Boosting communities gone?

[shise]

More likely they'll just keep creating Discord communities. Considering nothing the boosting communities are doing is against their ToS even if these communities aren't restored the demand isn't going anywhere and people will still find ways to get boosted. Discord simply helps organize their operation.

Yeah, Blizzard should make changes in the ToS.

Luckily in Europe more countries are banning gambling and P2W practices That helps a LOT.

[Coldkil]

Luckily in Europe more countries are banning gambling and P2W practices That helps a LOT.

From what i'm reading around the thing is exactly due to EU new regulations about lootboxes and the sort. Apparently there's a crackdown on methods to exchange real currency for virtual currency to then buy in-game goods or services; this includes the buy token - sell token for gold - buy boost loop.

It's easy to understand why many people is interested in booting other players; for many living in a poorer country it translated into a lot of actual money they can get and it literally compares to a decent living wage there. Granted, i don't have numbers so i'm not gonna say they're the majority but for many players is a damn huge incentive to boost other people.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Know what it means? It has 3 times the people on twitter/reddit/posts/twitch etc. Does it mean it has more players. The answer might surprise you. Nope.

I think it's hilarious how you say this with absolute certainty then go on to say nobody knows the numbers, then proclaim WoW to be the king. It's such delicious cognitive dissonance and hilarious delusion, it's just *Chef's kiss* I love it.

Engagement metrics are the best thing people have. Actiblizzard MAUs continue to tumble like it's a rock falling off a mountain, and while the Blizzard part of ActiBlizzard is at least somewhat stable, we can thank the Dragonflight announcement and D:I release for a brief stall in the downward spiral.

People use examples like Wildstar and Star Citizen on that site as reasons for why "it's not accurate AT ALL" when in reality it's just measuring engagement metrics on socials as estimates. And when estimates (yes, estimates are approximations) are used, it's painting a grim picture. WoW classic nearly doubled the active World of Warcraft population for a little while, while retail continued to lose players. Now even Classic is looking at merging servers because the vast majority of them are dead and most people exist on two realms, one alliance dominated and one horde dominated.

Retail servers aren't faring much better. 76% of retail players play on 20 realms out of the 246 the game has. Source: https://wowanalytica.com/statistics/region/us

That one site that you hate the numbers of is also far more generous on WoW's numbers than census tracking sites.

Blizzard has had two flop expansions in a row. They can't afford a third. They literally cannot afford it. Dragon riding looks fun, and it served to garner a single week of hype when the first streamers got their hands on alpha keys. Dragon riding looks fun. But what else is there? Dragon riding can't carry an entire expansion as the only new feature.

Talents are once more going to be an illusion of choice, because while players claim they like playing sub optimally for choice, we see how THAT turns out. It's the same people who claim they like being outnumbered on PvP servers. And now the vast majority of players play on servers where the population is AT LEAST 70% in favor of their faction.

The rest of Dragonflight looks like it's going to be more of the same out of touch Blizzard. Heck, the slime cat is just another thing in a long line of bad decisions. The game's systems are outdated. While other games (and we're not talking about one of them, we're talking about pretty much all recent releases) allow you to go straight to bosses in raids. No trash, no BS, just boss fighting and progression. So many of WoW's design decisions are utterly antiquated. If you're a player with only 1 hour a night, or even less, you can log in, do a fight or two, then log out. WoW's raiding design relies upon daily chores, joining an organized guild, spending hours in a single raid, etc.

Casual side content continues to be mostly ignored in favor of funneling players into the three pillars, M+, raids, and PvP. When I said WoW needed more casual side content that people could log in and just "do" without having to commit to chores every day just to participate in, I was bombarded with waves of hate for it. The "raid or die" mentality (that includes M+ and PvP) continues to drive players away, and the players refusing to accept any casual content in THEIR RAIDING GAME drives a lot of that decision making.

And that brings us to boosting. The mentality that one needs to participate in one of the three pillars is pervasive throughout the community. There's a passive and active pressure to participate in one of the three major content types. Why? There's no reason someone should feel like they have to do those things. Thus the top end players have created a system to make money, both gold and real life money, to exploit that pressure people feel. They're even adding to that pressure and that culture of "raid or die" because they know it brings them in the big bucks.

The spirit of fun and "Do anything you want" has been replaced by a need to "Keep up with the Joneses". And while people reading this might go "Well I don't feel pressured to do content! You're wrong!" it's a sentiment felt by a majority of the playerbase. It's not fake or made up just because you don't feel it.

It's one of the roads to ruin, and people are proudly walking it.

Josh Strife Hayes made an amazing point. Articles that talk about single player games dying are stupid. You can pick up a single player game that has "lost 99% of its playerbase" and be just fine and have a ton of fun. But the problem is that modern game design is focusing on games as a service. Companies are looking for the next big cash cow that they can glide on easy for the next decade. Problem is, MMOs and games-as-a-service games actually require an active and paying population. If an MMO or live service game isn't pulling in enough dough, it's shitcanned.

WoW isn't close to that point, it still has at least another 3 or 4 bad expansions left, as there are players who will continue to deny reality and urge Blizzard to keep doing the same thing and continue playing. But as bad decisions continue to be made, decisions that have been failing the game for the last 3 expansions, there's only so many times you can keep doing the same thing and failing before you should say "Man, this isn't really working. Maybe we should try something new?"

Don't really care if you "Believe" any of this or not. Reality doesn't care about your feelings. People who have their feet in multiple MMOs see it happening. The only ones saying that WoW is still the reigning champion, doing just fine and Blizzard should stay the course are people who play WoW and only WoW.

The MMO population at large is not shrinking either, as many like to claim. It is diversifying. New player populations are only growing, and I continue to hear stories from ex-WoW players saying that they kept boosting ahead of the curve for several tiers until they realized they weren't even playing the game any more, they were just filling out an achievement card.

Boosting is a symptom of a greater problem. I won't claim to know ALL of the reasons or the answers, but I know that whatever is going on right now isn't working.

Playing the game is complicated and annoying and a terrible experience, so you buy boosts to make your experience better otherwise you cannot enjoy the game. And you're not alone and it's clear there's an upwards trend of people doing this right off the bat no questions asked.

It's just fascinating. The community itself instead of building up relations to make their gameplay better, just resorts as a whole to buy boosts from more skilled players so they "can also enjoy the game as it's supposed to be fun". I find it a full devolution of the playerbase to an abysmal level.

Pretty much. I'm all too happy that boosting is getting a serious look. The problem is that it's not Blizzard that's doing it. EU laws banning gacha gambling and p2w aspects are WONDERFUL NEWS. But it's not going to fix the underlying problem that WoW isn't fun to play for many, it's something where you feel pressured to tick off an achievement box.

Perhaps if boosting goes back into the shadows of illicit behavior, the players who once relied on boosting will realize they just don't want to play the game, and haven't wanted to play it for a long time. If they wanted to play it, they would have joined raiding guilds rather than opting not to. It will be a harsh wakeup call.

[Kyanion]

I think it's hilarious how you say this with absolute certainty then go on to say nobody knows the numbers, then proclaim WoW to be the king. It's such delicious cognitive dissonance and hilarious delusion, it's just *Chef's kiss* I love it.

Show me official sub numbers showing WoW has been toppled. I'll wait. FF does not report subs, WoW does not report subs. You think there are other MMOs breaking a million+ players? Let's see them.

- - - Updated - - -

Engagement metrics are the best thing people have. Actiblizzard MAUs continue to tumble like it's a rock falling off a mountain, and while the Blizzard part of ActiBlizzard is at least somewhat stable, we can thank the Dragonflight announcement and D:I release for a brief stall in the downward spiral.

Engagement metrics =/= sub numbers. MAUs =/= sub numbers.

- - - Updated - - -

People use examples like Wildstar and Star Citizen on that site as reasons for why "it's not accurate AT ALL" when in reality it's just measuring engagement metrics on socials as estimates.

So because sites like that think a dead game has players and that SC has 500k players on RIGHT NOW you believe this 'measuring engagement' has any worth at all? Really? You think SC has half the engagement of WoW? LOL. Holy fucking shit I love when people try and defend that website that it somehow produces useful information and then try and use it in a discussion.

You heard it here folks, SC has half the engagement of WoW so it must be kicking WoW's ass!

- - - Updated - - -

And when estimates (yes, estimates are approximations) are used, it's painting a grim picture.

Or it paints a picture that not many people post on social media about an 18 year old game when they just you know go to wowhead or mmo-champ, do web searches for 'world of warcraft' or whateverthefuck you want to use to try and twist this into sub numbers.

- - - Updated - - -

Retail servers aren't faring much better. 76% of retail players play on 20 realms out of the 246 the game has. Source: https://wowanalytica.com/statistics/region/us

And where is this data coming from? Their ass? Some addon? Scraping stats from logs? Useless? You know it baby!

- - - Updated - - -

Blizzard has had two flop expansions in a row. They can't afford a third. They literally cannot afford it.

Geez you mean if this expansion does badly Blizzard will shut their doors and the game will be over? Oh wait, you mean if it doesn't do well there will be another expansion afterwards and people will still play it? Got it. Also I disagree with the two flops in a row, but hey you do you doomsayer.

And that brings us to boosting.

What about it? That thing that was around before WoW tokens? That thing that only a fraction of the playerbase does? You think that is ruining the game? Sure it is about as stupid as any other conspiracy theory for why wow is 'dying'.

WoW isn't close to that point, it still has at least another 3 or 4 bad expansions left, as there are players who will continue to deny reality and urge Blizzard to keep doing the same thing and continue playing.

But you said Blizzard can't afford a third bad expansion. Remember? Jesus man keep up with your own warped reality.

Don't really care if you "Believe" any of this or not. Reality doesn't care about your feelings. People who have their feet in multiple MMOs see it happening. The only ones saying that WoW is still the reigning champion, doing just fine and Blizzard should stay the course are people who play WoW and only WoW.

Good thing I don't believe your gloom and doomsaying. I don't give a fuck about anyone's 'feels' on the matter actually. I play multiple MMOs, not hard to see people flock to a new one for a month or two and then watch them crater, and then watch people run back to WoW and FF during content patches.

I say WoW is the reigning champion because it has almost 18 years of a proven track record. Something will eventually topple it, but it has not happened yet despite what faked up data you can provide.

I'm glad I don't live in your reality though, or else we'd be playing Wildstar again as it has fucktons of players, or the reigning king FF14.. or *cringe* STAR CITIZEN! Fucking lol.

[3DTyrant]

I don't quite understand it, setting aside websites doing it for actual cash (not too sure how much of a thing these types of sites are now days), buying a token gets Blizz £17 in their pocket per token so why is it such a huge issue for Blizz if it's done via gold transactions? You'd think they wouldn't really care because more £££ for them. Someone correct me if I'm wrong in my assumption here, in game on your own server is a-okay, any other method isn't (LFG tool, Discord, etc)?

[Biomega]

The moment someone pays for a service in game regardless of what currency they use, they gain an UNFAIR advantage.

What's unfair about it? The fact that they're boosting for gold, or that they're obtaining gold for real-life currency?

[Cthulhu 2020]

SOURCE SOURCE SOURCE

I don't really engage with sea lions. No information I provide is ever enough for them. Again, don't care what you believe.

I've already had these conversations in the past, providing massive amounts of sourcing, and none of it ever mattered because the person just wanted to deflect, deny, and detract. I really just can't be assed to do it again.

"Well your sample size was only 10,000 players, that's not nearly enough!" once said to me by a person who knows jack shit about statistics.

You stay inside your bubble and you'll remain blissfully unaware of everything that's going on around you. It's better for you and it's better for everyone else.

What about it? That thing that was around before WoW tokens? That thing that only a fraction of the playerbase does?

Boosting was always done under the table and in secret. You really had to go looking for it to find it. For the last few years it's been out in the open. Also, yes, a fraction of the playerbase does it. 1/3 is a fraction, after all. So is 2/3, and 3/4, and 1/10.

Wait, you think trade chat being spammed with boosting ads happened because it was rare? Bahahahaha.

Mage boosting was the go-to method of leveling in classic for a large portion of the playerbase. Many players rely upon boosting to get their AOTC. PvP boosting is all over the PvP scene. Players that don't engage in boosting services and don't ever choose to look at the boosting scene will of course have no knowledge of it, because it's like all transactions made online: It's done in private conversation between two people. Just because you don't see billions of Amazon orders a day doesn't mean they don't happen.

People have been making full time living money off of being managers and middle men for boosters, and the players on the ground have been making great side hustle cash, many citing it akin to effectively being the Uber of WoW. You think people can earn that kind of money from something almost nobody does?

Again, I don't care if you believe it or not. There WERE discords with tens of thousands of players in them for boosting. Thank god they're gone. It won't stop boosting, no, but forcing boosting back into being an illicit underground activity would go a long way in reducing its presence.

[Relapses]

I don't really engage with sea lions. No information I provide is ever enough for them. Again, don't care what you believe.

"Well your sample size was only 10,000 players, that's not nearly enough!" once said to me by a person who knows jack shit about statistics.

You stay inside your bubble and you'll remain blissfully unaware of everything that's going on around you. It's better for you and it's better for everyone else.

Yeah, your conspiratorial numbers are the only ones that matter. And anybody who doesn't believe poorly sourced numbers used to support poorly sourced opinions is just ignorant. Yep. That's totally how this works.

Boosting was always done under the table and in secret. You really had to go looking for it to find it. For the last few years it's been out in the open. Also, yes, a fraction of the playerbase does it. 1/3 is a fraction, after all. So is 2/3, and 3/4, and 1/10.

Wait, you think trade chat being spammed with boosting ads happened because it was rare? Bahahahaha.

People have been making full time living money off of being managers and middle men for boosters, and the players on the ground have been making great side hustle cash, many citing it akin to effectively being the Uber of WoW. You think people can earn that kind of money from something almost nobody does?

Again, I don't care if you believe it or not. There WERE discords with tens of thousands of players in them for boosting. Thank god they're gone. It won't stop boosting, no, but forcing boosting back into being an illicit underground activity would go a long way in reducing its presence.

Hey boss, they were already doing that before the token. My buddy made it through college off of residuals from MoP CMode boosts. It was already "above ground" before the token and had it never been introduced it'd still be just as popular now as it was before the token existed.

[Trend]

Blizzard has had two flop expansions in a row. They can't afford a third. They literally cannot afford it.

I'm guessing you're using "literally" as a meaningless fluff word to try to amplify your subjective dogmatism, or do you actually believe they won't be able to pay their bills if they put out another bad expansion?

IMO the problem is that they very much can afford to keep putting out bad expansions. If bad expansions caused them not to be able to pay bills, then I think we would have seen changes a while ago.

[Biomega]

The part you quoted answers your question so what is the point of your question?

To clarify if your problem is with buying gold or with boosting - specifically what about boosting that DOESN'T involve buying gold for RL currency is "unfair", exactly.

I don't want to misrepresent your position, that's why I'm asking for clarification.

[Peacemoon]

It’s a bit of a quagmire, since if you’ve ever been in a guild or helped a friend through content they aren’t actually geared for, then technically you’re ‘boosting’.

But I think for the more common use of the term ‘boosting’ is when you assist strangers for payment. That has always been around too. People back in classic would trade items/gold to join a raid with a good guild and be allowed any of the drops they needed.

Yes WoW token has made it easy to magic up a six digit gold figure and pay for something instantly, but also social media (discord, Reddit) and cross faction in game communities have probably helped it grow more.

What baffles me more is the mentality of the people paying for boosts. No achievement or title you gain through being boosted means anything; there is no accomplishment there. I don’t understand the allure. My favourite mounts and titles are all from hard-earned achievements where I overcame a challenge that was difficult for me. I have zero interest in faking any accomplishments by paying for them, it undermines the entire purpose of them.
Getting AotC or whatever is not the achievement, the achievement is getting there with your own group.

Actually the boosting problem I don’t think is as widespread as people think. The fact they have to spam everywhere 24/7 just to get try bait a single customer is evidence enough. Most normal people don’t waste RL money on these things, because like I said above, there is no point.

The best thing Blizzard can do is crack down on the advertising. There is always going to be a black market for these things, but 95%+ of players don’t need to see it.

[Kyanion]

I don't really engage with sea lions. No information I provide is ever enough for them. Again, don't care what you believe.

I've already had these conversations in the past, providing massive amounts of sourcing, and none of it ever mattered because the person just wanted to deflect, deny, and detract. I really just can't be assed to do it again.

"Well your sample size was only 10,000 players, that's not nearly enough!" once said to me by a person who knows jack shit about statistics.

You stay inside your bubble and you'll remain blissfully unaware of everything that's going on around you. It's better for you and it's better for everyone else.

Yup, that is what I expected. When asked to provide a source that isn't using 'google metrics' 'made up shit' and 'a wow addon that tracks people' and whatever other nonsense you can come up with you go in a hole and blame the other person.

Trust me, I'd love to know sub numbers so people could stop fucking speculating on it. But when people are using sources that show games like STAR CITIZEN and WILDSTAR as games with robust player bases online RIGHT NOW. There is a fucking problem. EVERY single source YOU have provided as well as ANY other source people use to cite player numbers is WRONG. Know why? BECAUSE THEY DO NOT KNOW THE PLAYERS IN THE GAME UNLESS THE COMPANY PROVIDES IT. Period. They are GUESSING. The difference is YOU are trying to show that as factual numbers that represent players in the game. You are WRONG.

- - - Updated - - -

Boosting was always done under the table and in secret. You really had to go looking for it to find it. For the last few years it's been out in the open. Also, yes, a fraction of the playerbase does it. 1/3 is a fraction, after all. So is 2/3, and 3/4, and 1/10.

Wait, you think trade chat being spammed with boosting ads happened because it was rare? Bahahahaha.

Yes, I do believe it was rare. Do I give a flying fuck if you believe me or not? Nope. And boosting wasn't always 'under the table' in secret either. They existed in another type of run, GDKP.

- - - Updated - - -

Again, I don't care if you believe it or not. There WERE discords with tens of thousands of players in them for boosting. Thank god they're gone. It won't stop boosting, no, but forcing boosting back into being an illicit underground activity would go a long way in reducing its presence.

Woo tens of of thousands. So many. So what fraction would those be if the hypothetical player base was 500k. 1mil. More? Yeah. What would that make it? Oh, would the word RARE work for you?

- - - Updated - - -

People have been making full time living money off of being managers and middle men for boosters, and the players on the ground have been making great side hustle cash, many citing it akin to effectively being the Uber of WoW. You think people can earn that kind of money from something almost nobody does?

Ah yes the lucrative world of 'full time' living money off boosting. I imagine all of those tens of thousands were making that. Wait, you mean it was only some of those tens of thousands? Would that be like a twitch streamer that is making massive money and the majority of other twitch streamers don't make a lot? Mind blown.

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah, your conspiratorial numbers are the only ones that matter. And anybody who doesn't believe poorly sourced numbers used to support poorly sourced opinions is just ignorant. Yep. That's totally how this works.

Now now, don't be like that. Thanks to them I realized Wildstar has a massive playerbase again and that there are 500,000 people playing Star Citizen RIGHT NOW.

[Kyanion]

Hey boss, they were already doing that before the token. My buddy made it through college off of residuals from MoP CMode boosts. It was already "above ground" before the token and had it never been introduced it'd still be just as popular now as it was before the token existed.

Hell that was happening in Vanilla with a different type of boost. Account selling. Know why that was a thing? Oh because currency selling, account selling and more were due to EverQuest.

And I think he might be shocked to learn that you could pay people to level your character or run you through a dungeon or raid in Vanilla as well. Shocking isn't it? When did the token come out again? Lolz.

[Exystredofar]

The way I see it, until people stop requiring AOTC for everything (now including past raids that you can't even get AOTC for anymore), boosting is the only reasonable way to progress. You wanna talk about a problem that's ruining the game, it's people requiring 20 years of job experience plus AOTC.

[Peacemoon]

The way I see it, until people stop requiring AOTC for everything (now including past raids that you can't even get AOTC for anymore), boosting is the only reasonable way to progress. You wanna talk about a problem that's ruining the game, it's people requiring 20 years of job experience plus AOTC.

There needs to be a better way to check someone’s credentials when forming a group. AotC achieve is just the community using what tools it has at its disposal to try guarantee a smoother run.

People are much more disconnected ingame these days. Back in the day it was much more common to join guild and make friends to get things done, and rely less on strangers…

[Biomega]

I feel that all boosting services that require payment of any kind are bad for the game.

That's a bit different from calling it "unfair", but it's not an unreasonable position.

1. Blizzard makes content harder to promote boosting

That seems dubious to me. Do you have any evidence for this? At all?

2. Boosted players don't become good players

How do you know? People buy boosts for all sorts of reasons - someone buying a mythic raid mount, say, or someone who just doesn't have time to complete their +15 on an alt this week because of work or whatever. Those would be example where them buying a boost has zero impact on their development as players.

Furthermore, you implicitly presuppose here that without the boost, those same people WOULD become "good players", which is also far from in evidence. Could be that they wouldn't improve either way, so them buying a boost doesn't change that.

The area of actual concern in that argument would then be people who regularly buy boosts but then somehow also do content without boosting, at a level where the lack of improvement caused specifically by them buying boosts would be a detriment to other players. I'm not sure how you would show how many people those are, or that it would really happen this way. It seems on the face of it to be a very unlikely, very niche scenario; do you have anything to substantiate this claim or show its actual magnitude?

3. Participation in the community is reduced since there is no need to collaborate with others if one can simply buy a boost

That seems reasonable in the abstract. The only question is, how much does this ACTUALLY affect "the community"? Where do you see this happening specifically? LFG raids on normal/heroic? M+ groups? Guilds? And what's the magnitude of that problem?

4. Many boosted players lose interest in game soon after they get what they wanted

That's an interesting one I haven't heard brought up a lot in these discussions. Do you have anything to back this claim, though, or is it just supposition? I don't think it's unreasonable to say that this could be true for some people, but "many"? Also, how much does this really change - i.e., if people buy boosts and then get bored and quit, how likely is it that these same people would get bored and quit faster than the average player anyway? It seems to me that there could be a significant overlap between people who want to "skip ahead" by boosting and people easily bored by content in general.

5. In rated pvp legitimate teams can meet boosted teams which diminishes the fun for everyone leading to boring or imbalanced games

This is probably the strongest argument, though it's PvP-specific. I agree that in PvP specifically this can have a disproportionate impact, though of course the real extent of it is somewhat self-correcting since people who aren't at the skill level of a particular rating don't tend to stay at that rating for long. And there is probably a SIGNIFICANT amount of people who boost in PvP for gear, not for rating, and are not actually all that interested in doing the actual PvP. Which is likely to diminish as Blizzard changes things about PvP gear to have it be less relevant for PvE (something we're already seeing).

I'm not saying it's not a problem - I do agree this is likely the strongest anti-boosting argument.

6. Non-booster players are seen as inferior to their boosted counterparts

Could you explain this a bit more, I'm not sure I understand it. Is this just about "players with better gear are more highly regarded"? Or is there something else you're referring to?

[GreenJesus]

I don't really engage with sea lions. No information I provide is ever enough for them. Again, don't care what you believe.

I've already had these conversations in the past, providing massive amounts of sourcing, and none of it ever mattered because the person just wanted to deflect, deny, and detract. I really just can't be assed to do it again.

"Well your sample size was only 10,000 players, that's not nearly enough!" once said to me by a person who knows jack shit about statistics.

You stay inside your bubble and you'll remain blissfully unaware of everything that's going on around you. It's better for you and it's better for everyone else.




Boosting was always done under the table and in secret. You really had to go looking for it to find it. For the last few years it's been out in the open. Also, yes, a fraction of the playerbase does it. 1/3 is a fraction, after all. So is 2/3, and 3/4, and 1/10.

Wait, you think trade chat being spammed with boosting ads happened because it was rare? Bahahahaha.

Mage boosting was the go-to method of leveling in classic for a large portion of the playerbase. Many players rely upon boosting to get their AOTC. PvP boosting is all over the PvP scene. Players that don't engage in boosting services and don't ever choose to look at the boosting scene will of course have no knowledge of it, because it's like all transactions made online: It's done in private conversation between two people. Just because you don't see billions of Amazon orders a day doesn't mean they don't happen.

People have been making full time living money off of being managers and middle men for boosters, and the players on the ground have been making great side hustle cash, many citing it akin to effectively being the Uber of WoW. You think people can earn that kind of money from something almost nobody does?

Again, I don't care if you believe it or not. There WERE discords with tens of thousands of players in them for boosting. Thank god they're gone. It won't stop boosting, no, but forcing boosting back into being an illicit underground activity would go a long way in reducing its presence.

I wonder when the IRS will start to get a whiff of this and crack down on blizzard for basically being the middle man of income tax fraud.

Should players working to earn gold in WoW to exchange for money (blizzard balance) count as taxable income?

[Lochton]

I wonder when the IRS will start to get a whiff of this and crack down on blizzard for basically being the middle man of income tax fraud.

Should players working to earn gold in WoW to exchange for money (blizzard balance) count as taxable income?

There won't be a crack down on Blizzard for doing such, it'll be on the service provider for not reporting their income.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Yup, that is what I expected.

Same to you. You weren't asking for sources because you actually wanted to learn anything. You were asking for sources so you could use terrible "logic" to try and prove it wrong. I've had these conversations before. It's pretty obvious what was going to happen. You're not in here for an honest conversation. You just want to deflect and deny.

Again, don't really care if people "believe" that one site or not. There are discrepancies in data handling and weights that can account for a 10-20% shift in numbers that have nothing to do with Star Citizen and Wildstar reporting as having players. Overall player engagement is pretty good indicator. 10-20% is something that in actual academic papers would be unacceptable, but when comparing MMOs isn't so terribly bad.

I've already provided plenty of data in the past in plenty of past conversations with people just like you. Again, find it truly hilarious that you claim WoW is the reigning champion by far over any other MMO with zero evidence then demand someone else provide a source when they claim differently. Where's your source? Wait, not even google analytics, player engagement, nor any evidence to support your claim? Who would have guessed! If there's one thing I have over you, it's SOME kind of source of information. (Psst, by the way, official data from census sites also paint a grim story, but again, you'd just whine and grab some random thing out of your ass to pick it apart)

Woo tens of of thousands. So many. So what fraction would those be if the hypothetical player base was 500k. 1mil. More?

Hahahahahaha, cute.

By the way, there wasn't just one boosting discord. There were many. Everyone wanted a piece of the pie, and made their own communities.

This is a thread about boosting. If boosting is pushed back under the rug and considered an illicit, bannable practice because of EU laws and Blizzard wanting to abide by them, I say "FUCKING GOOD". All of the people in this thread who have in the past said that "Nothing can be done about boosting" have always been wrong, that's not changed. It just requires will on the part of Blizzard. And if Blizzard never got the balls to have that will, I'm perfectly glad if some higher power forces it upon them.

[Kyanion]

Same to you. You weren't asking for sources because you actually wanted to learn anything.

Because the only source that matters is from the company themselves. And since WoW and FF do not report sub numbers that's that. You can guess, you can do whatever you want but it is only that a guess. It is not the right answer. Keep on believing in sites that make up numbers.

Like I said I'd LOVE to know the sub numbers just so people would stop guessing at it. But nothing is accurate and many of these sites are wildly off because they post about dead games, minor games in alpha and all sorts of other wrong information that has been point out to you. And I'm the one that doesn't want to learn anything.

You couldn't even leave my name in the quote because you didn't want me to reply. Tough shit.

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I've already provided plenty of data in the past in plenty of past conversations with people just like you.

Flawed data is not useful. Wrong data is not useful.

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By the way, there wasn't just one boosting discord. There were many. Everyone wanted a piece of the pie, and made their own communities.

Ooh now it is 'many' boosting discords. I bet tens of people made lots of money on this! So many.