Boosting services

[Alumage-draenor]

@Rushmóre-tarren-mill

People know nothing about the subject…simply because they do not want to get involved with the legality of boosting services and actually play the game.

That is completely fine if you don’t wanna get involved, don’t get me wrong i don’t think there is anything wrong with that.
But then you also forfeit the right to make claims about the subject, since you have no real knowledge or experience in whether it’s true or not.

Also a side note to the stat earlier, of course i can only speak for the 3 boosting communities i have been, gallywix, twillight and pink panda, my personal experience and friend’s experience as an owner.

The exception to that stat is right at the start of the patch where there are quite a few boosts given to people who can’t be bothered with the early patch pugging experience, but if they can’t handle higher keys, then they are just gonna get sorted out eventually, and the boost won’t have really helped them with more than giving them a higher ilvl.

@Rushmóre-tarren-mill

Go back to the original point of its evidently clear its becoming a problem within the wow community and constant trade spam

Ruining the game? really? i don’t know a single person who actually enjoyed trade chat even before this, and who actually had it turned on.
Also it’s a fair trade. Every single item that is tradeable can be put on AH, so the only thing you realistically need a trade chat for is really services, so i don’t see the problem?

@Rushmóre-tarren-mill

as one member posted later in the discussion, why would someone wait around all day on trade and then be free with availability all of a sudden to carry out the service just for gold?

In many of the bigger communities, advertisers get accounts just for advertising, and the guy advertising the run is usually not the guy doing the boosting.
Something you could do is if you’re playing low effort content, then you can have that account open with a macro you press every once in a while to advertise, while you do stuff on your main account.
If someone whispers your advertiser account you can stop what you’re doing (again low effort content), talk to them, then book the boosting and easy gold.

Many high level advertisers have multiple accounts even.

I get what you’re trying to say, why would someone afk and wait for gold since it’s just a means to an end, but the exact same thing can be said for people playing the AH, they just sit around for gold instead of playing the game.

The thing these advertisers get out of it is they can pay for their wow token with this gold, and since the advertiser account it paid by the community, and they don’t do it all day, then they essentially earn gold in moments they would just afk anyways or maybe they go and mount farm while advertising.

edit: i have never advertised myself, though i have a grasp on how it’s done, so feel free to ask questions about it, but i can’t guarantee i can answer all of them.

[Syrdanna-argent-dawn]

@Rushmóre-tarren-mill

People know nothing about the subject…simply because they do not want to get involved with the legality of boosting services and actually play the game.

Anyone who wants insight into what a boosting community is, how they operate, what is their purpose and motivation, etc. can join one. These are not really closed circles. It is true that some boosting communities will refuse to answer your questions or dodge them. However, the “legality of boosting services” is nothing more but a fairy tale. They are legitimate services, just like blacksmithing, enchanting and so on that operate within the ToS. Is there RMT in some communities? Yes. There is, it is against the ToS, it is regularly reported to Blizzard and people sometimes get punished, however, the vast majority of the player base involved is clean, doing it for the gold, for fun, playing with their friends.

The spammers you see, don’t do it for real money, they are just players who usually don’t boost themselves, but instead, they look for clients while the raiders/boosters are playing the game just like you. If they find a client, they form a group (in the case of M+) or schedule the buyer to one of the daily raids the community has. It’s their way of making gold. Just like others lurk and camp the Auction House to sell their products or to flip.

It’s all operating as a gigantic guild, with lots of players who are interested in doing this to afford their expensive Mythic Raider, M+ Pusher, Mount farmer, collection wow lifestyle. Some players even do it for the sense of being part of a community with their friends from across multiple realms, a means to play together, a reason to log in especially in the boring parts of the tier. Guilds do it to have the gold needed to fuel progress and also as a means of promotion to get better players.

Also, please, don’t blame all boosters and communities for the sins of some. If you see a community spamming their heart out, while another keeps it low and posts a message every 3-5 min from the same advertiser, try your best to direct your frustration to the abuser.

Feel free to ask me any questions you may have about boosting communities, I am leading one together with other good people and I have no problem answering any questions you may have. Maybe Blizzard has a read and adds some boosting specific channels in the process to cull the trade chat abuse that keeps getting worse and worse as new communities appear.

[anon22788420]

@Rushmóre-tarren-mill

After asking for recent invites to discord boosting services (cloak and dagger) - to name a few, Sylvanas and Nova boosting on Tarren mill, I am currently surprised how blizzard allows such services to continue.

Were you trying to investigate them yourself?

@Rushmóre-tarren-mill

How does a mass operation of people in discord allow such services for in game gold only? You have several roles, managerial, moderator, senior management board, staff - do the staff get paid for sitting idle in discord awaiting for boost services to arrive?

They don’t do it for gold only, if it were only for gold then you wouldn’t need to have the operation setup like shady business dealings.

@Rushmóre-tarren-mill

After the Gallywix community ban - why is blizzard not reviewing the new boost services provided? Players send complaints constantly, where is the action? You clear/ban a corrupt company, this will only open the window for new companies to take power!

Personally I believe that Blizzard leans on the side of not caring unless they believe it could have a reputational impact on them, Gallywix were known well enough that maybe they thought the group could tarnish the “good” name of their company and game. It took enough complaining from their players to start looking into these things.

The amount of websites that have been active selling boosts for real currencies for a long time should be testament to how little they really care. They could literally do the most basic of google searches and find many of them.

Now the following capture I took from Trustpilot could be nothing more than a fake review but even then its pretty telling how far this has gone no matter if its real or not. I’m not going to disclose the website its for.

Boosting brings in token sales (but not all tokens are for boosts), removing boosting would have some form of an impact to those token sales. Shareholders of the company aren’t typically going to care about boosters either because their dividends and the value of the company are going to be of a greater importance to them.

@Rushmóre-tarren-mill

One response i had from a staff member is that they accept in game currency but their are other alternatives if required! I cannot state the specific name of the manger role in the channel - however, the person is reluctant on sharing any information that would harm the business.

Other alternatives most likely linked with RMT, not surprising at all.

@Rushmóre-tarren-mill

Most importantly I asked several times to such boosting services if they were aware of the damage they do to the game - in terms of players not learning a challenging concept in the game and resorting to the ‘easy way out’. General replies involved - we offer services which makes us a business, if you understand how a business operates, you would understand our motives (NOVA).

No one would classify this as a business if it was for gold only, calling it one indicates that there is a bigger motive than making some gold in an online game.

@Rushmóre-tarren-mill

A shame the game has got to this level… I accept critical feedback - just remember and see for yourself, the boosting element of the game is getting out of hand and it ruins personal player achievement, progression and satisfaction,

There’s a few options you could take to state your intent with Blizzard.

1. Stop paying and playing their games if they continue to do very little or nothing.
2. Report those you believe to be dealing in real money when it comes to WoW boosting and/or kick up a fuss about what you believe is happening.
3. Do nothing if you believe this has no impact on yourself and continue playing.

Ultimately the biggest impact that could ever cause Blizzard to do a massive u-turn to their lack of investigation of these groups is if many players removed themselves from the game and Blizzards products thus affecting their profits, this won’t happen because addiction far greater outweighs a persons judgement in many cases.

[Lilîith-draenor (Lilîith)]

@Rushmóre-tarren-mill

People know nothing about the subject…simply because they do not want to get involved with the legality of boosting services and actually play the game.

Go back to the original point of its evidently clear its becoming a problem within the wow community and constant trade spam - as one member posted later in the discussion, why would someone wait around all day on trade and then be free with availability all of a sudden to carry out the service just for gold? Something doesn’t add up, whether blizz turns a blind eye to the problem due to the implemented of the wow token who knows?

This is not me saying there are not legitimate boosting services, I am sure there are!

or … people simply dont care.

they play the game and use bad boy addon to completly ignore boosting.

honestly use it and never see this spam again .

[Dhoobs-draenor]

@Rushmóre-tarren-mill

How does a mass operation of people in discord allow such services for in game gold only?

If you are found to be doing RMT in a boosting community (even as a buyer) you are banned from that community and blacklisted in a seperate channel only boosters/advertisers etc. can see (Gallywix did this too ironically)

@Rushmóre-tarren-mill

do the staff get paid for sitting idle in discord awaiting for boost services to arrive?

With as many advertisers there are in these communities you don’t need to stay at home all the time. When you’re at work and not paying attention there are still hundreds of people (cause not all people work the same hours) to take your “order” of boosting and put you in the sheets.

@Rushmóre-tarren-mill

why is blizzard not reviewing the new boost services provided?

How do you know they are not? If they say “Hey we’re looking into X” that just gives them a chance to clean up their books…

@Rushmóre-tarren-mill

Most importantly I asked several times to such boosting services if they were aware of the damage they do to the game

When you’ve been part of a boost community you see how many people buy every day, how hurtful can it be to the game when it’s that requested? Sure people won’t learn the fights or whatever, but those people most likely wouldn’t have done the content anyway.

And to touch on this

@Rushmóre-tarren-mill

why would someone wait around all day on trade and then be free with availability all of a sudden to carry out the service just for gold?

There is a massive difference between advertisers & boosters. The advertisers are the ones you see in trade chat (there are hundreds of these players cause they get a % cut of all boosts the book). Once a booking has been made by an advertisers it goes out to the boosters. If it’s a raid boost you are put down for a specific run, if it’s an M+ run you are posted to be looking for M+X key with/without armor stack and the M+ boosting teams will pick you up

[Charlatan-ashbringer]

Every new expansion, at sale period, Blizzard lies us “we take action on matter x!”. And makes some little shows to fool us (Gally ban or multibox 3rd party announcement etc).

And when expansion starts, Blizzard does NOTHING they promised.

Boosting continues, and mboxing in its peak level with 3rd party click delay function, bots everywhere…

Blizzard has been fooling us this way at the beginning of every expansion to increase sales, and we still believe them

[Laquickshot-silvermoon]

no I never believed them. companies will say whatever makes more people buy their product. Never trust a company with anything they say

[Rivanon-ragnaros]

I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with boosting for gold. It’s proof of a healthy game and has always been a thing in MMO’s.

The problem is, with these big boosting communities, it’s only the lowest tiers of the organisation that are doing it for gold. All higher levels are inevitably involved with RMT with the volume of gold involved. Being able to prove this is however the challenge. I believe Blizzard had a team investigating Galliwix for 6 months before taking action. More will follow, but it will be a slow process.

My main issue is that every channel in-game has been taken over by boost advertising. I’d be happy if just the advertising itself was banned and they forced them to peddle their services outside of the game so ingame channels are free of their clutter.