Blizz Boost Attitude, What changed?

I would start to play such a game. You might find it surprising but there are 7 billion people living on earth and people have different tastes. Some people like spending thousands of days in a game and develop their character slowly, over a long period of time.
This is the niche of MMORPGs. Ever since the dawn of time, MMORPGs were born to accomodate this type of taste. It is the sole reason of their existence. If you want to skip “barriers” and go right into a game and start shooting rockets, MMORPGs are not YOUR genre of video game. MMORPGs are for people that want to start a new character, like in real life, and waste countless hours on it.

And for some strange reason, people that don’t like this specific genre feel the entitlement to come into this genre and start asking the games to change for THEIR tastes, which I find amusing to this very day.
I, an MMORPG player, played a lot of different genres. I played FPS games, CS:GO a lot for example. But I never went to CS:GO forums and asked them to implement talent trees, or professions in that game. I never asked for valve to bring quest chains into CS:GO. Because that is a DIFFERENT GENRE. If valve puts these things in their games, it would annoy this genre’s playerbase and ruin their experience.

There can be no “irrelevant content” in an MMORPG and that is a big insult to the designers who spent hundreds of days creating those content.

It has been answered 1000 times on the forums and almost by every content creator. It has massive effects on economy, streamlines and pigeonholes the whole playerbase into a few zones, kills old zones, creates a disparity between different players with different disposable incomes, etc. etc. so many reasons have been throughly argumented.

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Lmao this comes from the company who said they wouldn’t do boosts in classic.
Of course they will change their minds, they have done 180s in their game design philosophy since wrath Activison acquisition.

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That’s the point of the thread. But this isn’t about game design, it’s about the change of position in paid services.

I think it walks hand in hand with the current global western society’s issue with people avoiding responsibility, therefore voiding their chance at ‘happiness’ or meaning.

If you don’t consider that to be part of game design, then what would you classify a mechanic, that skips gameplay as?

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I think we’re talking past each other. To be clear, I am not talking about the introduction of boosting but the stance change to it.

Indeed they changed position on paid services.
I wish I had numbers to back my claim but I suspect monthly micro transactions in retail generate more revenues than subs. I could be completely wrong though. But they seem to manage to live quite well with 1/10 of the subs they had at their peak in WOTLK with few microtransactions.

That they try to slowly but surely implement it to Classic should not come as a surprise to anyone. Especially knowing the delays / issues due to the pandemic/ layoffs they currently have with Shadowlands that probably sent those microtransactions down a lot. They probably see TBCC as their cashcow until the next expansion comes out (probably really late in 2022 or even later as SL seem to pull a WoD).

Paid services or not the 2021 playerbase is mostly not (really) casual and exploiting every bit of the game to their own advantage. The opportunity to exploit that from Blizz must be pretty tempting up there.

tbh i dont think you even really know what youre asking, youve had multiple responses and you just keep referring to your OP or saying this thread isnt about boosts??

like what are you asking?

It’s the “sliding it in” tactic.

First you give a one time boost, since this community would be far against boosts, and then you’ll have some people defend it, saying “it’s just one time” (these people are very gullible, and usually end up realizing they just spent months defending boosts, pretty much working for blizzard for free). But then few months in, after people are invested, you make boosts unlimited, or add tokens.

They smelled money, and they’re just trying to take the most cautious way to slide boosts and tokens in, they can’t just throw it in at once.

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You know I meant the vast majority, but if you are being a pedant the worlds population is closer to 8 billion than 7.

I’m not sure who you think you are to tell me what is and isn’t my genre and how I should enjoy a video game, especially when the developers of that game seem willing to cater to me and my desires. My skipping Hogger or Mankrik’s wife for the 12th time doesn’t impact your gameplay

There absolutely can be irrelevant content and I don’t care how insulted the game developers are. The content as it ages ceases to be come relevant to the more modern versions of the game and after a time becomes barrier to entry to new consumers, that’s why with almost every expansion the XP required to catch up becomes less and less, why heirlooms were introduced in a subsequent expansion (with stats that rendered the content zero challenge and thus more irrelevant) and why Blizzard started offering a boost with new expansions, because, nobody should be forced to buy and play what they deem to be a crap version of the game in order to play the new version that they hope will be better.

Between original WoW release and Classic I’ve levelled over a dozen chars in a world I only enjoyed exploring the first 2 or 3 times in order to play the late game content that I have enjoyed every time, I don’t want to experience the classic levelling again and it’s pretty petty of you and the no boost crowd to think you should have the right to stop me in order to keep your old world zones populated.

Firstly if the game is as fun as you say and that people enjoy it then the zones would still be full of those real MMORPG players that don’t think any content is irrelevant, however we already have dead zones because everyone is sat paying a mage to boost them, these mages boost places like Mara at 50g a run, 3 runs an hour 10 hours a day what do you think happens to that 6k gold a day? Do you think all these mages are sat at gold cap? Or are they selling that gold in RMT? I’d rather put money in the pockets of the creators of a game I enjoy than in the pockets of RMT traders, but given the choice between levelling the content and giving gold to a gold seller, the majority of us, judging by world chat seem to be prepared to give it to a gold seller.

The majority of people after completing the levelling content once or twice don’t want to do it again so your zones will be empty regardless, if I’m wrong the boost won’t hurt you, if I’m right boost or no boost your zones are dead.

It’s the arrogance of you guys trying to force players to do content they don’t enjoy, that has no bearing toward the new content, just so the parts of the game you like are more fun for you that truly surprises me.

Entitled much?

Blizzard have recognised days of played time to play with your friends is a barrier to entry for some players for their new expansion, an expansion being provided at no additional cost, Blizzard a profit seeking entity have strangely decided they’d like to enable more people to pay them for their product and have created a catch-up mechanic that allows anyone to jump the old content they may not and, at a weaker power level, allow them to play with friends from day one.

I thought we were agreed as a community that just because content creators say it, it doesn’t make it so? Or do we bring them into the argument when we agree but ignore them when we don’t? If I see another ill-informed content creator moan about the hypothetical store/deluxe edition mount, whilst failing to mention that there where tons of cool items only available by providing a code from out of game purchases to Landro Longshot in Booty Bay (who is in the beta by the way so get ready for that gem) or referencing “Lurky” the murloc pet bundled into the TBC Deluxe Edition I’ll just despair.

It’s not about YOU, no one cares what YOU do. It’s what experienced people will do, what every semi hardcore player will do, it’s what all the bots will do.
And maybe, because it’s against the whole philosophy of what an old MMORPG was.
“BuT iTs 2021 nOw, MoDErN pLaYeRs hUrrDuRr”

Yeah that’s why we wanted CLASSIC GAMES you fakking idiot.

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You have classic, you can play however you want, but the hubris to believe that somehow you get to dictate how others play the game, just to keep it fun for you is astounding.

Zones are already empty because of instance boosting. Would you rather we paid Blizzard or RMT traders? because levelling in the open world isn’t the option many people are prepared to do.

This false dichotomy/“two wrongs make one right” argument is really garbage and doesn’t make sense.

I’d rather have none. Everyone would rather have none.

And saying that the boost hurts the health of the game is a fact, an objective argument. “Don’t dictate how others play the game” is just an egocentric opinion, and you can justify pretty much everything with it.

That’s not an available option, boosts exist, players use them. Blizzard don’t want to interfere with them as they’re player driven market activity. The game you want, where everyone levels for days in the open world doesn’t exist.

I got called out earlier for using the word everyone by the way, I think you mean you, and those like you.

So you’re saying that the game is set in stone, that it can’t be changed and that because it’s a player driven market activity, it’s okay. Do I need to explain why this point of view does not hold ground?
I guess I will :
-The game can be changed, that’s the principle of balancing
-“Player driven market activity” does not mean that it’s good for the health of the game, World buffs for example
-Blizzard’s job is to deliver a good game, they are not interfering because they are incompetent/greedy.
-In case you are implicitely suggesting that “mage boosting exists so paid boost is okay”, please refer to the “two wrongs doesn’t make one right” argument.

And for the “everyone” call out, it seems you can’t understand that the paid boost is bad for the health of the game because you get progression through wallet, the mage boost is bad for the health of the game (Although not as much as the paid boost since the mage boost is within the game) because it renders leveling irrelevant, hence why everyone should be against it. “Everyone” is concerned because it concerns the health of the game.
Don’t put on the level of “I do what I want”.

I cba responding, easy fix to dungeon power levelling(boosting):

You mean allowing players to bottle buffs? how is that helpful to the nochanges, no boost crowd?

Absolutely and their market research shows them that the best thing for the game is to provide a boost that enables people to skip older, irrelevant content.

You don’t get to tell the creators of a game how it’s meant to be played by anyone other than yourself.

Again with the “I do what I want” mentality.

Guess I’ll stop arguing here, you should read up on how to argument, be objective and not give opinions. You use a logical fallacy every 2 sentences.

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You just think your opinion, and those that agree with you are the only ones that count.

Enjoy your day, sir.

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What changed is that the company was bought out by a huge, profit-hungry mega-corporation in 2008.

A games company composed of geeks, gamers, lore nerds, D&D fanatics, tech heads etc. who made games because it was their absolute passion; who made games by gamers, for gamers was changed into a company consisting mostly corporate bean counters, most of whom have probably never played a videogame in their entire lives, and who actually view gaming with something akin to amused contempt. They now make games as a means to maximise short term profit, and nothing else matters.

That’s what changed.

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The company which is called Blizzard nowadays has nothing to do with the company of the same name 15-20 years ago. The passionate devs who used to work there have long since moved on to other projects. This Blizzard is merely a subordinate of Activision. Instead of game devs who love making games for other gamers, this Blizzard has corporate suits making all the decisions for the future of the game. All of these decisions must be justified in terms of profit, for the lowest possible effort. They view gamers like you, or me, as little more than money cows to be milked for as much cash as possible. The poster above me pretty much hit the nail on the head.

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