It's not hard to level and gear in classic or TBC btw, I wish folks would stop making it out to be that. Without boosting I leveled a shaman on alliance with an average of more than a level per hour for the trip. Ran some raids with my guild this week for gear and will be in a good spot for TBC. My hourly through the first 30 levels was less than an hour per level (2 levels per average for the first 15 levels). I didn't buy myself anything other than bags with my level 60 toons. I ended the leveling trip with almost 500g in my bag, blues in everyone spot except my neck and 1 ring and reputations in numerous factions almost or past honored. Also mining is maxed and am in a good spot for jewel crafting to go up quickly. My cooking is maxed as is first aid. All that in less than 2 weeks.
I would say in a guild with over 400 active people playing not a single boosted player that has boosted in the last 2 weeks are as far progressed as I am and I did this part time when I got home from work every evening. Pay-to-win is so a thing....
This guy copied classic 60-level toon in most cases. Even if this guy started a new 1-lvl character, he can level it in a week or so (I leveled my current main during actual TBC in something like 5-6 days), before any serious raiding activily.
And if we talk about completely new player - he do not need to be competitive, and can experience a full leveling adventure while slowly learning the game/class. At least when I start to play any new MMO, I am not using any boosts in any cicrcuimstances on my first/main character, because I want to feel the game, story, learn the class, etc. I can use it on alt then, but I doubt it can be considered as "win".
So, no win in any situation.
I didn't play Classic Vanilla. Just bought the boost. Started playing retail in BC, so i'm trying to recreate my first character.
If the character boost system had never been implemented then I would have just never touched the game.
Idk how people can't see that the boost is actually a good implementation for the growth of the community. It attracts more players.
Anyone who says WoW isn't pay to win now just doesn't know what pay to win is. If you can spend real money to gain an advantage over players who aren't spending real money, it's pay to win. It's that simple.
I think people are taking the whole "pay to win" to a weird degree.
This s becoming something akin to "I suffered and wasted my time leveling, so now you have to endure it too!".
The boost doesn't give you a power advantage. Rather, it just saves you time by skipping irrelevant content.
But does ppl get an advantage. they get to play the character they want on outland day one. They are geeting ahead of the curve they will have less trouble finding groups, they will reach lvl 70 earlier. They will set the AH prices. They will gear up faster, be raid faster and assert their raiding spots faster.
Ppl in my guild are already lvl 63 and i am still grinding to reach lvl 40 on my Paladin.
And i have less options to find ppl to grind dungeons or form groups when they skip the lvling.
And forget about everything i said it is a microtransaction why are you defending it are you guys Blizzard employers trying to get us to be find with it
I think the problem is to a lot of people this game is more a trophy than a game. So they want to have all the boxes checked so it doesn't matter how they get checked but only that they are. So any lengths is worth it and even more so if they don't have to actually play. Really its odd to me. But to each thier own. I just wish I thought up the product that people didn't want to use that much but will throw a lot of money at just to say they have it.