I don't get why people buy +15 boost

[Coldkil]

Especially for new players, yes, it does sound better. Between understanding personal time better or newer players simply not wanting to even touch WoW because of how complex and time-consuming it is, player figures will most likely grow faster if it was possible to skip the mandatory gear chores. The challenge of the game, and this is by blizzards design, is in the endgame pillars - Mythic raiding, high keys and high rated pvp. I am fairly sure a lot more ppl will be interested in those if they didnt have to spend months suffering.

Then probably said players shouldn't play an MMO and go to other types of games. In a literal meaning - WoW is an old style MMO and until Blizard makes some drastic changes (that already happened over the course of the years) this won't ever happen. To me it just seems that players want a game that looks like WoW but it's not WoW, more like an hollow shell of what WoW has been so far.

I mean, i get it's me that's been playing for 17 years and the playerbase has deeply changed. Apparently most people don't care about the world but only about the challenge and bragging rights of beating said challenge.

I don't know if changing how WoW is for the sake of this players is going to be a good decision, but i'm not the one that can say that. If i end not liking how the game is, i'm just going to stop playing. Still doesn't make boosting better - it's again quite literally "i'm gonna pay more to skip the things i don't like". I agree Blizzard can be at fault for designing things that people don't like, but they have the numbers so they design the game according to them.

Oh, and people actually doing Mythic raids and high keys are just a small fraction of the playerbase. They're not the playerbase making them money (but they are often the most vocal and visible ones, so they're basically free advertisement). If anything, Blizzard is losing most players on the middle of the pack, which have always been the bulk of the community (not really sure about now though).

You just want WoW as a different game as it actually is, but since you can pay more to make that happen, you're fine with it.

[Nalam the Venom]

So. You dont enjoy playing the game so you buy boosts for alts just because you are addicted to the game.

If the game doesnt provide fun content to the point people prefer paying to avoid it, something is bad with that game.

Only addiction explains it.

I have cured mine long ago and just play once in a while when content is fresh.

Good luck.

I enjoy playing the game when i do good damage.

Game is not fun at 150-240 ilvl.

Only at like 255-260 does it start to become fun.

Tho, Those numbers are for before this recent patch.

I guess it would be more like, The game is fun at 290-300 ilvl.

Don’t know what ilvl m+15 drops atm

[Coldkil]

I enjoy playing the game when i do good damage.

Game is not fun at 150-240 ilvl.

Only at like 255-260 does it start to become fun.

Tho, Those numbers are for before this recent patch.

I guess it would be more like, The game is fun at 290-300 ilvl.

Don’t know what ilvl m+15 drops atm

You get dopamine releases when you see your damage meter go high. So you pay more and more to get that feeling over and over. It's literally addiction.

Your skills or reasonings have nothing to do with this - it's what's happening.

[Nalam the Venom]

You get dopamine releases when you see your damage meter go high. So you pay more and more to get that feeling over and over. It's literally addiction.

Your skills or reasonings have nothing to do with this - it's what's happening.

Nice.

Still would be better if the gear was straight from the store.

Going through WoW tokens and boosters is conveluted.

Make it an RNG box for more dopamine.

[crusadernero]

You see, I was one of them who always complained not getting invited to any m+ groups and if somebody told me to form my own I just got mad at them. Now I tried it from scratch on my own and I have to say it is so easy and calm to have your own choice of people and classes. I would never ever join another group again except for my own.

And I don't consider myself as a good player

Yes, its much better to make your own groups. Especially if you can live with failed keys from time to time. People tend to care ALOT less if someone elses key(a stranger) gets ruined for whatever reason.

I create my own groups everytime I decide to bother with m+. I invite ppl with high score and good gear, most runs go fine. If it fails, I dont care. im fine with it. Others though? Man, some ppl literally go berserk.

- - - Updated - - -

Nice.

Still would be better if the gear was straight from the store.

Going through WoW tokens and boosters is conveluted.

Make it an RNG box for more dopamine.

lol careful what you wish for!

[Mamut]

In the end of the day. You should play other game, that takes you right in to the action.

Unless you are addicted to this game.

I enjoy some part of something but I dont like other parts, I usually dont buy it.

I don't buy boosts so this does not affect me but I see plenty of reasons why people wanna buy it. Also I play/ed WoW mainly for raids and theres no other game than offer raiding that good like WoW so for many people enjoying raiding theres no other options because GW2 or FF raids are nothing like WoW.

[Rhelyo]

Why would anyone buy boosts when we know season 4 is the last season of Shadowlands and no new raid is being added this expansion. I am a mount collector and i will try to get the 2000 rating M+ mount. So far this week i have 1100 rating by doing 1 key at lvl 12 and the rest of the dungeons are at 10 while 4 of them being at 8.
I will try to do next week aswell +9 - +10 keys for all dungeons and see where i end up with the rating. By farming all dungeons i will end up with some gear that can be upgraded with valor up to ilvl 298 or more. I will probably struggle for the last points and will have to do +14 keys or even 15 but by that time my ilvl will be way higher and the prices for +15 boosts will be greatly reduced.
If you are buying +15 for gear just don't. Farm +8 +9,avoid last affix,get gear for all slots and upgrade them.You wont get top end ilvl gear but at this time of the expansion its just not worth it.

[Mamut]

And this should be a compelling argument in favour of boosting?

"I don't like a part of the game so i pay to skip it". At this point, they should give gear away for free because it's annoying to gear up a character, just log in, create a preset character with BiS gear, and go straight to +20s and Mythic raids.

Sounds a really better game huh.

- - - Updated - - -

Look above. You're literally telling the game is better if everyone just had the character selection screen filled with premade characters and just go in to do content.

And I think you are exagerrating here. Most people I know that bought boost did it either for achi (raids) or rating to make getting into pugs easier for them. Items from those boosts were just a bonus. Noone expected and noone wanted to get BiS items in 1 week.
Many people play without guild or in small non raiding guilds and if they did not get AOTC in like week 1-2 then they could forget about getting into pugs unless you were a healer.
Same was with low key M+ when people were asking for way bigger IO score than the key level they wanted to run.

I'm on a few months break now so can't see current state but I'm pretty sure this did not change at all or it's even worse at this point.

[Lolites]

Yep, happening since the new gen came into mmorpgs. They want everything and they want it NOW.
Glad im 35 and had the best years of mmorpg without all the weak kids.

well M+ boosting obviously started with M+
boosting as a whole started in vanila, assuming age 15+ at that time (younger wouldnt have money or way to buy boost) thats pretty much our generation of people (im 30) so... what exactly do you mean by "new gen"?

[Dan94]

I took a break after S2 and entered half way through S3 with gear from only S2. I bought 5x +15 boosta and then I began pugging 15s myself, ended up with 2500 score so I got the mount before season ended.

Why did I buy instead of doing it myself? Because that 600-700k spended saves me hours and hours amount of work where I would have to start my journey by doing 3-5lvl keys and progressing up to my first 15. We are talking many many hours of work. Paying for the service gives me an advantage which I gladly take.

Castle Nathria för example, I bought the mount on mythic last week for 1.8 million. I have 0 interest in joining a guild and spending months progressing on heroic & mythic. My only goal is the mount, same with m+. Once I have it I always go afk cause there is no other reward after the mount in m+ that I have any interest in.

[Amariw]

I usually do it for the mount and slight epeen (not enough commitment or desire to push past 17s or so). I pug keys till like 12 and then raise my own key from next week onwards when i get it in vault, and from there its usually smooth saillings, especially on relatively easy seasons like this and s3.

But i can understand people who just want the mount and have the extra gold, it honestly saves a lot of time. You basically pay gold for a mount. If I only cared about the mount and had tons of gold lying around i might have done similarly.

[Okacz]

Let's look at it from other side. Game, that is based on bad unhealthy mechanics, such as FOMO, time-gating, grind, RNG - isn't actually game. It's job simulator. I call it "If this game is designed for bots - let bots play it". But majority of players play games for entertainment and fun. They don't need so called "socialization". So, no wonder, that there are players, who play such games "professionaly" and provide their services to others.

Came back for the recent season. Dusted off an old hunter from S2, started doing M+ with random ass people, pretty much every run was fine, with chill people sometimes joking around. Did over 10 runs because dungeon selection is banger, like 4 of them at 15. Didn't feel too hard, except of Kara Lower, that one was brutal.

Did fated raid on normal to check it out, another relaxed pug run with a few wipes, but wrapped up in less than 2.5h, sounds about right. All of that was me purely having fun and upgrading a char from around 240 to 275.

Your argument feels like it comes from an already pessimistic approach, treating the content as, I don't know, your enemy? Social aspects, possibility to endlessly upgrade character, RNG are all parts of a designed game, it's their implementation that makes them good or bad. I'd say currently it's pretty good.

You can make preemtive assumptions about any game to ruin it for youself, without seeing the positives. Don't buy Elden Ring, it's shit filled with unhealthy mechanics, such as RNG drops, too hard bosses, long horse rides and sewer levels. Some games don't need long horse rides, damn it, why can't From Soft get it together!

[crusadernero]

They do it beacuse its easy and ppl have money for it.

[pfbe]

I think the issue is not really "gearing up is annoying", but "gearing up normally is annoying because there are a lot of bad players in low level dungeons that make me lose precious time and i don't want to put up with them, and just skip everything to the endgame".

You know, his happens exactly because boosting is so normalized that most people do that, making the previous process worse for everyone, thus making boosting even more appealing - there's a loop in place very similar to the one that made Horde become the largely dominant faction.

well, it's not like the game does much to reduce friction in the process. While waiting to form a group, you are severely limited in the forms of content you can take part in - no bg's, no arenas, no random dungeons, no random raids, no group quests, no torghast, etc. Forming a dungeon group is not gameplay, it is anti-gameplay that locks you out of the majority of the game's content.

[Coldkil]

And I think you are exagerrating here.

I'm not, because gear is completely out of the equation at this point. People don't pay for items (which sounds obvious), but to have better/faster access to other activities, or to et achievements they have put no work into to have an easier time doing more stuff later on.

This is why widespread/normalized boosting is a problem. Gear is not a factor at all, what people is saying is "i feel the need to buy a boost because a) content is not accessible/problematic to deal with (to the point it feels a chore) and b) my experience will be better after i have the boost done".

It's pretty clear Blizzard has overlooked on the matter for too long (much like faction unbalance, with cross-faction being the only solution at this point). I'm not against boosting as a practice itself because it will never go away, so it's useless to fight it; but it's worth considering the impact widespread boosting practices have on the endgame loop. What i see is a slowly deteriorating situation where more and more people expect others to be at their level (and by this i mean score/curve etc) so the ones who still not partake in boosts are more and more prone to buy them. Guilds are a dying breed since you can pug a lot of stuff, and in many guilds boosting is considered fine as it's preparation steps to Mythic raids.

The example you provided are exactly the reason why boosting is damaging the game. People shouldn't be in need of buying a boost otherwise they cannot partecipate into activities, as you clearly said.

- - - Updated - - -

well, it's not like the game does much to reduce friction in the process. While waiting to form a group, you are severely limited in the forms of content you can take part in - no bg's, no arenas, no random dungeons, no random raids, no group quests, no torghast, etc. Forming a dungeon group is not gameplay, it is anti-gameplay that locks you out of the majority of the game's content.

On this i can agree. I really dislike how trying to join a group for M+ (cause i want to do a different key from my own) takes so much and it's annoying as hell - though it's players who make it like this for the most part. I usually stick to my own keys or guild groups to minimize this time, something very few people do in the end.

- - - Updated - - -

Still would be better if the gear was straight from the store.

If they made a server with ready-to-go characters and you could just log in and play whatever you want, i think it would be pretty successful at this point (plus it would nullify boosting needs for a lot of people).

EDIT: just to be clear, in the end everyone can do whatever he wants with his money. So i'm not gonna go preaching "boosting bad you shouldn't do it". I just think it reached a point where it's starting to affect the game design as a whole.

EDIT2: i am actually finding this discussion pretty interesting. Until it's "BUH I NID MAH BOOST" i like how in the end there's a plethora of situations and points of view behind the matter, and how the "boosting issue" is not simply people wanting rewards for no effort.

[Lolites]

You already pay to play this game, on top of that you pay other people to play the game for you so you can get stuff in the game you don't want to play?

tbf if you pay for boost doesnt mean you dont play, selfplay is a thing... what ill never get is piloted boost

[Mamut]

The example you provided are exactly the reason why boosting is damaging the game. People shouldn't be in need of buying a boost otherwise they cannot partecipate into activities, as you clearly said.

I agree on that but I think huge part why boosts got so popular in recent years is that because people could not get into groups. So it's not that boosts locked people from doing activities. People themselves made boosts so popular with their unrealistic requirements for content they do (heroic achi for normal runs, +15 dungeon run while doing +10 etc).

And I'm not defending boosting at all nor I encourage anyone to use it. I'm just not surprised why it's so popular.

[Coldkil]

I agree on that but I think huge part why boosts got so popular in recent years is that because people could not get into groups. So it's not that boosts locked people from doing activities. People themselves made boosts so popular with their unrealistic requirements for content they do (heroic achi for normal runs, +15 dungeon run while doing +10 etc).

And I'm not defending boosting at all nor I encourage anyone to use it. I'm just not surprised why it's so popular.

That's exactly my point. Also it's pretty clear Blizzard is only partially at fault because i can agree friction is bad but players asking for stupid requirements has always been a thing and that's the main driver for boosts being really useful for a lot of people.

You can always say "you can make your own groups" - but when most people is "on the other side" you're gonna have an even harder time (mostly because players statistics have zero value and you cannot really distinguish good players from bad ones).

[prwraith]

just complete like 18-20's across the board. Then every time you list for a 15 it's instant accept

[Ragu4]

im garbage at modern WoW lol, i struggle to do +10, shrug. I just cannot keep up healing. I legit do not understand how people heal this much spike damage.