Need to do something about these RMT boosting sites

[WowIsDead64]

Sorry, but what? There has never, in the entire history of WoW, been a time where any content that could be considered "casual" has ever been so overtuned it couldn't be handled by the people it was intended for. I would straight up suggest that if, at any point, you were actually struggling with "casual" content, then you are probably just straight up bad at the game.

Examples: Nazjatar, Korthia. Please remember, that I'm casual player, so the best gear for me - is gear, that is provided by WQs. So, if new location is tuned for M+/Raid gear from previous patch and too hard even for BIS WQ gear - then it's overtuned, as outdoor location shouldn't require M+/Raids.

[Sialina]

Make it faster & Easier to get gear.

Poof, Boosting gone.

Naxx & Ulduar are pretty easy compared to the 1 billion mech garbage in retail.

Thus no boosting needed for WOTLK classic.

Just make retail content easier to the point where there is no need to buy boost for best gear

It took me less than 5 seconds using google to find several RMT sites selling "Ulduar boost" in Wotlk classic, you can check for yourself, so you are wrong. There will always be people that want to bypass the gear checks, gold requirements or other barriers.

Edit-

Not just hard modes, everything from just normal 10 man all the way to 25 man Hardmode. So yeah

[Nathanyel]

The person is talking about the rising RMTs I believe. Third-party sellers, even organized boosting groups are under 3rd party now, as that is against the ToS.

OP saw one boosted character and just assumed they paid with real money.

Maybe RMT is on the rise, but one boosted character is no indication of that.

[Surfd]

Examples: Nazjatar, Korthia. Please remember, that I'm casual player, so the best gear for me - is gear, that is provided by WQs. So, if new location is tuned for M+/Raid gear from previous patch and too hard even for BIS WQ gear - then it's overtuned, as outdoor location shouldn't require M+/Raids.

Not doing much to contradict my original assertion that you are probably just terrible at the game. Open world areas are generally not tuned with mythic / raid gear as a baseline, and if they are (such as Hellfire peninsula being tuned around Nax level gear when TBC originally launched) they generally give you enough upgrades to comfortably survive in the opening quest lines of the zone. If you are struggling in open world content, WoW probably isn't the game for you.

[WowIsDead64]

Not doing much to contradict my original assertion that you are probably just terrible at the game. Open world areas are generally not tuned with mythic / raid gear as a baseline, and if they are (such as Hellfire peninsula being tuned around Nax level gear when TBC originally launched) they generally give you enough upgrades to comfortably survive in the opening quest lines of the zone. If you are struggling in open world content, WoW probably isn't the game for you.

No, badly tuned transition between locations - is bad game design. Simply because if I need almost BIS gear from certain location to actually enjoy it, then it's almost pointless to play it. Simply because when I start enjoying location - I no longer need anything from it.

[Nalam the Venom]

You mean the version of wow were GDKP is THE main source of getting gear in feasable pug raids? In the version of wow were you either grind gold 24/7 like a champ or buy gold to keep up.

BTW, wow retail is really easy with normal, LFR etc. But, you can have a challenge too.

My server has never had GDKP, So i don’t understand the fuss around it and i have done Naxx25 16 Times already in a Discord PuG no problems.

You are very delusional about the state of classic.

Normal & LFR does not give you good gear, Thus not worth the time

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It took me less than 5 seconds using google to find several RMT sites selling "Ulduar boost" in Wotlk classic, you can check for yourself, so you are wrong. There will always be people that want to bypass the gear checks, gold requirements or other barriers.

Edit-

Not just hard modes, everything from just normal 10 man all the way to 25 man Hardmode. So yeah

Well, Then people are dumb af.

It’s easy to do raids in WOTLK.


I never understood how people willfully break the rules like this.

It’s not allowed to use 3rd party sites or RMT

[Ludek]

Boosting will never be gone, all you can do is to maybe do some design adjustments to decrease it's number, like removing timed rewards associated with clearing the content within the "tier", or making higher end gear more accessible after some time (kinda like XIV goes with making raid upgrade tokens available to purchase from casual content in the mid tier patch).

Yet then the "true players" will be angry that either they don't feel rewarded properly for being "ahead of the curve", or that their rewards are worthless because casual Timmy also got those high ilvl epics 4 months after them.

And then we go straight back to the beginning of the issue.

[WowIsDead64]

Reason for RMT is very simple. Blizzard gate some cool mount behind "organized content only". And I have several options, how I can get it:
1) Find static group/guild/friends. Should I bother about it, if I need just that mount?
2) Try to find random group, i.e. deal with random players. I should meet some prerequirements and there are no guarantees.
3) Buy boost.

Which one is the easiest?

Things would be easier, if they would just sell this mount in shop. But they pretend, that they aren't P2W, mount is "earned" and put unnecessary intermediate step between paying money and getting mount - dealing with some other players, who should help with getting this mount. Of course it causes problems. Players want everything to be turnkey.

[Sialina]

My server has never had GDKP, So i don’t understand the fuss around it and i have done Naxx25 16 Times already in a Discord PuG no problems.

You are very delusional about the state of classic.

Normal & LFR does not give you good gear, Thus not worth the time

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Well, Then people are dumb af.

It’s easy to do raids in WOTLK.


I never understood how people willfully break the rules like this.

It’s not allowed to use 3rd party sites or RMT

That's the thing, you assume people are around your skill, that isn't always the case, YOU think Ulduar is easy, but to really new gamers, or people with disabilities or learning difficulties it might be VERY hard, there are people so new that they can't move their character properly, let alone hit buttons while doing so. There are also people who enjoy mastery, for them a 20 key might be small stuff. If you want to include everyone you need it to be LFR easy, or even easier, people simply like content around their own skill, and that's why we have different levels of dungeons and raids, and rating in PvP.

[Lolites]

These platforms selling accounts, boosting in ALL the game content, are just destroying the whole atmosphere.

those things exist since vanila...

[Lordofbelbol]

Boosting will never be gone, all you can do is to maybe do some design adjustments to decrease it's number, like removing timed rewards associated with clearing the content within the "tier", or making higher end gear more accessible after some time (kinda like XIV goes with making raid upgrade tokens available to purchase from casual content in the mid tier patch).

Yet then the "true players" will be angry that either they don't feel rewarded properly for being "ahead of the curve", or that their rewards are worthless because casual Timmy also got those high ilvl epics 4 months after them.

And then we go straight back to the beginning of the issue.

No one raiding hc or mythic will think i need to get rewarded for "ahead of the curve" i mean yes they love the great loot but they don't think in the way you described it.
this shows you don't know shit about those players so your opinion about them is worthless

[Valysar]

Even Blizzard sells boost so, they won't do anyhting about this. Rotten to the core

[Thirtyrock]

RMT exists because of the way a game is designed. If you have a game that revolves around raiding but there are no true server communities, only randos queueing together in LFG and viewing each other as cogs in the machine to be replaced for the most optimal cog, people are going to ask for you to link your kill proofs so you can get into a group to do content, then ofcourse people are going to buy carries.

RMT exists in basically any game with a competitive and/or multiplayer aspect. If it's possible for someone to boost someone else, there will almost always be someone trying to capitalize on that. Halo 2 had boost sales for pvp rating, albeit at a way lower level than what we see in modern gaming, but that was due to where we were in the development of the internet more than game desing.

You show me a remotely popular game with a competitive and/or multiplayer component, and I'll find someone selling boosts for cash.

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I doubt FOMO is the only thing what motivates RMTs, as most rewards in WoW (save for the high end PvP stuff) are well within anyone's reach. Boost buyers want the status and creds that come with Ahead of the Curve or a high M+ score or whatever, without having to do a grind that involves failing and getting rejected a few times.

What a strange elitist take. Put effort into acquiring something and you will definitely feel more rewarded because you will value that reward more. This goes for a concept as simple as making a three stage sandwich (something anyone can do), to something more complicated like landing the job of your dreams.

I'm definitely not trying to argue that kind of condescending view. The point is that WoW is a game designed to hook you into a grind... if the grind doesn't appeal to you, you'd be better off playing a different game than paying money so you can pay money.

Besides, any kind of reward that you get from skipping the line can't feel all that great at the end of the day. Boost buyers are likely burned out players, or players on their way to a burn out.

The vast majority of players will never be able to clear Mythic raids. Most Mythic raids have rewards that are ONLY available while the tier is current.

If we were talking about rewards being temporarily available in Heroic raids, I would largely agree with the concept that anyone could accomplish it given some time and effort. But needing to clear the end mythic boss to get a reward...Nah, the vast majority of players will never be able to get to that level, for whatever reason.

For me, it's mostly a time commitment. I can't find a CE guild that raids on my schedule, even if I think I could make the cut. It doesn't matter WHY I don't have the ability to clear it, the fact is I don't. So that means those rewards are out of reach for me unless I purchase a boost.

I choose not to purchase a boost because I like to earn my rewards and I don't have fomo around limited time rewards, for the most part, but I understand why people DO have the fomo.

Personally I'd like to see the temporary rewards from Mythic drops made permanent after the expansion is over or something. Like, all the mounts that were available for end boss kills are limited to the tier while the expansion is current, but then after X.1 in the next expansion, they should be restored. That would be enough of an incentive for me to go back through the old raids.

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My server has never had GDKP, So i don’t understand the fuss around it and i have done Naxx25 16 Times already in a Discord PuG no problems.

You are very delusional about the state of classic.

Normal & LFR does not give you good gear, Thus not worth the time

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Well, Then people are dumb af.

It’s easy to do raids in WOTLK.

I never understood how people willfully break the rules like this.

It’s not allowed to use 3rd party sites or RMT

My boss was in a competitive TBC guild during TBC classic. They would clear the raid for themselves and then do GDKP speed runs for the rest of the tier. It wasn't just happening on his server, it was the NORM after the first few weeks of the tier.

Normal & LFR are worth the time for people who want to do that content. If they have no interest in progressing beyond normal and like +10 keys, then normal is absolutely worth the time. Hell, I'm a heroic raider and there are still some improvements I could get out of LFR due to bad luck. THe first several weeks it was open it was really important for a lot of raiders, even heroic raiders, to run, because you could get tier out of there and a LFR tier piece to complete your 4 set is normally an upgrade over a Heroic ilvl NON tier piece. Obviously this isn't as much of an issue now that catalyst is back out.

Your response is elitist and puts YOUR expectations on other players. Your experience is not universal. If you tried to understand where other people are coming from and WHY they do what they do, you might not be so judgy.

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No one raiding hc or mythic will think i need to get rewarded for "ahead of the curve" i mean yes they love the great loot but they don't think in the way you described it.
this shows you don't know shit about those players so your opinion about them is worthless

I've seen players who don't care about anything but the achievement. I've seen players who only care about getting all the best loot and most unattainable mounts. There's a spectrum. Your experience is not universal. Lots of AOTC players want to be rewarded for the achievement. I'm fine with just getting the achievement, but I have friends who think it should come with a guaranteed mount.

So, should I now say your opinion about those players is worthless and you don't know shit about how raiders think? Your opinion certainly doesn't match my experience. Hell it doesn't match the reality of people on this very forum STILL bitching about "welfare epics" every expansion launch. Some players clearly DO care about status symbol drops. Some don't.

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Even Blizzard sells boost so, they won't do anyhting about this. Rotten to the core

How, exactly, does blizzard sell boosts? Are you implying that purchasing a token is the same as purchasing a boost?

[Valysar]

How, exactly, does blizzard sell boosts? Are you implying that purchasing a token is the same as purchasing a boost?

I remember a person working at blizzard selling boosts for golds, I'll try to find the tweet. (and yes, buying a token can help you buy a boost but that's another story)

Edit : https://twitter.com/qwik/status/1449480048902225921

Well, not "a person", just the President of Blizzard Entertainment himself doing "sales run"

[GothamCity]

Gold boost runs are even more common, and they won't end up getting your account banned. RMTs are less popular since they crack down pretty hard on them if they catch you. I've had many guildmates over the years get permanent bans due to RMTs.


Though I know loads of people who just buy wow tokens and buy gold boosts for AotC/M+.

It is essentially the lifeblood of WoW. Geared/skilled players make gold by selling gold boosts. Less skilled players either are goblins or buy tokens to get the same results. If you're pugging heroic or +20s, you have to check their profile closely to distinguish between organic success and boosts.

Once you get into actually difficult content, e.g. 21+ and mythics, boosts largely go away as there's little reason or ability to offer carries for those.

[loras]

I doubt FOMO is the only thing what motivates RMTs, as most rewards in WoW (save for the high end PvP stuff) are well within anyone's reach. Boost buyers want the status and creds that come with Ahead of the Curve or a high M+ score or whatever, without having to do a grind that involves failing and getting rejected a few times.


What a strange elitist take. Put effort into acquiring something and you will definitely feel more rewarded because you will value that reward more. This goes for a concept as simple as making a three stage sandwich (something anyone can do), to something more complicated like landing the job of your dreams.


I'm definitely not trying to argue that kind of condescending view. The point is that WoW is a game designed to hook you into a grind... if the grind doesn't appeal to you, you'd be better off playing a different game than paying money so you can pay money.

Besides, any kind of reward that you get from skipping the line can't feel all that great at the end of the day. Boost buyers are likely burned out players, or players on their way to a burn out.

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What else then? Boosts seem to drop off precipitously after rewards run out and i've seen everything from full mythic raid boosts to glad boosts to plus 25 boosts, so it's not like it's impossible.
I'm not sure if this "status" or "cred" relating to this sort of difficult content even exists at all, especially if there is such an obvious discrepancy between their skill and their supposed achievements.

That kinda only leaves loot as a possible explanation, and i mean sure most of all stuff is sort of attainable to casual-ish people of mediocre performance, but between the draw of "It's related to difficult stufg so it must be a better reward" (with which i don't agree, things like i.e. glad mounts just looked fugly for most expansions they've been out) and "But it's going away and i might covet it!" it's the high end stuff that draws the strongest.

I myself have on occasion bought boosting for heroic last bosses at the end of expansions just because time would otherwise have run out and i lacked the tolerance (or time) to pug that shit.
(though admittedly that was not about the mounts per se, but rather about the neat story tidbits that were locked behind them, in i.e. WoD i returned to the game after quitting in early cataclysm, and only learned that some quests would become unavailable a few weeks in advance of that date, and it wasn't realistic nor desirable to use that time to get up to speed on raiding again, get a guikd, get geared, relearn my class, etc. within that timeframe, for SL i had a comparable experience dur to their insistence introducing "fated" difficulties and me returning a short while beforehand with only the intent of finishing up some grinds and doing the prepatch).

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It's really rather the opposite of elitism. Elitism would be disallowing people rewards based on "lacking" performance, allowing boosting is just opening up another path that can be walked by anyone who can psy the price. Frankly it's a more genuine version of "rewards for people who put in the effort" than to expect them to fruitlessly waste time on a climb they'll never complete.

As stated earliet the temporal component to the rewards just makes it that much clearer to those plentiful chanceless people, so boosting should be an expected outcome. If you dislike boosting yet support these temporary rewards, well, you're just being the root cause of your own tormemt at that point

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Grinds are alright, but neither rng nor the combination of time+skill locks are any good.
The former is plain and simple gambling, with all obvious drawbacks thereof, the latter is artificial scarcity which will naturally result in "cheating" the flawed system via boosting.

I've made suggestions regarding what i believe to be elegant solutions in the past, i'll use glad mounts as an example:
If you gain glad as an end of season reward you gain your title and your mount, however rather than being granted them immediately you are given a token for both, allowing you to choose either the current reward, or any of the previous ones.

That way no more effort is wasted on discontinued art, winners still get their just reward, people will always be able to work towards some truly rewarding reward experience thinh, and people eill not be penalised for misding artificial "windows of opportunity".
You can get glad at any time of your choosing and you won't be left with some disappointing shadowrat dragon, retarder dirty gronn or Xteenth variant of an overdone protodragon.

Encouraging that artificial shit, tgat FOMO shit, it's an excercise in self-inflictef pain i believe for the players that support it.
Blizzard of course benefits from it as it encourages more continuous play without providing continuous content (and effort ).

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I can tell you that for most people it's simply not about being pet on the back and getting called a good boy, people that work like that are very rare, especially those that care when a game does that. I mean i get that sometimes people use the word "dog" as an insult, that's the sort of creatures and rolds it's actually common for.
Lucky are those that can subsist on compliments and praise, let alone be motivated by it.
Most people really only care about the actual substance of their reward, and for (evolutionarily) good reason.

[Thirtyrock]

I remember a person working at blizzard selling boosts for golds, I'll try to find the tweet. (and yes, buying a token can help you buy a boost but that's another story)

Edit : https://twitter.com/qwik/status/1449480048902225921

Well, not "a person", just the President of Blizzard Entertainment himself doing "sales run"

Ok, that's fair, you can buy tokens which can be sold for gold which can be used to buy boosts. Yes, that's P2W. Thanks for finding that information!

[Tiwack]

It'll never stop as long as you can pay to play for ingame currency + blizz encourage competition meaning there's always new accolades to be had.
Wherever you have one or the other you'll find cheats and twisted individuals.
It's pretty bad in what's supposed to be a fun game and I suspect one of the main reasons new players don't stick around for long. There's too many parallels to irl-social issues that had people seek out a break in the first place in what looked like chill game on its surface.

[Hotmail]

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What else then? Boosts seem to drop off precipitously after rewards run out and i've seen everything from full mythic raid boosts to glad boosts to plus 25 boosts, so it's not like it's impossible.
I'm not sure if this "status" or "cred" relating to this sort of difficult content even exists at all, especially if there is such an obvious discrepancy between their skill and their supposed achievements.

You need certain achievements or iLvl to get into good guilds. You need a high M+ score to get into good M+ PuG groups. You need certain achievements to get into good raid PuG groups... so on. This is what I mean by "creds". Boost buyers want to skip all that grind, even though it's a tricky but ultimately rewarding part of WoW.

The bolded part supports my argument that boost buyers are mostly short-sighted, burned out players who are chasing short term gains at the expense of their long term enjoyment. This happens and causes drama all the time, as laid out in the OP.

It's really rather the opposite of elitism. Elitism would be disallowing people rewards based on "lacking" performance, allowing boosting is just opening up another path that can be walked by anyone who can psy the price. Frankly it's a more genuine version of "rewards for people who put in the effort" than to expect them to fruitlessly waste time on a climb they'll never complete.

If you say so. Assuming that most people cannot successfully climb the ranks of an MMORPG to a place where they'll be content sounds pretty elitist to me, but you do you.

As stated earliet the temporal component to the rewards just makes it that much clearer to those plentiful chanceless people, so boosting should be an expected outcome.

I think FOMO only affects a very small subset of compulsive "collectionists"; it isn't necessarily caused by just having temporal rewards in the game. Are there FOMO boost buyers? Absolutely, but I doubt they are the majority.

I can tell you that for most people it's simply not about being pet on the back and getting called a good boy, people that work like that are very rare, especially those that care when a game does that. I mean i get that sometimes people use the word "dog" as an insult, that's the sort of creatures and rolds it's actually common for.
Lucky are those that can subsist on compliments and praise, let alone be motivated by it.
Most people really only care about the actual substance of their reward, and for (evolutionarily) good reason.

I'm not sure what you are trying to say here. To paraphrase, I'm arguing that jogging from point A to B gives you runner's high and ultimately makes your journey more rewarding. Whereas paying someone to get you to point B leaves you at the destination, sure, but it's nowhere near as rewarding and doesn't come with any sense of accomplishment, which is what a game like WoW is designed around.

[Nathanyel]

I remember a person working at blizzard selling boosts for golds, I'll try to find the tweet. (and yes, buying a token can help you buy a boost but that's another story)

Edit : https://twitter.com/qwik/status/1449480048902225921

Well, not "a person", just the President of Blizzard Entertainment himself doing "sales run"

To be fair, that's Blizzard employees playing the game, just like other players.

That is no indication that Blizzard the company is trying to inflate gold purchases.