[Speculation] Boosting is going to be banned fully

[Relapses]

No, it is no conspiracy. I myself know guilds like that. So it is more about anecdotal evidence here.

Buddy if you can't understand how much of a leap in logic there is to go from "I know a guild that sells boosts," to "Blizzard is clearly turning customers into whales via boosting" then I don't know what to tell you. You're literally making something you claim Blizzard does up out of thin air and using a single anecdotal interaction with a one guild as proof. Like I said: This is a conspiracy.

[Unholyground]

Lol. So proof that what you say is likely to not happen is just dismissed. But it for sure is going to happen they way you say because you say so.

It makes logical sense to gain an extra 10 million subs into gamepass. Once they reach 55 million or so they now profit from gamepass and have the biggest online userbase for gaming. It will only take them like 9 years to pay for the acquisition and they just need to keep 55 million or more.

[Linkedblade]

edit: ingame boosting for gold, ofcourse boosting for money was always banned

I'll spare you the "my gf works for bobby kotick and is sucking his dick in exchange for info". Blizz currently has plans to ban boosting fully or at least intervene in some meaningful form, heres what i was told:

i.imgur.com/FXOJihO.png (sorry cant post links)


source: dude trust me, also behind tor because mods on mmo-c probably would leak my ip to blizz and then connect the person im talking to me

I don't see why they would do that. Boosting keeps people playing the game.

[Stormwolf64]

Dont mind boosting at all. Gives me a chance to get what i'd never get otgerwise. Its up to me to pay or not, no one forcing me by gunpoint

[deenman]

never gonna happen,you cant do it,paying ingame currency for services is a core aspect of an mmo,might as well ban the auction house and professions,its literaly the same thing,and even if they did,enforcing it would be 100% imposible

[rhorle]

It makes logical sense to gain an extra 10 million subs into gamepass. Once they reach 55 million or so they now profit from gamepass and have the biggest online userbase for gaming. It will only take them like 9 years to pay for the acquisition and they just need to keep 55 million or more.

By losing out on 10 million subs of revenue. Including the revenue generated by the token. It is more likely they offer a discount on the game pass for WoW subscribers. Like I said what you claim is unsupported by the ESO, FO76 and the other "subscription" games they may have acquired. Wouldn't they want to add the 2.5 estimated ESO subscribers to game pass? Or entice the non-subscribing players to get game pass? If it is all about boosting Game Pass subscribers then why pass up existing products?

[Relapses]

But beside the question how many whales there are it simply is true. A whale is someone who invests a lot of real money into a game to gain ingame advtanges, and those token buyers who buy boosts actually do that. So yes, blizzard turns, at least these players i know about, into whales. And i imagine there are way more than those few i know.

This is no conspiracy theory, as there is no conspiracy in saying "Blizzard makes money with tokens". It simply is the truth.

Please go back and read my original post where I told you why this is a conspiracy theory. (You know, the part of my post you didn't quote.) I'm done repeating myself as I'm positive I've had this exact conversation with you multiple times at this point.

[ZazuuPriest]

i surely hope not. I make so much gold from boosting bads that cant be assed to increase their iO on their own. I get my full vault and stacks of gold every week from these fools. The profits are delicious.

[Ashana Darkmoon]

I would love to see stats on how much the community boosting lowered sales, if it is even possible to measure such a thing.

Anecdotally, it seems to have made a huge difference. Friends who were doing it stopped because it became way more of a hassle etc.

[Celement]

I would love to see stats on how much the community boosting lowered sales, if it is even possible to measure such a thing.

Anecdotally, it seems to have made a huge difference. Friends who were doing it stopped because it became way more of a hassle etc.

It had a rather large effect from what I've seen. I believe part of the tokens rapid fall in value is a reflection of that.

[Unholyground]

By losing out on 10 million subs of revenue. Including the revenue generated by the token. It is more likely they offer a discount on the game pass for WoW subscribers. Like I said what you claim is unsupported by the ESO, FO76 and the other "subscription" games they may have acquired. Wouldn't they want to add the 2.5 estimated ESO subscribers to game pass? Or entice the non-subscribing players to get game pass? If it is all about boosting Game Pass subscribers then why pass up existing products?

No they are free to play with optional subs, WoW is not free to play, and those other games I legitimately did not remember existed until you brought them up. Removing the token is better for the health of the game in the long term and adding WoW to gamepass ultimate is a win for everyone. I garauntee if they moved current WoW players to a gamepass ultimate sub many of them would be far more likely to check out other gamepass games.

[Katchii]

People are still shitting on this view I have but I know it will happen, I see based on some of these changes they have been making/working towards and with the Microsoft acquisition they will retire the WoW token as it is a primary incentive to boost and go against the tos. MS wants gamepass subs and the WoW token actually hurts thier subs if you can make money by playing a game to buy other games. Also you can already get free gamepass by doing quizes playing games and getting the microsoft rewards app.

3 years from now battle.net and gamepass will be merged making it the largest online player base in the world. Somewhere in there retail WoW gets added to consoles and gamepass.

This would defeat one of the primary purposes of introducing the token, which was to curb the amount of external gold selling/ RMT going on. I see no reason why they would get rid of it. Yes, the people who use in game gold aren't paying subscriptions, but each token purchased pays for that person's sub + $5.

I'm not saying it's impossible or that the change to Game Pass doesn't make sense or anything, but I'm just not 100% sold on the idea they'll get rid of the token because of the above.

[Ashana Darkmoon]

It had a rather large effect from what I've seen. I believe part of the tokens rapid fall in value is a reflection of that.

If true it seems like a pretty good example of effective, targeted regulation!

You can't stop something, but you can reduce the amount greatly by making it more of a pain in the butt. The rest probably isn't worth dealing with

[Relapses]

To quote you fully:



Right, but i know some, and that is argument enough to say there actually are whales, and they use the token system to buy boosts. I never argumented about the amount. I simply wrote that boosting is way more epidemic as all chats and group finders are full of ads no matter if they are banned. You did not have that in the old days, even if there was a LFG chat and a trade chat already those days.

I agree that advertisement is out of control. I would like to see things done to curb the amount of boost advertisement that exists in the game. But that is something that's easier said than done. The solution that @rhorle made about adding a boosting channel is probably the most elegant as it both centralizes the advertisement and allows for easier moderation. They could also try the FFXIV route and make it so that it's opt-in only but I think that'd just have the opposite effect where trade channel would instead be inundated by players looking to buy boosts. Regardless, it's probably better to go take one of these routes as there is very little Blizzard can do to curb the desire for players to be boosted. This neatly moves onto the rest of your post:

How much does that change the fact there actually are whales and that blizzard creates them by not giving them progression pathes?

This is where your tendency to rely on conspiratorial thinking patterns gets the best of you. Blizzard isn't "creating" whales by failing to have multiple gear progression systems in the game. Players choose to seek boosting options. Blizzard isn't telling anybody what to do with their $15/mo in the game.

You even said yourself there should be progression for those players (while you condemded vertical progression, which i do not see as a reason). So that simply is the solution. Get those boostees to play their gameplay. With their rewards. That could even be part of the vertical progression. Drop gear from world quests with different difficulties. Allow crafters to progress without having to run raids or dungeons. Make something like torghast but with gearing rewards.

And simply lets get rid of gate keeping. Yes, raiders demand good gear. But other players also should get gearing progression. Simply because it is a "core" ( @rhorle !) mechanic of the game.

And really, that is all that is needed to solve the problem.

I never condemned vertical progression. I said that as long as vertical progression exists that so will boosting. Your argument seems to be that if Blizzard gave everybody access to the same potential gear that boosting would vanish. And I'd even be inclined to agree with you there. But that would also require that the way loot works currently would have to go away, to be replaced by a system which either doesn't use loot or greatly diminishes the power creep between casual and "hardcore" players. I think, personally, this is the wrong way to approach the problem because boosting, imo, isn't a big enough issue to warrant this kind of change.

[Celement]

If true it seems like a pretty good example of effective, targeted regulation!

You can't stop something, but you can reduce the amount greatly by making it more of a pain in the butt. The rest probably isn't worth dealing with

If they move onto banning individual groups I think the effect will be noticeable. Right now new accounts advertising usually tend to die in an hour (" was chain queuing something on alt cant recall what lfr or timewalking).

Right now most of the spam is from a few select groups trying to snag up up a far smaller buyer pool ( most community sales were to br players were na and oceanic too but they made the lions share).

I am still skeptical they are going this route but if they do it will impact ingame spam pretty drastically.

[Cæli]

blizzard will go bankrupt and sell the licence a lot before boosting is "banned"

[Swnem]

Hope so. It undermines the point of achieving anything in the game if you can just pay to have someone do it for you.

[Zantera]

Could always hope the day boosters get banned but that probably won't happen.

[Therougetitan]

They do not have the manpower to ban all boosting and it is stupid to think otherwise. What are they going to do, monitor third party discord servers? Monitor every high end raiding guild and act of trading gold? They don't even have enough customer support as is due to trying to automate most of the process.

[MoanaLisa]

Hope so. It undermines the point of achieving anything in the game if you can just pay to have someone do it for you.

I've never boosted. I'm fine with the achievements that I can manage to get. Is my game undermined? No, it isn't. Do I care if some stranger's game is undermined? No, I don't. It's their game. If they feel great about it then fine. If it fucks up their game, well....that's on them.

Nevertheless I'd like to see boosting advertising in chat and on the LFG interface stopped. If it's out of sight, I could not care less.

- - - Updated - - -

They do not have the manpower to ban all boosting and it is stupid to think otherwise. What are they going to do, monitor third party discord servers? Monitor every high end raiding guild and act of trading gold? They don't even have enough customer support as is due to trying to automate most of the process.

I posted earlier in the thread the idea that player-to-player transactions over a certain amount, say 10,000 gold, could be subject to a 72-hour delay and cancellable by either side. That would be simple enough to code in fact. It wouldn't stop boosting but it might throw a monkey wrench into the gears. I can think of a relatively simple workaround for that (worthless auction house item for 150K gold) but it would add more complication to a process that would have already gotten complicated to manage on a large scale. And even this could be flagged easily enough by Blizzard. It's not an outright ban. I don't know that Blizzard actually wants to drive it from the game. Again with them: There are words and there are actions and the two don't match up. It's the Blizzard way.