Reason's behind disgust at 60$ for level 90 chars

[Deleted]

Sorry, but I do not accept that. Paying my monthly sub does not give me the skills to do heroics. It only makes sense that the room for error is less in the top content and I know my reflexes are not good enough. I simply do not have the skills required - and I am totally fine with that and do not see it my "right" to have the gear that content would give me. I think sometimes it is easy to look at something you can do yourself - maybe not even find that hard - and assume that since you can do it - everyone can if they spent the time to try. Unfortunately the world just doesn't work like that (or maybe fortunately). Some things require a skill to do that not everyone has. Personally I think the world would be a boring place if we all had the same skills.

I would also say that even by your own estimation you acknowledge that it isn't available to everyone - not everyone has he ability to put the time investment into it. However my original point about not everyone having the skill is my main point.

I fully agree. I've played the game since early Burning Crusade and I couldn't even pull my weight in a normal mode. I've got time, my job affords me a lot of it. But time never has and never will = skill. Some people have an intrinsic understanding of the game and are skilled, but my dedication alone would not get me to heroic level raids. People at the top have said some people simply lack the awareness/ discipline to raid at heroic level.

[Lolvanish]

Because buying any form of advantege is considered P2W. You can whine as much as you want, yet it will remain true.

People are still making this argument? LOL

[Deleted]

I actually totally agree, just not when everyone is already paying $15 for a level playing field. Everyone should have equal opportunity to implemented shortcuts with those $15. Reserving character boosting services for people with more disposable income strikes me as unfair and greatly lowers the value of the $15 they charge every month. The same goes for the profession boost.

Your playing field is level. You just take a little longer to get on to the turf.

[crakerjack]

I actually totally agree, just not when everyone is already paying $15 for a level playing field. Everyone should have equal opportunity to implemented shortcuts with those $15. Reserving character boosting services for people with more disposable income strikes me as unfair and greatly lowers the value of the $15 they charge every month. The same goes for the profession boost.

I also understand that for the vast majority of the people who play this game, it's simply a gear treadmill that starts at level cap. They don't understand how this boost comes across as a bad decision for players who don't just want WoW to be a mindless boss grind to raise the all important number located next to the words Item Level.

Why are you mentioning even playing field? Someone boosting to 90, is no better than any typical 90. What disadvantages/advantages are going on when someone buys a level 90 boost? As far as I can see, there's none at all. Whether they level to 90 or boost to 90, they're still 90. They're not 91 1/2... they're not 95 or even 100. Are you looking at it from a racing perspective or something? Trying to race someone to level 90 and they boost? I'm trying to see your insight because you're seeing something that I would consider irrelevant to the topic. I can understand even playing field for PvP and other topics, but when it comes to leveling, there's no advantages being handed out. You have to admit that the game is 100% end game and that raiding/PvP are the main aspects of the game. When you hit max level, you either waste your time w/ features or you PvP/Raid.

[Deleted]

Try being in a lfr with a bunch a pay to boosts dps in nothing but greens, and no knowledge of their class.... that's why the hate!

A boost comes with 483 ilvl gear. Now why would anyone trade those for greenies? And I don't know if you know this but without the boost lfr is hell aswell.

[Templis]

Sorry, but I do not accept that. Paying my monthly sub does not give me the skills to do heroics. It only makes sense that the room for error is less in the top content and I know my reflexes are not good enough. I simply do not have the skills required - and I am totally fine with that and do not see it my "right" to have the gear that content would give me. I think sometimes it is easy to look at something you can do yourself - maybe not even find that hard - and assume that since you can do it - everyone can if they spent the time to try. Unfortunately the world just doesn't work like that (or maybe fortunately). Some things require a skill to do that not everyone has. Personally I think the world would be a boring place if we all had the same skills.

I would also say that even by your own estimation you acknowledge that it isn't available to everyone - not everyone has he ability to put the time investment into it. However my original point about not everyone having the skill is my main point.

Yet you assume that everyone has the patience to level to level 90. Blizzard stated not too long ago that only 30% of all players even make it past level 10. People don't get into heroic raiding for a number of reasons, the most common I imagine being that most players these days want to raid on their own time and don't want to be tied to yet another schedule, which is totally fine. If you want to pretend that you are literally unable to get heroic gear with your $15 a month, I'm totally fine with that, but it's not the truth. Your character is capable of being in a raid where a heroic boss dies, drops your loot, you picking it up and equipping it. That's all that it comes down to.

[Deleted]

Try being in a lfr with a bunch a pay to boosts dps in nothing but greens, and no knowledge of their class.... that's why the hate!

Before the boosts came, I would be in lfr with a bunch of people dpsing with no knowledge of their class but, fair play to you! They were in purples instead!

[Templis]

Your playing field is level. You just take a little longer to get on to the turf.

Your analogies don't really apply here. The turf begins when you log in and sit at the character screen.

Edit - Or at the very least wherever the free version of the game ends.

[Deleted]

-snippity snip- Your character is capable of being in a raid where a heroic boss dies, drops your loot, you picking it up and equipping it. That's all that it comes down to.

In my case I'd have to pay 250k to the best guild on my server to take me, but, yeah, true enough. Some people literally do not have the skill, awareness or reaction times to do a heroic raid. I know a lot of people who play near enough fulltime, but they struggle on normals. Wheres their insta' heroic for their 15 bucks?

[Templis]

In my case I'd have to pay 250k to the best guild on my server to take me, but, yeah, true enough. Some people literally do not have the skill, awareness or reaction times to do a heroic raid. I know a lot of people who play near enough fulltime, but they struggle on normals. Wheres their insta' heroic for their 15 bucks?

Good question. Where's my insta 90 for 15 bucks?

[Deleted]

Your analogies don't really apply here. The turf begins when you log in and sit at the character screen.

If you consider the levelling process a part of the game that takes part on this metaphorical field then, sure. But I'm fairly certain that levelling is more like the tunnels from the changing rooms, and the field itself is reserved for the endgame. That field, where you have as much a chance to pursue gear, achievements and the likes as anyone else in the game. We will agree to disagree, however. We're dynamically opposed on the matter and I respect your opinion.

- - - Updated - - -

Good question. Where's my insta 90 for 15 bucks?

I'd respond with the fact that Blizzard aren't required to provide the insta-90 and, in many cases, some people don't want it. It's a paid service, not required to be provided but there as an alternative, some might say with a price tag to dissuade its continuous use. But you do, for your fifteen dollars, have access to the game in all its wonders. No restricted features, just a slightly more lengthy process to join someone at 90 if they use the boost.

[Deleted]

What is now way back in the day, when the first kind of "pay to do something with your character" (can't even remember what the first thing was, race change?) people were all about how the ultimate doom for WoW would be when you could simply pay to "change" class, or in this case, to get max level.

I just think people held on to this one because when this was relevant, leveling was actually the real deal. Leveling was hard and it took _alot_ of time. Getting to 60 in vanilla actually had a slight feeling of "having beat the game", atleast imo.

Over time, with all of Blizzards services, I just think this was unavoidable and personally I neither like or dislike it. I can understand the argument that it is for catching up, but for people who has played since vanilla and actually leveled from scratch you've also got to understand their point. Leveling hasn't always been easy and this is just something that's still lingering from the time when "boosting an alt" really wasn't doable compared to how it is today.

It's good seeing people come back but keep in mind that players that do complain do it for what could be considered a valid reason.

[Deleted]

If you consider the levelling process a part of the game that takes part on this metaphorical field then, sure. But I'm fairly certain that levelling is more like the tunnels from the changing rooms, and the field itself is reserved for the endgame. That field, where you have as much a chance to pursue gear, achievements and the likes as anyone else in the game. We will agree to disagree, however. We're dynamically opposed on the matter and I respect your opinion.

That depends on what you enjoy about the game. I spend much more time leveling up characters than raiding. I know there are those that say the real game starts at 90, but I know I'm also not alone. Many people play this game for many different reasons.

[Templis]

If you consider the levelling process a part of the game that takes part on this metaphorical field then, sure. But I'm fairly certain that levelling is more like the tunnels from the changing rooms, and the field itself is reserved for the endgame. That field, where you have as much a chance to pursue gear, achievements and the likes as anyone else in the game. We will agree to disagree, however. We're dynamically opposed on the matter and I respect your opinion.

Yep, I also did mention it in one of my previous posts. For the players that do disagree with the instant 90, the game is most likely not just the level cap gear treadmill that it is for most players. To be frank, the instant 90 and instant maxed professions go quite strongly against the initial philosophy of the game of '$15 and everyone gets the same sized serving'. I would have preferred they'd at least scrapped the monthly fee when they decided to provide real in-game character services that affect gameplay (to one extent or another).

I can totally understand why players are ok with this service. I'm just a little baffled that they cannot understand how some players might feel strongly against it, or at least refuse to believe it might be anything other than envy.

[Ciddy]

Irrelevant. By that reasoning selling full LFR gear, legendary cloak and full Honor gear is fine too, since none of those are difficult. Hell Flex and Conquest gear are debatable as well.

Is there any difference?

I'll call it pay to win when you can get something that completely bypasses a skill check or gives you an unfair advantage over everyone else. To me, P2W is paying $20 for an item that instantly kills your target, lets you pick items from heroic Garrosh's loot table, or similar. Leveling to 90 only takes time (no skill), and achieving that is hardly "winning" in my opinion. My one-year-old nephew could probably level a character to 90.

[Alroxas]

The "greens" are better ilvl than the epic items dropped in the first tier of LFR, whch is need to get into ToT. Also, as a lot of players who do LFR have "no knowledge of their class", then the whole argument here is nothing but churlishness and completely invalid. Smacking of nothing more than bitterness and whining.

A boost comes with 483 ilvl gear. Now why would anyone trade those for greenies? And I don't know if you know this but without the boost lfr is hell aswell.

Better ilv maybe but not better itemized, in fact, you're not even hit/exp capped from the gear you get at lv 90 boosted greens. You can however immediately que into LFR.

So you get players new to either game and/or class plus poorly itemized gear (with no reforging or enchants) and practically zero accountability in LFR to do even moderately ok equals a very bad time in LFR. Granted LFR has gone down the tubes since Flex, but now more so. The only good thing initially is that all these folks are running ToT LFR, but now a few are trickling into SoO LFR.

Going back to the OP:

If every player that boosted took the time and effort to learn their class (on their own), outfit themselves properly (at least reforge to hit/exp cap, maybe a few gems and few enchants) and not derp in raid, then I don't think there would be so much "hate". However, current experience shows what I previously described as typical new player behavior and that causes toxic behavior from everyone.

I guess we can call it Raid Rage (akin to Road Rage).

Honestly, though if new players want to be bad by not investing time/effort in their boosted 90s, I'm more than happy to purposely play even worse than they are (i.e. Intentionally Wiping the LFR over and over) till they either a) quit or b) stop being bad. Which is probably a failure on my part precipitated by a failure on their part.

[Lovechile]

Try being in a lfr with a bunch a pay to boosts dps in nothing but greens, and no knowledge of their class.... that's why the hate!

I agree. I'm playing a shadow priest that I boosted atm...and yes, while I am doing pretty craptastic dps because my gear sucks...I at least took the effort to have the toon already leveled to 70 so I'd have an inkling of an idea about it, read up on noxxic, icy-veins, ect about spec and rotation and gems and stuff, and I already have 2 90's so I don't get into lfr and go "a hurp de durp wtf iz fierz lolz". So while I'm not the best dps, I'm still a good PLAYER.

Then you have "Mr. McBoosted Tank" who's never played anything but a mage or a rogue or just bought the game 6 months ago or just someone who is a baddie to begin with and has never tanked...or the same for a healer...or just any baddie anyways, that is now a baddie on a class they barely know....so now they're STILL standing in stuff, still nubbing it up, but now they don't have the gear to carry them so they're semi-decent dps.

[Deianeira]

In MMOs everything is all about time, how much you have and how you can spend it to help you win. The game used to be the more time you invested the more you could spend on doing the things that help you win. By allowing people to essentially to save time with money you are essentially letting them spend more time doing things that help them win vs. someone who did not spend that money. No matter how you slice it, it IS pay to win since the most valuable resource when it comes to winning IS time.

Tell me exactly WHAT i do win when i use this service?

[Mihalik]

sip

I don't want to rain on your parade but there are a few things I'd like to mention.

Today it doesn't take as long to level as it did in the past. Back in the day it took infinitely longer to level 1-60 then it does today to level 1-90. Unlocking a dungeon was a major benchmark. Sometimes you spent weeks or months grinding Deadmines, Scarlet Monastery or Uldaman. Getting to from 30 to 40 was a massive achievement that took endless grinding. This situation persisted pretty much all the way until WotLK when Heirlooms and lowered mount costs and level requirements made alts a viable option.

While leveling today teaches you nothing, (you can pretty much afk dungeons, bot BGs or autorun quests 1-90) in the past it did teach you tons of stuff. One of them being patience. Like when you had to run 10 minutes back an forth on foot just to pick up and deliver a single quest that only rewarded 2% of your xp bar and was 5 levels under yours because it was in a zone that was 10 levels over the quest level you learned that 1, Dying was not fun (corpse run on foot at normal runspeed) 2, You preferred to go the long way round a group of mobs because it was safer.

What leveling used to teach you wasn't your classes abilities, but patience and situational awareness. Plus it gave you time to learn about things like addons, agro, other class abilities.

I'm not against the level 90 boost. I used it myself. What bothers me is the total and utter lack of a learning curve in the game at this moment. You can go 1 to 90 without learning anything about being a team player, about being aware about your environment or anything. You hit 90 (booster or not) being utterly unaware of anything, go into 5 man HCs and you stay utterly unaware of anything (let's be honest 5 mans are a joke), you go to Timeless Isle, running around doing nothing staying utterly unaware, then you step into LFR or Flex and is a total and utter disaster as both are totally out of your league. Unfortunatly you might get lucky in LFR get carried, again learn nothing, which means you are "ready" for Flex or Normals.

WoW needs some of type of a learning curve back in the game. One that works, is not utterly broken, and actually teaches people to play the damn game again.

[Giscoicus]

Your playing field is level. You just take a little longer to get on to the turf.

And in a game with daily and weekly lockouts cool downs and reset, along with continuous progression, the longer a character is at gap the further ahead they get. The game doesn't remain static at level cap, leveling is ony part of progression and those who boost will move further ahead. More importantly, progression beyond leveling is easily controlled, you cannot just keep grinding to catchup, the difference is very hard to make up

You analogy is weak, the only thing level is player opportunity in this game, players who sieze it gain an advantage. Those who boost are paying for an advantage.