Blizzard just banned a number of R1 players for selling boosts for real money. So why are boosts for gold allowed? The principle is the same and the negative impact on other players is definitely also the same.
Time to demand some basic principles from Blizzard
Because gold is an in game currency and boosts are an in game service.
The principle isn’t the same at all.
Ergo. Boosting for gold is boosting for cash.
You either ban boosting outright. Which is impossible. Or don’t ban it at all.
It’s simply a business decision. Why ban hundreds of unknown players. Ban a few well known boosters. Word gets around. It slows it down.
Hypocritical of blizzard to say buying things for cash is against the rules. But gold is cash on this game. From game time to wow tokens.
Gold is far from a simple in game currency now - as soon as blizzard allowed the converting of cash to gold and game time.
I think a big problem of this whole debate as well is that since blizzard started actually banning people for boosting, now everyone is just saying they’re “coaching” people as a way to make it sound legit, while in reality they’re literally just taking money up front and then boosting them to their desired rating.
Coaching should be allowed, boosting should not be, but it’s incredibly hard to differentiate between them nowadays thanks to all of this.
Considering logs and achievements exist - no, it’s not hard to differntiate.
Coaching doesn’t require a rank 1 player to play alongside with you. A Coach watches and tells you what to improve.
Coaching teaches you how to get a grasp of the game plan and what to look out for. It makes you improve over time.
Coaching does NOT make you shoot from 1400 to 2100 within a week.
But the boosters are still receiving gold.
Gold is the in game currency and a player offering their in game time for a fee is obviously going to be charged in gold.
Why is boosting any different than selling my time to help someone do a quest, Torghast, hang out in random BG’s to pocket heal, farm profession materials, help someone at a target dummy with their rotation?
In game time can be bartered for in game currency. That’s how it should be.
I get the point. Explaining the logic isn’t easy but I’ll do my best.
So the seller cannot (legally) profit indefinitely in real cash terms. However every negative impact to player experience is still there
well the thing is there is no one way to coach people, people have different styles of doing it which further complicates things.
you can absolutely coach people in real time as well, it’s not just done via vods, and in a game like WoW without solo queue that’s easily done by just playing with them instead of telling them to just queue up for a game on their own while you watch.
I do however agree that you USUALLY don’t shoot up in rating that drastically if you are being coached, but boosting doesn’t only have to be 1400 to 2100, it can also be 1400 to 1600 or 1800, or 1800 to 2100, and then it’s definitely possible for a rank 1 player to just carry the 1500 mmr games to victory while not even trying. that’s where it gets complicated.
I’m not sure this is the case. The demand for boosting is pushed by the gear locked behind high ranks which average players cannot achieve.
I don’t think you can stop boosting, it’s exploded because for too many players the game is essentially overturned.
Tone difficulties down and demand would lessen, supply would follow suit. That said there will always be some demand so it’s likely boosting will always be there.
Of course, all the boosts probably mean extra token sales so blizzard might be swayed by their own commercial interest in boosting.
The purchase of in game processes / items / stuff! Had always been around. I remember Star Wars galaxies having a second account to gather crafting materials and people offering cash for high quality stuff that wouldn’t be available for months on end.
Acklay venom for stun Batons.
In fact SWG was worse because NOTHING was BOE. Everything could be traded. Even after years of having it.
It’s part of the economy of games and human interaction.
this is essentially it, right. difficulty creates more opportunities for good players to boost bad players, but there’s no point in ruining the game by making it as easy and faceroll as classic again to combat boosters because then they would just be selling gear boosts in raids and leveling boosts and you effectively solve nothing.
Boosting is bad - with gold or RMT doesn’t matter.
Totally. If blizzard had zero monetary gain to be had. They wouldn’t care. Boosts for gold = tokens = income for them. So they don’t care.
Boost for cash = no gold = reduction in tokens resulting in action to try to stop it. Like so.
TIme to ban those who complain about boosters instead
And those who complain about complainers! IF YOU BAN THE COMPLAINERS WHO WILL COMPLAIN ABOUT THE COMPLAINERS!?
Coastguard?
Yes.
True.
That’s the whole point of my argument.
Was ofc an extreme.
There’s an interesting criteria here. You see, coaching improves your gameplay. Most likely will make you play better in the long run. People who buy coaches are interested in improving and playing the game.
People who buy boosts on the other hand are only looking after the achievements and gear upgrades. So it’s pretty safe to assume that, a player who shot up in rating (even if it’s just 200) and just entirely stops playing at a certain cutoff (like 1800 or 2000 for example) without playing any further games, was boosted.
A player who afterwards keeps playing around the same level, maybe a bit lower, could just have bought a coach.
Matter of fact is though, that most people right now buy boosts for the item upgrades. Logically enough boosters stop boosting as soon as the rating needed is aquired.
If Blizzard would analyze this data (which is pretty simple nowadays) they could easily ban these player or, at least, flag them as suspicious for further inspection.
Imo it’d be easily achievable to heavily reduce (not remove) the amount of PvP boosts being bought with a multitude of possibilites.
Real talk though - Blizzard isn’t interested in banning Boosts because people are buying WoW Tokens in order to buy those Boosts. Hands down, that’s the reason.
I imagine that people amassing serious amounts of gold via boosting for gold are likely to be selling that gold for real world currency. If you can link these people with such a transaction then they will get removed. All you need to do now is get that evidence if it exists, and present it to Blizzard
every time some buy a wow token to can aforde buy boosts blizzard makes money from it so why ban it so they luuse money ?