In that completely hypothetical scenario, I honestly would not care which one gets deleted, because I still would have the same level of gear, power, (if I understood your example correctly).
As long as the numerical outcome is the same, I don’t really care what the name of the toon producing it is.
Yeah you did understand that correctly, but you missed the point that many would pick their main as the one who is more important,
Even if you don’t see any difference between the characters many people do and will always pick the one that they spent more time creating.
But that’s exactly my point: The value of a character is not intrinsic, it is immaterial, and based just on ones feelings. I can control my own feelings, so I can decide whether or not I see something I care about devalued by some event that has no direct impact on me.
And if I do so decide, no one else has to care, or accept it as an argument for or against anything.
I levelled a warrior in classic 2005 then changed to an alliance shaman for TBC 2007. Now that took 30% less time to level so by your reasoning it should mean 30% less to me at 60. It didn’t.
And by 70 it meant a lot more, when both were 70 it still meant more. Stop saying your feelings for characters are the same as mine.
Now I’m going to shock you, one day World of Warcraft will be over, closed down, gone the way of the Dodo. Personally I will think, that had a good run. Whereas you will be crying into your coffee that your best friend is gone.
Do I think I will miss them, yes but will I be mortified that they are gone, no. My investment or immersion in them is not the same as yours.
Ok i get your position but you got to understand if people leave the game is worse off, a less populated server is always worse.
Nevertheless i want to i can make a more numerical argument, maybe this will be more tangible and clear, i of course urge you to dispute the meaning of these numbers if you find any inaccuracies.
(example numbers coming) Lets say that the boost will cost 40$, a player who lives in the US buys it while working at a minimum wage job earning 7.25$, meaning he spent 5-6 hours worth of work to get it. He instantly becomes 58 lvl skipping 2/3 of the leveling process that would have costed him about 150-200 hours or 6-8 days of game time (again numbers are estimated) resulting in him being able to transfer hours from his real life to the game’s results at a ratio about 30 to 1. Before the boost that ratio was 1 to 1 (1 hour of play used to yield 1 hour’s results) cause if you wanted to get results there was no mechanism to equate real life wealth/achievements to the game’s results.
That is my estimation of the intrinsic value of a character beyond any added emotional value that each one of us puts in the game and i still see it being diminished if the boost comes.
Therefore again i must stress this point that players who purchase
the boost gain a noticeable advantage in their potential, leaving those who didn’t being out-performed and on the worst of cases squeezed out of the game.
Through your own words i understand that your emotional preparedness and acceptance protects you from the effect the boost be it direct (advantage-disadvantage) or indirect (lowering your connection with your character) to your person. Even after having managed that you will get to feel the impact the boost has on you when the server starts bleeding out players.
P.S. I am enjoying this debate regardless of us disagreeing.
Level 58 Boosted Characters now start at level 58 and 75% of the way to 59, with max rested experience, more specifically 126,367 experience into Level 58. New characters will start in their faction’s capital city, right in front of their class trainers. The starting gear for boosted characters have also received some visual upgrades, depending on that class’s armor type.
https://tbc.wowhead.com/news/new-boosted-character-experience-for-burning-crusade-classic-321731
So effectively boosties start at 25% into level 60. Boost was not “2 levels behind” as we thought.
I agree, but I have yet to see evidence that the boost will cause lots of people to leave.
I enjoy that estimate, in no small part because I made the same argument in other discussions before (albeit in a different context).
For the purposes of this discussion, I don’t believe this to be a good metric however; because if it applied, it would mean that a character played by someone who earns more $/h is worth more than one played by someone with lower income, and that just doesn’t seem logical to me.
Additionally, as we discussed before, the time spent leveling Sorzza here, is miniscule compared to the time spent playing him at max level. Even if we applied that metric, and argued that the boost diminishes that value, said diminishuing only affects 2% of Sorzzas total intrinsic (lets call it “game-time-value” ir GTV for short).
This will be true even moreso for a boosted character in TBC, because it has not 2 but 12 more levels to go, and the path from 1-58 (more precisely 20-58, because that’s when the level changes of 2.3 kick in) is much shorter anyway.
As do I. It’s always nice to see someone well spoken and putting thought into his arguments.
I don’t think so, the quests they do might get them to 59 at the most, but probably to almost 59.
Rested exp equals to future earned exp since you will get exp at a 2x rate until its over anyway. How is it to 59?
It clearly says: They start at 75% of level 58 and with a full rested exp bar (150% of a level added on top of that.)
So by the time they reach level 60, they will still have some rested exp left, like 25% or more.
If the boosted players grinded all the way they would end double xp at level 60.25 however they are likely going to hand in some quests, I’d guess at rested to 60.5/75.
It’s why I think they’ll drop them in pre-patch as there’s a hard cap on double XP that ends at 60 meaning anyone who takes the boost wont have an xp advantage at the start, and later when the game has been out a while it won’t matter.
It’s what, 6 quests at the start and probably skippable. Rest XP does not count towards quest hand ins.
It is a good metric and it does mean that an account played by someone who earns more $/h in real life is worth more than one who played with lower income. Do you remember back in the day when people that wanted to stop playing or got into financial troubles they sold their account online?? Well imagine that exact same monetization of accounts, where if you have 2 similarly progressed accounts then the one that buys the boost will be more expensive because it has more realized potential in it, potential that was bought and not played through.
From the 2 different types of accounts (ones with already at least 1 leveled char and one that is completely fresh) if we assign the boosted-non boosted aspect to them we have 4 different types of results:
The effects of the boost being a noticeable instant increase in any player’s potential for his account, will create in my estimation these forthcoming results in each of the sub-categories of the player-base.
Those who have leveled and can’t/won’t buy the boost (category 2) will notice the lowered in comparison potential and either ignore it since they still have enough resources (here is your 2% Sorzza argument) or they feel cheated out of their effort and time investment because that 2% was still 150-200h approximately nullified in value. Weather anyone finds merit in either of their decisions that is what will happen and the server will lose some players from category 2.
The new players that can’t/won’t buy the boost (category 4) will experience the same weeding out of the game cause of the leveling process whether there is a boost or not so i take it as a constant. So they get to start the game behind everyone and have to push through 150-200h to even reach the game content the rest of the player-base will get to experience on day 1, some will therefore be discouraged to continue . Again weather you find merit in either of their choices the fact remain that the server loses players from category 4 too.
Now the new players that will buy the boost (category 3) and reach outland on day 1 are gifted this progression without earning it in game. My argument is that like a rich kid that doesn’t value much the car his daddy bought him,some of them won’t appreciate their benefit of skipping 150-200h and abandon their progression. And since the game failed to retain their interest (cause their outcomes weren’t earned in game) the server loses some players from category 3 too.
Lastly the leveled players who will buy the boost (category 1) will take advantage of the fact the game offers new potential for money and will love the opportunity to maximize their gains and experience while playing. I see no one from this category leaving the game so the server won’t lose players from this category.
Taking all of this into consideration, the server outcome (lets call it outcome 1) with the boost is that out of the 4 categories the server will bleed out players from 3 of them. Of course all those claimed results in each of the corresponding categories are open to discussion, and of course the severity of these results are disputable as we can’t reasonably predict how big or small chunks of the player-base will leave the game but we can predict that some will and therefore the number isn’t 0.
On the other hand lets explore the results in server population if the boost doesn’t come to pass.
Category 2 of players don’t see any disparities based on IRL money in game outcomes and so the server won’t lose any players.
Category 4 of players don’t get discouraged by the further progression of everyone in the game , even those with the same playing time as them, so apart of the normal leveling weeding out the server won’t lose any players.
Category 3 of players has the biggest impact on them in this scenario cause they never intended to level, they wanted to experience the same content at the same time as the leveled players and will be discouraged to even get in the game. Now even when some choose to try it anyway again the leveling process will halt the progression of some and the server loses players from category 3.
Category 1 of people only lose the extra potential they were willing to buy, and although this will force them to either abandon those extra potential outcomes or again face the leveling process the won’t stop playing the game. Therefore the server won’t lose any players from category 1.
So the server without the boost loses players only from 1 of the 4 categories of players, lets call this server outcome 2.
Realizing now that categories 1 and 2 make up the current player base one can see that the future of server outcome 1 is erratic in deep fluctuation and pins all the hopes for filling the player gaps and server growth on the shoulders of players in category 3.
In contrast the server outcome 2 can only grow in size, and that is why i believe the boost will damage the servers population and should be removed.
One last argument (i know this was a long message testing one’s patience i tried to make it as small as i could while keeping my points intact) even if the players from category 3 are so many that they not only fill the gaps lost from other categories but also grow the servers significantly that will result in servers primarily populated by people who either like the boost or are indifferent to it.
But if that comes to pass, the new player base that will be formed is going to be much more accepting to further monetization methods released from blizzard designed to sell for instant gratification purposes. All the systems that most players don’t like about retail are designed around this instant gratification model and that’s why i called the 58lvl boost the progenitor of retail’s current grind-fest state.
If on the other hand we stop the boost we send a clear cut message that we won’t be accepting cash-grabs or instant gratification methods put in the game, we can relegate/demand this way blizzard to stick to game-balancing issues/difficulty tweaks and nothing more.
P.S. To anyone that read this i salute you 
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