One of the most common pieces of feedback we’ve received (and observed ourselves in our own adventures) is the concern about pervasive sales of dungeon boosting services in-game. It often overpowers chat with advertisements and makes certain channels hard to use for their intended purpose.
It’s also no secret that the gold from many boosting groups is used for illicit activities such as Real-Money Trading (RMT), as much of the gold that players pay to boosters is then sold for real money back to other players.
Now that we’ve seen the final major content release of Burning Crusade Classic, we will soon adjust the behavior of creatures in most dungeons (including the new dungeons coming in Wrath of the Lich King Classic) to make it significantly more difficult to endlessly snare and kite enemies. Additionally, we will implement a reduction to group XP earned when there is large disparity between player levels in the same group.
We’ve experimented with similar changes to most dungeons on our Season of Mastery servers, and we’ve found these changes to be very effective at reducing the efficiency of boosting groups. We plan to roll out these adjustments to Burning Crusade Classic realms at the same time as the Joyous Journeys XP buff, which should happen sometime in the next several weeks. Stay tuned for more information about that and when you can expect to see these changes hit live servers.
This is also a good opportunity to remind everyone that spamming chat channels with advertisements for boosting services outside of dedicated Trade channels is against the Terms of Service, and you should take every opportunity to report players that you see advertising for boosting services in channels such as General and Looking For Group.
We’re really looking forward to players joining us very soon in the Wrath of the Lich King Classic Beta, and hope to be able to share more about that very very soon as well!
Personally i feel like the a massive xp reduction to group xp when there is large disparity between player levels in the same group should be enough on it’s own.
The snare changes don’t really stop paladin boosts, and stratholme runs etc, and the SOM changes in regards to snares can ruin cool moments in dungeons for a lot of people.
I remember having our tank die multiple times in blood furnace heroic during early TBC, then kiting the mobs out for the kills using our full toolkit of stuns and everything. Having the mobs become immune to snares/freezes after 30s just ruins stuff like that. If it was the only way to stop boosting, i’d agree with the change, but i feel like you can totally destroy boosting without messing with kiting.
You cut xp by 90% if mobs are grey for a player in the group, and all forms of boosting, not just mage boosting are dead.
I approve this message very much. Dont remove the toolkits from legit players (kiting and stuff). Just kill the exp in dungs when there is like +10 or +20 lvl disaprity between highest level player and lowest lvl player.
I’m really disapointed with this change. Don’t get me wrong, boosting for gold and spamming the chan is a problem. Selling gold for money is a problem. Boting is a problem.
What disapoint me is the answer to this, as always instead of punishing the people that are not playing with the rules Blizzard is just nerfing a way to enjoy the game for everyone else.
So I’m seeing 3 big problems with this :
First, I used to boost some of my friends/guildies. I haven’t done it much, maybe for 3-4 people, but I don’t understand why if I have a well geared caracther I should not be able to do it anymore because of some people who exploit this…
Second, I farm some old dungeon from time to time for crafting materials for gold or to up my crafting comp. I won’t be able to do it anymore because of this…
Third, I was planning on leveling my mage 70 by AoE farming dungeon at launch, I won’t be able to do it anymore because of this… I’m not exploiting anything, I played trough BC, geared my mage during almost 2 years so I could do this and now you’re saying just before the launch that I can’t? That’s really disapointing…
So I see the problem you’re trying to adress here and I agree with you, boosting for gold shouldn’t be allowed in the game, but don’t punish evereyone else because of this. Maybe try banning the people who buy gold for money? I think we won’t see much people with enough gold and if the boosters can’t sell the gold anymore they won’t do it as much.
Did you forget about GDKP runs? This is the majority off the problem…
The 5-10k for lvl 1-70 doesn’t add up against 20-50k (even higher sometimes) for an item in a GDKP raid… EVERY WEEK!
So paladin boosters are untouched, yet you nuke Frost Mages AND THEIR LEVELING PROCESS.
Delete this change, implement the following.
Fair.
Will you, in return, actually do something with our reports then? I have reported ppl multiple times over the last weeks/months with 0 effectiveness. As they continue their trend happily.
Hello this applies 110% to GDKP as well, please shut them down as a followup action ty. Though I guess that won’t happen as Brian is apparently enjoying GDKPs with his friends.
Concern about pervasive sales? Yes
Overpowered chat with GDKP spam? Yep
Gold from (and into) GDKP groups used for illicit activities? Yep
In any case, if I need to say something positive, I think this is a decent first step. GDKP RMTers usually boost their characters with the same bought gold as what they use in the raids, so maybe this slows down the RMT-money laundering-machine at least a bit.
Great changes, thanks! It’d be super awesome if you guys are able to keep up as people find new ways to exploit dungeons (They sure did this in SoM, I remember mages boosting BRD early on) and can sort of continually fight this. Also I’m guessing it’d be too much to ask for a ban for boosting services in Trade Chat as well, my only concern with allowing this is that /2 might start looking a lot like /2 in Retail currently does… I guess I’ll be hiding that channel if it does.
Not really, paladins won’t be able to boost dungeons either anymore for gold since the boostees would get (almost) no xp due to the level disparity.
If the point was ‘paladins are not affected in normal dungeon play while mages are’ (less kiting options?) then I agree with this.
It’s enough to reduce xp with a level disparity.
The mob behaviour change just affects Mages, also when they like to farm older dungeons solo for resources. Kinda bad change imo, the xp reduction is enough to kill boosting completely
Indeed, the mage change is completely redudant and single handedly kills Gold farming, such as SP (the legit way) or ZF (if you don’t glitch on top of the walls)…
So many more dungeons with descent drops/gold farm spots, all ruined.
I don’t think they are removing kiteing because of boosters. They are removing it because of bots, alot of bots use mages to farm gold in dungeons by going to unreachable spot for the mobs and then pulling all the dungeon and killing them.
At least it will slow down the rampant hyperinflation as well as gold prices going higher due to less botting.
If you relied on mage boosting or mage farming, there are other farms you can do. Economics is about finding the market niche and exploiting it right?
Yeah… And also the Legit way for mages too farm gold… Instead of just banning these bots, because they gain subscriptions on these bots…
Now they will only lose legit mage players subs (those who exclusivily farm gold this way, like me) but those are less than the bots…
No way too earn gold anymore too afford all the RMT funded GDKP runs as a legit player… Guess it’s back to Retail for me then
I think you might be right there. On Mirage Raceway i found 2 complete botting guilds with mages being in shadow labyrinth and slave pens around the clock along with demo warlocks constantly farming in Netherstorm.
One of those guilds has a complete network setup, mages porting to shatt, then their auction guy shows up and posts the grinded stuff on the AH. The warlocks however travel in odd ways back and forth between Netherstorm and the cities with an AH, never using a hearthstone.
I reported them all and i got some thank you msgs for reporting, hope to see them disappear soon.
However i do hope these changes won’t affect the spellcleave dungeon groups like we had at the start of TBC which was quite a lot of fun.
Edit: i checked the botting guilds i found, they seem to have disappeared!
This is so short sighted. Want to know why I boost with my Paladin in dungeons? Because the open world is so infested with bots it’s impossible to farm… This will only increase gold buying not decrease it, but then you don’t care about that do you?
this applies 110% to GDKP as well, please shut them down as a followup action ty. Though I guess that won’t happen as Brian is apparently enjoying GDKPs with his friends.