Time to ban boosts for gold

Community General Discussion
248

Your scope of “Demand” is a bit off-centre here. So it is open to discussion even if you do not think so.

Did you see the video I linked to you? It is a clip from a movie called The Founder. Which is about the guy who built the Mc’Donnalds franchise.

What he says is an example of the way this particular “demand” is working. If you have the means to supply something, then people will come to demand it. But if it wasn’t there in the first place then there wouldn’t be such a demand.

He says “you increase the supply and the demand will follow!”

If you have so many companies and players dominating the trade channel and the Group Finder tool, with advertisements for boosts, it will make it very difficult for people to join a normal group, but also it will show people “hey, this is ok, everyone is doing it, hop on this band-wagon” and then there will be an increased demand for it.

But then if Blizzard come along and start issuing time-bans and silencing accounts, those adverts will fade away and people will go back to playing the game properly and work for their progress.

Go ahead, argue with the logic of the man who made one of the largest companies in the world.

249

Its not. You are wrong. Without demand there is no supply. And it’s clearly visible vs past couple expansions where M+ was simply easier and TF existed.

Enjoy your WTS spam in LFG.

250

Tell that to all those who invent and innovate.

If what you suggest were true, there wouldn’t even be a computer for you to play on. Before anyone made a computer, there was zero demand for a computer.

251

You are comparing apples to oranges. Items in wow are not innovation. They are simply boosting multipliers.

252

no

Advertisements are the multipliers here. I am sure you are familiar with what an advertisement does.

Look, I understand that you are unhappy with the way you have to grind for items from the game. But saying that this is the reason for boosts is just misdirecting the argument from the actual cause, in order to get blizzard to change something which you are unhappy with.

Change it, go ahead, boosts will still exist, just as they do in other games. The sale of in-game currency and the monetisation of it by third party companies is what caused this rampant boosting economy in WoW.

As a Game Designer, one of the first things I would look at for a game I was developing, would be how third party companies could monetise my game, and possibly make more money from it than I or the company which I work for do or does.

I would look at how bots could be used to farm the game and dominate the in-game economy. I would work to stop those bots and not let it spiral to a point where third party companies are botting the game on an industrial scale, (as they used to in WoW before Blizzard put a stop to it).

Then, if those third party companies used their power to establish Boosting Communities, as a way to gain Gold or other in-game currencies to monetise them, I would work to stop that practice too.

Before anyone established any boosting communities, there was very little demand for boosts. They increased the supply and with the multiplier of mass advertising campaigns, the demand followed.

At least the bots used to get banned.
I would say that the bots were the lesser of the two evils here, as they were more manageable and easier to ban.

254

Yeah, you are a part of a problem. Imagine thinking banning smoking advertisements got rid of smokers.

Look, you have no clue, I was mythic raider for 5 expansions now. I know how boosting works and worked in the past. I know what gating does. You don’t.

Banning advertisers will do nothing, as long as demands exists.

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255

Problem is gold being conflated with money.

Whether Blizzard does it or fails to ban others doing it - that’s the problem.

257

First you say this…

and then you come with this…

For the record, there are far less people who smoke these days by percentage, due to the ban on smoking advertisements and the drive of anti-smoking campaigns.

I have a clue, on the contrary to what you believe. Anyone can get the same clue by searching Discord for WoW boosting communities, and then searching google for boosting websites, and then compare the pricing plans they see there.

The only difference they will find between the two are the currency “dollars vs gold”.

You must be some kind of mind reader to be able to tell me what I do or do not know. Since that is impossible, it would be easy to assume that you must be making gold from boosts somehow? or perhaps you get twitch views for boosts?

I honestly do not care if you raid at a mythic level or not. Stating that you do, sadly, does not increase your status or the weight of your argument here. In my opinion, it means nothing.

Silencing the accounts of advertisers and issuing incremental time-bans which lead on to permanent bans for repeated offences, just as they used to for gold-seller spammers and advertisers in-game, would make a very big splash in those boosting communities!

It would stop the players from collecting gold for boosts, it would make people afraid of getting banned. Then the third party companies behind the boosts would have to start paying for more accounts, have to start paying people real money, have to do more work themselves, and make far less money from selling boosts.

And the players, who might otherwise have paid for boosts but now can’t find a company they could trust… would have to join a guild and work to progress through the game, the old way.

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258

Because those people go into dungeons and then ruin them? Lol, should be pretty obvious.

Just wanted to do a spires for my paladin for the campaign. Had some KSM mage in the group, he grabbed an orb on the last boss and just ran around with it. We wiped. To devos. Because of a mage with KSM. There’s no way he obtained KSM legit with how lost he seemed to be in the dungeon.

259

Well, engage your brain before randomly inviting, it’s super obvious from their RIO if people have been boosted ^^

260

Again, utter rubbish

261

I can’t control the LFD tool. We wiped. On heroic. Because of him. We wiped on heroic. Because of a guy with KSM.

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262

Again, rubbish.

They wouldn’t HAVE to join a guild at all. It’s quite easy to pug most content, or have a decent friends list. Even if you could magically remove every booster in the game, people still won’t join a guild and ‘work to progress through the game the old way’. What is this ‘old way’ you even talk about? You think everyone used to belong to a guild and that was the only way to progress?

Silencing accounts would just lead to a big storm and make very little difference to the boosting communities who can afford to open endless accounts.

As for pricing differences, there does seem to be some spread and prices generally drop the further into the expansion we get- but of course they check each other’s prices and adjust to remain competitive. This is normal for any business model of this type. Will the prices be quite similar? Yes. Try this: go and buy a pack of corn flakes from every large shop in your country and compare the price differential. Unless someone is doing a promotion you will find only a limited spread in pricing. Same things as the boost market.

Maybe someone annoyed him? Maybe he doesn’t have a perfect memory and forgot what to do with it or didn’t realise he had picked one up or was on the phone or many other reasons.

Don’t assume someone with KSM runs every single dungeon many many times or has even been in it in weeks or maybe just switched back to that toon after a break…

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263

Is it that you can’t tell the difference between your own opinion and actual facts…

Or is it that you just like to state your own opinion as though it was a fact, as a way of trying to get people to agree with you?

You don’t seem to understand the power of influence which advertising has on people.

I am not talking about the prices, current price or whatever price.
I am talking about the pricing plans, packages, price list, whatever you want to call it.

This “Self Play” as opposed to giving someone your account details and letting them play your account for you, and “loot traders” where you pay double the price (or more) to have some extra player(s) in the group who will trade items to you if they get loot.

As I already said, they have exactly the same packages for sale on the boosting communities as on the third party websites which sell boosts and gold for real money.

This system is by design. The boosting communities are run by the third party companies.

If you think they are not then you are either blind or very foolish to believe that they are only boosting people for a price of gold and that it goes no further than that.

Anyone can setup a website, sell boosts for cash and give you gold, for you to boost their customer.

Silencing accounts would lead to what big storm? A big storm of people crying because they can’t scam other players out of their gold anymore? O, boo-hoo!

Banning people for 24 hours for a first offence, 7 days for a second, and a month for a third or a permanent ban for running advertisements which claim to be selling boosts only for gold… Instant permanent ban for any who promote a third party website which is known to be taking real money in exchange for boosts.

This is the only way to deal with this problem. You argue it would not be affective because the boosters can open more accounts? It would be effective enough.

264

He had only run every dungeon on +15. That’s all he had done. Every dungeon on +15. No other runs at all.

You think that’s legit? No dungeons at all except +15s?

265

Ronjambo, please, do yourself a service and join a boosting community as a booster. Boost ~100 M+ keys and talk to the buyers you meet. Then I promise you will come back here with a completely different view on what is boosting all about and how wrong you are with the doomsaying.

For 6 years I’ve been selling boosts for gold, organized them, and met thousands if not tens of thousands of customers. The vast majority are boosters themselves, capable players, or people who have alts to maintain. The common problems they all share: lack of time, lack of friends to play with, dead faction/server, lack of interest to actually play the game, to begin with, but the desire for rewards. Many just want to get the tedious/unfun things on their list checked with as little effort as possible. Why? Because that’s how the game works. Many hated islands, so they bought islands so they can just AFK for 5 hours while 1-2 others did their grind. Many buy M+ runs or Raid runs with armor stacks so they get the gear they want fast and not have to do dozens of pugs and risk depletes and what not. All to get the gear they need to go back to pushing or clearing mythic as they want to.

Many, so many of them, are latecomers. The game asks you to climb a mountain in order to catch up if you come late. Guilds are very demanding, they want to see logs, they want to see you geared, they want to see that you are willing to invest time or gold into helping them progress. M+ groups want to see raider io above all else.

“People get boosted then they int keys/raids” - a small minority. Sorry to say but it’s a small minority and it’s not as toxic as you make it look. In League of Legends, Boosting is very toxic because you don’t choose who you play with on Soloq (The ladder that matters). But in WoW, in all 3 core pillars of the game, you choose who you want to play with and you have a lot of resources to tell if the guy legit got his experience or was boosted. Raider io addon shows u the number of timed +15 keys he did, if the guy only has 8 keys +15 (which coincidentally are KSM), that’s a clear red sign. If the guy lacks logs on heroic, or his logs are very bad, another red sign. I won’t open PvP boosting discussion because arena boosting requires the boostee to play and actually learn from the Gladiator he works with.

The toxic part about boosting is the endless spam, that first took over trade chat and then LFG. There are solutions for that, but sadly they require Blizzard to invest in moderation. Such solutions are: Make a Trade Chat and an LFG option for selling Services for gold. Make it against the ToS and 7 days or Permaban if u dare to advertise on any other channel but those. Then ban non stop, not once every 3 months, so the people who want to abuse the system can’t make a profit. Done.

The “boosters join pugs and intentionally fail to drive up the demand of boosts” is just some make believe fairytale generated by a very angry and delusional person. Nobody is willing to waste their time doing that, because that’s not how boosting even works.

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266

The R1 players were not banned for boosting. They were banned for RMT. That’s the problem - to Blizzard, there is no “boosting” issue. They are targeting anything that is using their product to make money for someone else.

267

When I first opened my guild in 2009, it had only 1 rule

“We play the game for ourselves and not for others. This means do not beg people for gold or for boosts.”

I would not spend my time playing the game for others, even if it paid me a full time wage.

I play the game for myself. If I want to spend my time working, then I will go and create game assets or 3D models, you know, a real job. Not go scamming players out of gold for making them feel like they have gained something in a game which they should be playing for themselves.

By boosting people you are effectively ruining their experience of the game. Which in turn then ruins the experience of other players when as myself and others have pointed out, those boosted players join other groups and cause wipe-outs, depleted keystones, arguments etc.

No, the only solution is BAN THE ADVERTISERS full stop.

Blizzard developers want guilds to be more rewarding. I would search for the quote of the lead developer in a recent interview, but you can go search for it yourself. Where he says they want to make guilds more rewarding again.

Well ban boosters, there you go. Job done.

268

You are absolutely delusional thinking it would change anything.

:clown_face:

Dont bother arguing with someone who has no clues, its better to just stop responding to this thread and let it die out.

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269

Guilds are ruled over by people. And people are the driving force behind the wide range of scoring & requirements. If you play the game for yourself, good for you, that doesn’t give you the right to ask Blizzard to punish people who help others in exchange for gold. What would the world be if the Supermarket will stop selling Vegetables and tell you “we don’t want to rob you the feeling of eating vegetables that you acquired, instead of growing by yourself”.

Boosters do not ruin other player’s experience, they enhance it. The guy wants to buy it, nobody forces him. If the person hates doing Island Expeditions or Torghast, his options are:

a) Don’t do it, meaning ur Artifact Level or Legendaries will be 0. So you can’t do M+, Raids or PvP, things you like, because you refuse to do grinds you hate doing.
b) Stop playing the game and go play a different game.
c) Play the auction house, do professions, do BMAH, do TCG, buy wow tokens and pay a player willing to do the grind for you, so you can enjoy the part of the game you like.

The game evolved into boosting, boosting didn’t shape the game into what it is today. You didn’t have infinite grinds like Artifact Power, you didn’t have Legendary grinds, you didn’t have M+ or 10 raid difficulties before. You used to have a very simple, rather fast progression path. Level to max -> do some reputations and heroic dungeons -> do the normal raid with pugs -> find a guild and do heroic.

Today: reach max level -> start grinding renown from 100 sources -> do 9 torghast runs (if it s ur first time) or 2 a week (that takes ~30 min / run so 5.5 hours or 1 hour gone) -> do the maw for sockets (only if you want to be optimal) -> do 1-10 M+14s to unlock your chest every week (another 30 min - 5 hours) -> clear the raid on normal/heroic for 0-3 pieces of loot if you are lucky (another 2-4 hours gone). All not taking into account depletes/groups failing. Then after you’ve done all of the above, every week, for weeks, you can finally get accepted in a Mythic Raiding guild that has Cutting Edge aspirations, or a M+ Push team who wants to do some hard keys, or a PvP group of people aiming for gladiator and unwilling to get stomped for months until their gear is up to par.

What you rob people of is dozens upon dozens of hours of tediousness that they have to go through in order to finally be able to play the part of the game they enjoy.

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