a shit. Why would they take action? The current WoW lead is a boost seller themselves.

Well, again. If a boost transaction is a simple "Help me and I'll give you some gold" that's perfectly OK. Now, if you have any factual evidence that Ybarros is doing RMT with the boosts then you ought to present it where we can all see it.

[Relapses]

You have rambled your way into a totally different topic. We agree that boosting is lame and bad for the game. The question here is which solution to boosting is better:

1. Power progression paths for casual players.
2. Real money transactions.

You are clearly stating that you prefer number 2 while decrying number 1 as wrong because people shouldn't get rewards they don't deserve. It is fundamentally nonsensical at its core. You can't have it both ways, and appealing to your fan fiction statistics of how few people pay for boosts is meaningless. You think its better for rewards to be behind paywall than be behind playing casual content, so drop the phony moral high ground act. You believe pay to win is preferable to play the fucking game, so lecturing everyone else on who deserves what is laughable.

I believe skill expression is important when discussing rewards. The ability to collect 20 bear asses is not skill expressive. You should not get Mythic gear for collecting bear asses.

Only about 20% of players even do normal raids. About 50% do at least one M+ in a season. Normal raids are not harder than the average video game, and neither are low M+. This is relatively simple content than anyone with a pulse, two hands, and a couple of hours of time can do. Players simply choose not to, because they don't like doing it. Locking gear progression behind that content just means that of those relatively embarrassingly small number of players that do the content, some of them aren't even there because they like doing it.

The problem with comparing anything to "all players" is that many of WoW's subscribers are cyclical so saying something like "only 50% of players do at least one M+" discounts the fact that of the other half of the playerbase, most just got max level and unsubbed. You make the argument that if these players had a way to get Mythic gear that they'd stay subbed but I'd say that Blizzard going back on TFing proves that their internal data suggests otherwise.

[NineSpine]

I believe skill expression is important when discussing rewards. The ability to collect 20 bear asses is not skill expressive. You should not get Mythic gear for collecting bear asses.

Yet you should get rewards for swiping a credit card?

The problem with comparing anything to "all players" is that many of WoW's subscribers are cyclical so saying something like "only 50% of players do at least one M+" discounts the fact that of the other half of the playerbase, most just got max level and unsubbed. You make the argument that if these players had a way to get Mythic gear that they'd stay subbed but I'd say that Blizzard going back on TFing proves that their internal data suggests otherwise.

The numbers we are talking about are based on analysis of current, active subs so your criticism doesn't apply. It already controls for people leaving by virtue of being current, active subs.

TFing was not rewarding. It was frustrating RNG on top of RNG on top of RNG. I didn't say a bad reward system would solve the problem. This is like arguing that if you send a bus on fire out and nobody wants to take the bus it means nobody likes busses. Maybe it was the fire that was the problem.

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BiS raid gear would be a form of progression, tho. You'd still get people being boosted to get the raid gear they want in order to raid. In fact it might get worse if now the people who feel they need boosts now feel that even more if they need separate sets for raids and M+. I really don't believe this a good solution. I like that my M+ gear is great in raids and vice versa.

Casual players acquiring gear slowly is an avenue I wouldn't have a problem with, but if it's slow people will absolutely say Blizzard is timegating them, and boosts will still get sold a lot for those who again want the gear now or who want to get alts up to speed. To say nothing about cosmetics which also drive boosts a lot, something you can't solve without removing cosmetics from any content that has a challenge, which wouldn't be good game design.

As I said I have no interest in playing FF14 and so can't comment on comparing the two games. But I also doubt the two communities will react the same to the devs enacting similar measures.

"WoW is a unique snowflake and the logic and rules that apply to every other video game magically don't apply here" is a weak argument that bas no basis.

There is a reason that boosts are endemic in WoW but a rarity in other similar games. it is because the similar games don't have this arbitrary progression walling that exists to sell tokens.

[Relapses]

Yet you should get rewards for swiping a credit card?

Again: The number of people buying boosts is not significant enough to matter. An admin for Gallywix, one of the largest boosting communities that's ever existed, mentioned that even if 100% of the boosts they sold were RMT, it would only amount to a few million dollars. Considering Blizzard likely makes ten times this off of cash shop mounts alone the number of people "swiping cards" for boosts is not enough to qualify a substantial amount of Blizzard's bottom line.

The numbers we are talking about are based on analysis of current, active subs so your criticism doesn't apply. It already controls for people leaving by virtue of being current, active subs.

Data scraped from Blizzard's API is inherently flawed because none of the data is able to be corroborated by anything official. That's why I often refer to these numbers as imaginary. (Because they are.)

TFing was not rewarding. It was frustrating RNG on top of RNG on top of RNG. I didn't say a bad reward system would solve the problem. This is like arguing that if you send a bus on fire out and nobody wants to take the bus it means nobody likes busses. Maybe it was the fire that was the problem.

I don't think deterministic access to the best rewards from menial content will improve the game's retention rate. If anything, this would discourage players from engaging with the skill expressive elements of the game's current three pillars. This is the opposite of what WoW needs.

[NineSpine]

Again: The number of people buying boosts is not significant enough to matter. An admin for Gallywix, one of the largest boosting communities that's ever existed, mentioned that even if 100% of the boosts they sold were RMT, it would only amount to a few million dollars. Considering Blizzard likely makes ten times this off of cash shop mounts alone the number of people "swiping cards" for boosts is not enough to qualify a substantial amount of Blizzard's bottom line.

If people so buy boosts are so insignificant, why not just keep it disallowed rather than endorsing it and profiting off of it? Your arguments are full of these inconsistencies and contradictions. You say illegal boosting was such a threat to the game that Blizzard had to introduce the token to fix it, then you turn right around and say boosting doesn't matter.

Data scraped from Blizzard's API is inherently flawed because none of the data is able to be corroborated by anything official. That's why I often refer to these numbers as imaginary. (Because they are.)

The API is official data. If you want to engage in conspiracy theories that everyone pulling the data is making it up, that's nice for you Alex Jones.

I don't think deterministic access to the best rewards from menial content will improve the game's retention rate. If anything, this would discourage players from engaging with the skill expressive elements of the game's current three pillars. This is the opposite of what WoW needs.

Nobody gives a shit what you think about who'd deserves what as long as you keep arguing that swiping a credit card is a great way to let people get the best gear. You are a hypocrite with no ethical center whatsoever.

[Relapses]

If people so buy boosts are so insignificant, why not just keep it disallowed rather than endorsing it and profiting off of it? Your arguments are full of these inconsistencies and contradictions. You say illegal boosting was such a threat to the game that Blizzard had to introduce the token to fix it, then you turn right around and say boosting doesn't matter.

This is the second time you've misrepresented my position here. I don't know where you keep conjuring this phrase "illegal boosting" from because I've never mentioned it. I said gold selling was bad and had the token not been introduced it would have become worse. I played on Illidan back in MoP when it was the most popular NA realm right before the token was introduced. You could not use trade channel if you didn't download an add-on called "BlockChinese." The Chinese gold farming was so prevalent on this server that even to this day there are fully Chinese raiding guilds on it. Had Blizzard not introduced the token, this would have been the end result for every realm. I'm glad this never came to fruition.

The API is official data. If you want to engage in conspiracy theories that everyone pulling the data is making it up, that's nice for you Alex Jones.

By design, Blizzard's APIs do not allow for players to figure out the number of active subscribers. So when these "official numbers" are used to do exactly that you'll have to excuse my skepticism. Why, exactly, is it important to know this information anyway? If it meant anything you'd think Blizzard would just share it with players outright, wouldn't they?

Nobody gives a shit what you think about who'd deserves what as long as you keep arguing that swiping a credit card is a great way to let people get the best gear. You are a hypocrite with no ethical center whatsoever.

I'm sorry that I do not think something that represents an infinitesimally small fraction of Blizzard's total revenue is important enough to change the entire way rewards in the game are handled from the top down.

[Lochton]

lmfao no they don't. Blizzard barely does anything to put a stop to the majority of them. Mainly because they participate in it themselves. Sure, it's prevalent in all MMOs but WoW is some of the worst I've ever seen since the devs just don't give a shit. Why would they take action? The current WoW lead is a boost seller themselves.

So your own counterargument is that they don't handle it because a member of their staff boost according to the ToS? Aka. a guild is permitted to offer boosting services for gold, an organization/business is not.

[Cthulhu 2020]

I love how you criticize someone for hyperbole, while then 1-upping them by making a post filled, not only with hyperbole, but anecdotal evidence and conjecture.

Please do tell which part was hyperbole. I didn't exaggerate anything (aside from the one obvious jab at hyperbole).

The claim was made that boosting hasn't become more prevalent with time. So why is it that boosting communities exploded?

The claim was made that the WoW token stopped or at least almost got rid of RMT.

...

I don't even need to try and appeal to people's logic for someone to recognize how hilariously false that is.

[Coldkil]

Moreover, this idea that people reach their skill cap then bust out a credit card is both incredibly cynical and impossible to ever prove or disprove. I'm not discounting the fact that some players do this (and some may even buy a token to do it), but I just cannot buy the narrative that this demographic represents a significant portion of the playerbase.

I think what's happening is actually kinda different.

From what i am getting from this thread it seems that boosts are accepted and wildly used to skip the "initial progress" part of the game. So, basically, reaching 15s and KSM, or getting the Curve early because it a) makes it easier to play later and b) people is interested in the actually challenging content and don't want to deal with the likely happening fuckups on the road for there, or simply are not interested.

This means you're getting an healthy "low-level" activity participation, but that's also counting all the boosting the happens there. It's fun, because the very people who are really invested in the game at its peak level are the ones that use the most this kind of practices because, in the end, they like only a small subset of the game activities. The side effect is that it's getting really normalized, and since as you said people partaking in the hardest content is a small % of the playerbase, everyone else must abide to these unwritten rules to have a decent game experience.

I'm probably missing something though or assuming something wrong. I will forever be baffled by the fact being boosted war frowned upon and would get you "ostracized" by the community and now it's literally the optimal way to play the game if i have to hear some people (who also are supposedly the top tier players).

I'll just keep playing my own way until it's no more doable, i like the game for what it is and not for some kind of forced competition i have zero interest to partake in (but if i have to hear a lot of people here and around, if i don't play for it i'm stupid and should kill myself).

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I believe skill expression is important when discussing rewards. The ability to collect 20 bear asses is not skill expressive. You should not get Mythic gear for collecting bear asses.

Just to give you another example from the same thread above, the proposal of having your client filled up with premade BiS geared characters was a pretty welcomed one.

Hell, i'm thinking more and more about a couple servers basically made like this where you can log in and just play the endgame ignoring all the rest just to see what would happen lol. Obviously achievements would have to be disabled there.

[NineSpine]

This is the second time you've misrepresented my position here. I don't know where you keep conjuring this phrase "illegal boosting" from because I've never mentioned it. I said gold selling was bad and had the token not been introduced it would have become worse. I played on Illidan back in MoP when it was the most popular NA realm right before the token was introduced. You could not use trade channel if you didn't download an add-on called "BlockChinese." The Chinese gold farming was so prevalent on this server that even to this day there are fully Chinese raiding guilds on it. Had Blizzard not introduced the token, this would have been the end result for every realm. I'm glad this never came to fruition.



By design, Blizzard's APIs do not allow for players to figure out the number of active subscribers. So when these "official numbers" are used to do exactly that you'll have to excuse my skepticism. Why, exactly, is it important to know this information anyway? If it meant anything you'd think Blizzard would just share it with players outright, wouldn't they?



I'm sorry that I do not think something that represents an infinitesimally small fraction of Blizzard's total revenue is important enough to change the entire way rewards in the game are handled from the top down.

You just did it again on: Gold selling (the entire point of which is buying boosts) was simultaneously going to bury the game in Chinese advertisements and was an unrelenting tsunami yet also boosting is this tiny thing nobody does and doesn’t matter.

Then you go on to criticize using blizzards own API numbers and go right to telling us what blizzards revenue from tokens is like you have any fucking idea.

You are drowning in your own inconsistency and hypocrisy. “How dare a casual player get good gear if he didn’t pay for it with real money?!?!?”

[Relapses]

You just did it again on: Gold selling (the entire point of which is buying boosts) was simultaneously going to bury the game in Chinese advertisements and was an unrelenting tsunami yet also boosting is this tiny thing nobody does and doesn’t matter.

First off, gold selling isn't only used for boosting. I've purchased probably close to 40 tokens over the last few years and I've never once used the gold from the token to buy a boost. I've used this gold almost exclusively to buy raid supplies (or in SL's case, Legendary base items). Prior to the token, I'd afford raid supplies by crafting fucking BoE off-hands with Inscription. I am not good with gold and I frankly hate the entire "create wealth" part of the game. The best thing that ever happened for me was the increasing popularity of boosting which allowed me to finally afford raid supplies without spending hours of my life crafting off-hands. (I no longer raid; ergo, I no longer boost... which is why I buy tokens.) I can't imagine I'm alone in this but it's not my job to tell people what is and isn't morally acceptable for them to use their own gold to purchase.

Then you go on to criticize using blizzards own API numbers and go right to telling us what blizzards revenue from tokens is like you have any fucking idea.

I don't and I never claimed I did. I said that based off of information that we do know, the likelihood of boosting constituting a major portion of Blizzard's income is pretty low. Considering your entire argument operates on this idea that the game has become overwhelmed by players who "swipe cards" instead of playing the game (collecting bear asses), I'd say this is a relevant observation. Though you are free to disagree with me, just as I'm free to disagree with the relevance of APIs used to conjure statistics that they were never intended to display.

You are drowning in your own inconsistency and hypocrisy. “How dare a casual player get good gear if he didn’t pay for it with real money?!?!?”

If a "casual player" in this example is a bear ass collector, yeah. I think it's kind of fucked up for them to have the best rewards in the game.

[Tronski]

It's not but it's "locked" to a specific server and as before you cannot promote it in the LFD tools and such. The issue with boosting is just the huge scope it has reached, to the point it's getting a real problem when most people just buy a boots and everyone else expect people to have cleared content week 1 or to have increased ilvl.

It's not boosting per se, but the extreme easiness and convenience in getting one that makes them so appealing. Also, Blizzard is apparently "against" them but fail to enforce any kind of real policy (probably due to interactions with the token and so on - not saying every boost is paid with RMT).

It's a fact that a lot of people just buy boosts so they have the required achievements or score to be able to do specific activities in an easier way. Also it's often a better experience (if not always) to get carried by a team of experienced people (doesn't matter if you're good or not at the game). And it's a problem because the more people resort to this practice, the more it becomes normalized and even expected to participate in them.

We'll see how it pans out, if it's a mass report of people willing to "hurt their businesses" or there's something real behind it.

Blizzard could try looking at the root cause. Something is fundamentally wrong when people feel the need to pay entry fees to be able to play.

I'm no expert, but I'm guessing the insane gear threadmill and gear requirements to participate at higher levels have got something to do with people taking these shortcuts.

Heck, I know I gave up every single major patch in Shadowlands because I simply didn't have more than 10 hours a week to play, and that got me nowhere near the levels I enjoy playing at (heroic/mythic).

Having "getting high enough ilvl to enter LFR" as your only achievable goal does not make for fun gameplay. Wiping in LFR is not particularly fun either, nor is being used to wipe the floor in PvP.

[Coldkil]

Blizzard could try looking at the root cause. Something is fundamentally wrong when people feel the need to pay entry fees to be able to play.

I'm no expert, but I'm guessing the insane gear threadmill and gear requirements to participate at higher levels have got something to do with people taking these shortcuts.

Heck, I know I gave up every single major patch in Shadowlands because I simply didn't have more than 10 hours a week to play, and that got me nowhere near the levels I enjoy playing at (heroic/mythic).

Having "getting high enough ilvl to enter LFR" as your only achievable goal does not make for fun gameplay. Wiping in LFR is not particularly fun either, nor is being used to wipe the floor in PvP.

Actually, none of your point are actually the reason why people feel in need to buy boosts.

Boosts are a really interesting thing: on the surface they seem to be the "i want easy stuff" thing, but it's actually for many just a required step to enjoy the game. Much like farming consumables for a raid or getting the best crafted gear as soon as possible. Getting Curve or high rating fast makes the game experience better, and we all know why. Which is absurdly problematic.

The issue with gear/rating/achievement required is something players came up with. Raider.io is a players' invention, and it became so loved Blizzard had to implement it in an official way.

We reap what we sow. I don't think blizzard can make anything about the focus/obsession modern playerbase has on competitiveness, ladders, scores and so on. I am pretty sure people who like the game but are not keen into this kind of gameplay, either manage to find a group of similar-minded people or they just leave the game. I think it happened quite a lot so far.

[Tronski]

I don't think deterministic access to the best rewards from menial content will improve the game's retention rate. If anything, this would discourage players from engaging with the skill expressive elements of the game's current three pillars. This is the opposite of what WoW needs.

If they made mythic doable with the same gear as normal, only more complex and longer/remove enrage and soft enrage mechanics, people would still be able to engage with skill. Same goes for fixed templates in PvP. The downside to this is that they get bored faster because the addicts needs something to chase and dopamine dripfed through loot.

But the first thing they need to do is stop designing the game in a way that forces the players to play more than they want to in order to satisfy arbitrary metrics. They especially need to never ever have crucial gear pieces tied to professions and gold again.

WoD had a very nice solution when it came to gear. Templates in pvp that ensured you were never too weak to have fun, and one "free" piece of loot (of the next difficulty tier) every 14 days if you had killed enough raid bosses. Which also meant you could be half geared in mythic gear before entering a mythic raid. More alt-friendly as well.

This meant that people had to play less in order to reach their goals. The downside to reaching their goals faster and easier was that as soon as their goals were reached, they started whining about content drought.

The vault was obviously a step in this direction, but either it requires too much weekly activity, or it's not generous enough. Or both.

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Actually, none of your point are actually the reason why people feel in need to buy boosts.

Thanks for excluding me from the people category, I guess?

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, but it's actually for many just a required step to enjoy the game.

Literally what

need to pay entry fees to be able to play.

means.

[Coldkil]

-snip-

Was just saying that boosts are usually condemned because they are "unfair" = you pay to get access to rewards you otherwise won't get, doesn't matter you could, but you likely wouldn't without paying due to different constraints.

Instead, as you clearly said, boosts are somewhat "required to enjoy the game". It's a real issue to me, because if an entire community feels boosts are necessary to play/enjoy the game, something is very wrong somewhere. But i don't think it's the endgame structure (or at least is only partially) because many if not all the main reasons for people to buy boosts are actually abiding to requirements the playerbase itself came up with.

Boosting being "good or bad" immediately scales down a whole lot as an argument to me.

[Tronski]

.

The issue with gear/rating/achievement required is something players came up with. Raider.io is a players' invention, and it became so loved Blizzard had to implement it in an official way.

We reap what we sow. I don't think blizzard can make anything about the focus/obsession modern playerbase has on competitiveness, ladders, scores and so on. I am pretty sure people who like the game but are not keen into this kind of gameplay, either manage to find a group of similar-minded people or they just leave the game. I think it happened quite a lot so far.

It comes down to balancing designs that punishes playing with strangers.

Pugging heroic becomes impossible when a single persons mistake wipes the raid, be it because they die directly or can't maintain numbers to kill the boss.

Gear scaling is also a problem.

[epigramx]

I think a lot of people enjoy the game a lot more than you imagine.

And I was not referring to those. That was pretty passive aggressive. Stay on topic of what you're quoting.

[Tronski]

Instead, as you clearly said, boosts are somewhat "required to enjoy the game". It's a real issue to me, because if an entire community feels boosts are necessary to play/enjoy the game, something is very wrong somewhere. But i don't think it's the endgame structure (or at least is only partially) because many if not all the main reasons for people to buy boosts are actually abiding to requirements the playerbase itself came up with.

Both yes and no, the community has to enforce these barriers because a single persons mistake, or low output, could wipe the raid.

That is a problem caused by tight design and enrage timers.

And why is it so important for most people to raid higher tiers than they should? Because that's the way to get significantly better gear fast. If the gear rewards between tiers were less significant, and mythic gear didn't make you 15x stronger than normal raid gear, people with no business in those tiers probably wouldn't flock there in the first place either.

If heroic had the same mechanics as mythic, with lower output requirements, I would be totally content just staying there forever as well. Same could be said for normal. (But I'm the weird one who raids for fun)