Boosting Communities Deleted from Discord, Remote FollowUnit Script to be Disabled

[Jinpachi]

Assuming none of these bannable offenses are illegal...I miss when programs like these were communication tools and not social scoring systems.

Just to clarify this for myself...they are investigating people to verify that they are cheating in World of Warcraft, and banning them, but they do not make nor are associated with World of Warcraft, is that correct?

yup. time for a new app.

[rhorle]

People would pay extra money to avoid fun and engaging content they are already paying for? LOL you dont half talk a load of nonsense sometimes.

So you think the only reason people boost is because they don't enjoy playing the game they pay for? People boost for many reasons.

[Poppen]

I would say better late than never but gold inflation has been out of control on classic for a long time.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Once again, Blizzard doesn't address the problem that they themselves created, just further alienating their dwindling customerbase.

[Gorsameth]

So Discord decides to delete these servers, but they allow racist, lgbt phobic and antisemantic servers to roam at wild.

Wonder how much blizzard paid them to do this.

Have you considered reporting those servers so they can be deleted aswell?

People have already mentioned how many servers Discord shuts down for violating the ToS.

[oplawlz]

PRiVaTe ComPAnIeS CAn dO WHat ThEY LiKE. No, they fucking cant. I mean they can because they have all the money and nobody can challenge them, but they shouldnt have that kind of power.

They shouldn't have the power to control their own services? That's an interesting take that has ramifications I'm not sure you fully understand.

[exochaft]

No amount of "fun and engaging" will help you if the goal you need to achieve is blocked by group content which you cannnot access due to several reasons. Like, m+ has so many difficulties that the group of people you can play with at a current difficulty level is constantly bleeding people out who outlevel it by gear. Instead, it fills up with people who are probably more a burden on the group than a real contribution to it.

Back in the "older days" where you only had a couple of difficulties (normal and heroic in Wrath, or the introduction of Mythic in dungeons, and nothing above it), the amount of people who were able to run your Heroic / Mythic grew, because people could not outlevel it anymore. As the result, runs became overall easier - not only because of the increasing gearscore of the players running dungeons, but also because more and more people knew them. And it was a thing which I liked, because it happened to me just as well. I have farmed the heirloom trinkets back in WoD - and I did fine despite not setting foot in any raid above LFR - I did have my Mythic gear of course, and I knew how to play my characters and I knew tactics and stuff. I contributed well to my group, be it as tank, dps or healer. With the introduction of m+, I just cannot compete anymore, because people outgear dungeons faster than I can. So people I can play with get worse and worse, since all good player level out.

That's great for esports, but its a really bad social engineering in an MMO. FFXIV does it much, much better.

This is exactly where the fun and engaging aspect comes in. Sure, fun is relative for everyone, but it does tie in with engagement aspects of the game. To skip to the end point, the reason boosting is so prevalent is because there's a huge gap between what's efficient and what's fun and engaging.

A lot of this stems into the arduous restrictions, whether literal or artificial, when it comes to the game. When the classic versions of the game came around, people were saying "Man, these raids are ridiculously easy!"... and there's several reasons for that. One is that the skill of players and the information available is higher than back then, this is true. However, another major factor is that gear wasn't the limiting factor in progression.

To simplify, the game is currently in a catch-22 scenario for many players (not all): you need gear to complete the content, but the content you're trying to clear drops the gear you need. If you want to get your BiS gear, you're going to have to work harder and put in more hours than you did back in the earlier days of WoW when normalized to the current standard, which classic versions of the game clearly demonstrate. If your goal was getting BiS, as it is with many gear-driven players, it's a lot harder to accomplish on average unless you're a top tier player clearing all the hardest content. However, the restrictions on these forms of content is considered very arduous, which deters engagement and can be considered not fun for players if you peruse any forum about these sorts of things. Basically, Blizz has been designing a game in a way to make their lives easier and obtain their goals, but it goes against what the average player probably considers fun or worth their time.

When I say making the game more fun and engaging would reduce boosting, the method through this would work is if Blizz got rid of all their silly restrictions and scaled back on their time-gating, difficulty settings, etc. The MAIN reason boosting occurs is because people that boost don't feel it's worth their time to play the game to get what they want; they'd take the path of least resistance because there's nothing in the gameplay aspect that they deem is worth it. Now, you won't completely get rid of boosting, that's like saying you can regulate whales out of a mobile game. However, the concept of fun and engagement ties into making the game more accessible and entertaining, with the emphasis on making the experience of playing the game offset the time investment required to achieve your goal. Obviously not everyone enjoys the game the same way, but there's broad areas and systems that could be changed and overhauled where likely the vast majority of players would experience an increase in fun and engagement with the game.

The overarching goal is to make playing the game to reach your goals (whether it's acquiring gear, killing mythic bosses, etc.) worth your time. The moment it's not worth your time, you either quit playing or you buy a boost. The main issue is that the game is really not worth the time and effort to reach many of the classic end-game goals, so boosting has been on the rise for a long time. This is core game design issue more than anything else, and much of it has to do with the game design reducing playing engagement due to arduous and arbitrary restrictions (i.e. making the game not fun) for many. Again, you won't ever completely stop the boosting, but going after the boosting communities is just attacking the symptom of a game that players just don't want to play to achieve their goals.

[TomBrokovski]

Lay off the Bellular/Asmongold videos.

"Noo you can't blame Blizzard for a problem they themselves created because...you just can't, okay!?"
PS I never said anything about either bellular or asmon, I don't watch their videos obsessively like others here do to try and argue against boogeymen.

by some evil corporate entity hellbent on ensuring maximum profits at all costs.

next level irony considering diablo immortal released by the same company you are desperately defending (for free btw)

[Relapses]

"Noo you can't blame Blizzard for a problem they themselves created because...you just can't, okay!?"
PS I never said anything about either bellular or asmon, I don't watch their videos obsessively like others here do to try and argue against boogeymen.


next level irony considering diablo immortal released by the same company you are desperately defending (for free btw)

I'm not defending Blizzard. I'm telling you to create better arguments than "capital exists, therefore all decisions made are made in favor of capital." This is an incredibly lazy way to frame your argument.

[Exkrementor]

They shouldn't have the power to control their own services? That's an interesting take that has ramifications I'm not sure you fully understand.

So public transportation is done by private companies in my country. By your logic they should have the right not to transport whoever they want since its their stuff. If the train company decides not to sell tickets to black people anymore, would that be ok? Of course not.

Some companies are private but they still provide a public service and most of the time they have the monopoly on this service. Google and Youtube for example and you could argue that Discord is one of these services. Nobody uses Teamspek anmore, or Mumble or Ventrilo. Discord has a monopoly on Voicechat and also that very important "forum-like" feature with all the text channels. Nobody uses Online forums anymore.

So yes, they shouldnt have the power to do what they want.

And that is already a big problem. Search something controversial on Google and then search the same thing on Duckduckgo. Google as a private company has a monopoly on what information you are allowed to have.

[rhorle]

Nobody uses Online forums anymore.

Are you aware of what you are currently using? Lmao.

[SinR]

Are you aware of what you are currently using? Lmao.

but its not an Online Forum

Its an Online ... uhh.... uhh...MESSAGE BOARD!!! Yeah!! Message board!!!

[TomBrokovski]

I'm not defending Blizzard. I'm telling you to create better arguments than "capital exists, therefore all decisions made are made in favor of capital." This is an incredibly lazy way to frame your argument.

Nobody brought up capitalism, nobody brought up content creators. You did. It is not an insane leap of logic to see that Blizzard has been incentivizing buying tokens through game design, there are multiple examples of it in game and Blizz is hardly the only company to use those types of tactics. And it's not like Blizzard wouldn't do it either or is somehow morally above doing it like you are implying, again just look at Diablo Immortal. If you don't want to see it that way, that's fine but don't drop spaghetti over it by bringing up different things and not addressing the actual argument by simply calling it "lazy".

[Relapses]

Nobody brought up capitalism, nobody brought up content creators. You did. It is not an insane leap of logic to see that Blizzard has been incentivizing buying tokens through game design, there are multiple examples of it in game and Blizz is hardly the only company to use those types of tactics. And it's not like Blizzard wouldn't do it either or is somehow morally above doing it like you are implying, again just look at Diablo Immortal. If you don't want to see it that way, that's fine but don't drop spaghetti over it by bringing up different things and not addressing the actual argument by simply calling it "lazy".

It is an insane leap of logic when there is absolutely no fucking evidence to support your accusation other than pointless cynicism. The existence of D:I does not mean that WoW devs are twirling their cartoonishly evil mustaches while trying to figure out how to maximize token sales. This is a very poor way of criticizing Blizzard because it doesn't actually address any of the real problems the game has. It's just a boring way to seek validation of a very poorly thought out criticism.

[epigramx]

It is an insane leap of logic

It's an insane leap of logic to think a company would do unethical things in seek of money? You know what they teach first day in business schools? That the objective and only purpose of a company is the generation of wealth and the generation of wealth only.

[Palisis]

I will bet my left testicle that LFG is still full of "WTS xxxxx".

Well it hasn't for about a year... so where do I collect my free testicle?

[scubi666stacy]

This is exactly where the fun and engaging aspect comes in. Sure, fun is relative for everyone, but it does tie in with engagement aspects of the game. To skip to the end point, the reason boosting is so prevalent is because there's a huge gap between what's efficient and what's fun and engaging.

A lot of this stems into the arduous restrictions, whether literal or artificial, when it comes to the game. When the classic versions of the game came around, people were saying "Man, these raids are ridiculously easy!"... and there's several reasons for that. One is that the skill of players and the information available is higher than back then, this is true. However, another major factor is that gear wasn't the limiting factor in progression.

To simplify, the game is currently in a catch-22 scenario for many players (not all): you need gear to complete the content, but the content you're trying to clear drops the gear you need. If you want to get your BiS gear, you're going to have to work harder and put in more hours than you did back in the earlier days of WoW when normalized to the current standard, which classic versions of the game clearly demonstrate. If your goal was getting BiS, as it is with many gear-driven players, it's a lot harder to accomplish on average unless you're a top tier player clearing all the hardest content. However, the restrictions on these forms of content is considered very arduous, which deters engagement and can be considered not fun for players if you peruse any forum about these sorts of things. Basically, Blizz has been designing a game in a way to make their lives easier and obtain their goals, but it goes against what the average player probably considers fun or worth their time.

When I say making the game more fun and engaging would reduce boosting, the method through this would work is if Blizz got rid of all their silly restrictions and scaled back on their time-gating, difficulty settings, etc. The MAIN reason boosting occurs is because people that boost don't feel it's worth their time to play the game to get what they want; they'd take the path of least resistance because there's nothing in the gameplay aspect that they deem is worth it. Now, you won't completely get rid of boosting, that's like saying you can regulate whales out of a mobile game. However, the concept of fun and engagement ties into making the game more accessible and entertaining, with the emphasis on making the experience of playing the game offset the time investment required to achieve your goal. Obviously not everyone enjoys the game the same way, but there's broad areas and systems that could be changed and overhauled where likely the vast majority of players would experience an increase in fun and engagement with the game.

The overarching goal is to make playing the game to reach your goals (whether it's acquiring gear, killing mythic bosses, etc.) worth your time. The moment it's not worth your time, you either quit playing or you buy a boost. The main issue is that the game is really not worth the time and effort to reach many of the classic end-game goals, so boosting has been on the rise for a long time. This is core game design issue more than anything else, and much of it has to do with the game design reducing playing engagement due to arduous and arbitrary restrictions (i.e. making the game not fun) for many. Again, you won't ever completely stop the boosting, but going after the boosting communities is just attacking the symptom of a game that players just don't want to play to achieve their goals.

One of the ridiculous restrictions is the high turnaround of gear. You cannot even achieve your BiS because the next season overthrows everything and you have to keep chasing the carrot. It maybe fun for some people, but for me it is not. I like to have some sense of achievement on my character which is not devalued after some months. I want to play different characters, but if I cannot even keep up with one, then where is the point of playing anymore? Devaluing gear so fast is also one of the problem why people resort to boosting - especially with the reduced drop rates and the gambling abomination of the Vault. And I don't even buy boosts for gear, only to get some mounts or to save me some time (speaking of getting into decent m+ groups when you are DPS without a high score with some 3rd party addons and gear which is enough for the content you want to run, but not enough to compete with other DPS in the queue).

[Super Kami Dende]

Spreading cheats and services that break other programs ToS is against Discords ToS. Any company or organisation can ask Discord to ban a server that breaks their (and therefor also Discords) ToS.

They don't need 'Authority', they asked Discord and Discord said 'sure'.

The fact a Company can ask Discord to do it is fucked enough of a reason.

[Gorsameth]

The fact a Company can ask Discord to do it is fucked enough of a reason.

Discord could do it on its own without having to be asked but the amount of surveillance and invasion of privacy needed to have Discord actively monitor and cross reference every single thing that happens on every single discord server would probably offend you a lot more then Blizzard noticing it when investigating boosting communities and politely informing Discord.

[Exkrementor]

Are you aware of what you are currently using? Lmao.

Proving my point again. Mmo-champion is irrelevant for like 10 years now. Only a fringe minority of old people who cant let go of the old ways post here. And all the WoW news are faster on Wowhead anyway.