Out of pure interest, I would like to see your ideas after claiming something so bold as removing boosting from the whole ecosystem?
That is not a solution.
I said. Other companies with THOSE staff members you would hire havenât gotten a solution.
What would you do?
After culling boosting, they could:
Raise the member cap on guilds to either 2000 characters or 1000 accounts so that alts donât deduct from the current 1000 character limit. To make guilds more significant again.
Then fix the calendar, because currently it is dysfunctional. For example, You can invite non-guild members to guild events but you cannot invite guild members to guild events, they must sign up.
Fix the guild roster so that it works the same as the original one did, instead of it just being some cheaply made addon which calls to the old guild roster. Managing a guild of more than 20 characters is difficult now because the new guild roster does not function properly. We should be able to list the roster by level and then by rank and see the characters in each rank in level order but you cannot do that with the current roster, as it only remembers the last sorting order. Also, when someone logs in or out the roster info is updated (from the old roster) and the characters are then reordered in the list.
This is bad programming which makes it very difficult and time consuming to manage a guild.
Good solution. But I wonder:
How would such a massive guild be any different than simply pugging stuff? You cant possibly have 1000 friends there.
well, currently, as it is now, i have to constantly manage the guild. I have to routinely remove inactive characters and recruit new members. Often i find that people are returning from a break and had been unfairly removed. The players come back, the guild does not have enough room for all of the players who want to be in it.
That is awesome ! I wish I had the patience for that.
But from the perspective of a player (not a GM), how would a 2000 people guild change anything?
I imagine it like this: I âget alongâ with 10 people. If they are not connected, or just 1 but âhes chillingâ I would try to do keys with the other guildies I dont know.
But I dont know them. They could be randos.
And in a massive guild of 2000 people, 500 randos are still randos.
See where im going?
But they are less random than people from the group finder who you may only see one time. Also, they have some accountability because if they start dumping other guild memberâs keys then someone can report them to an officer.
I am sure you remember, before they started merging servers, oneâs reputation on a server would actually mean something. If you were well respected then getting into groups would not be a problem. If you were known as a troll then you better change server and start again.
This aspect of respect has been lost, not because of pooled servers but more so because of the group finder. I do not object to the group finder but i know some who do object to it strongly and they object to pick up groups likewise.
Boosting being allowed does have deeper negative affects on the community than people realise.
2 Likes
Sure. Why not.
Expand guilds. If that incentivizes people to not pay for boosts more than they do now, than great.
Sorry, I meant the question as: what would you to remove boosting services?
Remove the âservicesâ channel, announce that people known to be consistently boosting others for gold would be banned for doing so and apply a chat filter to the other channels. The filter would check/guard general channels, anyone advertising or asking for boosts would get a kick from the server and if they repeat the offense then they would get a soft ban for a number of hours, which does not affect their account status.
Just announcing that such thing would not be tolerated would be enough to cause the majority of people to stop selling boosting services. Only those who can afford to keep buying new accounts regardless of the possibility of being banned would then continue to sell boosts. And you would probably find that those accounts would be owned by those third party companies who do accept real world currency payments for such services.
Uda has already mentioned and described it perfectly so I wonât repeat much but I agree fully with him. Boosting exists and will always exist because there is a demand for it. You can remove services channel, make any other draconic law or requirement in an attempt to âfightâ the supply(aka boosting) but they will always find a way around it cause there is once again⌠I will repeat a demand. As mentioned before. Some substances are⌠illegal obviously and some countries invest in a motherload of resources to fight it, yet the illegal substance trade is still a âbooming industryâ. And why is that again? Because there is a demand for it.
Want to get rid of boosting? Find a way to reduce the demand for it. Trying to fight the supply will only lead to never ending ânew ruleâ-> ânew bypassâ-> ânew ruleâ->ânew bypassâ. And in the end⌠your casual player whom you are fighting for will suffer the most cause he will have to jump through many hops to prove to the system that he/she is not a booster. Cause what are new rules? If not simply a filter to try to keep the âboosters outâ but innocent players have to somehow pass that filter unharmed as wellâŚ
Ok well it is courageous stand but as someone who would indirectly lose from this I canât agree, sadly
- removing boosting channel seems nice but in without any real effect. There is only advertisement. Those who know the Way of the Gold, know that it is done elsewhere outside of Blizz or any ingame device.
- by banning people who regularly use boost from other players (not any sort of shady groups please note), you would decimate a large chunk of playerbase which tends to be really good customers to Blizz, but ok. Besides I would say almost nobody boosts regularly so I would estimate good 75-80 of pumpers are unreachable by such policy. You got like one or two +20s here and there, maybe group of friends gathers gold for 2T/2H or 2T for their raid run, you do it once in a while.
- there is really large demand for boosts which will be solved either as it is now, or they will find other more clandestine pathways
At the end of the day, as with almost all crazy ideas posted around here, I am enjoying the ideas as I see them outside, being tank only player (and healer on lower brackets). Guys whatever you think and get approved, just please make it without effect on pugging tanks/healers as it was in SL when I was bombarded by randoms in Oribos asking me how much for tanking their key.
Although 25k for a run wasnât really bad.
I agree with colleague above me, the demand is what drives everything. If you doubt, then look - there was invention of fire, then a looooot of demand happened, and we are flying to the orbit and having AI.
PS I am wondering how much would hypothetical removal of boosting impact overall Group finder in below-high and mid brackets. Because boosting never happens in either hardcore or very chill casual levels.
You cannot compare this to that.
If you own a game and people do things in the game which seem fair and ok but when you look closer you find that what they are doing is causing that leaking bucket which is the playerbase to leak faster⌠Do you encourage such activities because âwell hey thereâs a demand for itâ or do you put a stop to it before it literally kills your game for good?
If your game is dead for 2 months out of every 6 months, then when new players come during those 2 months, they quickly lose interest and do not subscribe for more. That is a lot of players you are losing, and a lot of money your company is losing. Which in turn means you cant afford to spend as much on development so the game soon becomes dead for 3 months out of every 6, and after that point, it isnât long before enough people state that your game is so dead, that it doesnât accrue any new players anymore.
So far, nobody has given any valid reason as to why blizzard should allow boosts. The only ones who argue that they should, either enjoy paying for boosts or make some gains from boosting others. Some people who boost others have gold capped so many characters they literally own the in-game economy. This is a totally unfair advantage to have.
It is Blizzardâs job to maintain balance and fairness in their game. From this point, the only way to do so would be to ban boosters. Not only because it results in a toxic in-game community, and toxic mythic groups, but also, since the third party companies which seek to make money out of blizzardâs game do so by making websites to sell boosts for real world currencies and then use âboosting communitiesâ to boost their customers - allowing such things to continue is against blizzardâs own policies!
Boosting communities who claim total innocence, directly enable the sale of boosts and in-game services for real world currencies!
I would just like to point out and maybe others may agree to an extent, that holding advantage on other players is one of the reasons we sometimes move to main tanks sooooo. Not all on merc trade. 
Thatâs down to blizzardâs inability to balance the classes, thatâs a totally different topic. lol
It can because it follows the same philosophy. âI want something which is not really fair or legal to haveâ. âThe forbidden fruit is the sweetestâ.
Encouraging it is not the same as accepting its existence and learning to live with it. Since I like the example about illegal substances. I can educate and encourage people the closest to not use and fall victim to them but I know I donât have Godly powers to erase it from existence either.
And how can you prove that Blizzard will benefit from implementing draconic anti-booster rules? Cause 1st: Implementation and ENFORCEMENT will require resources. And donât even try to suggest an âautomatedâ system. With the ânature of m+â⌠people report for being a booster/boosted for as much as missing 1 interrupt.
So that will lead to many false banns. And whatâs the best way to drive out the players? By making unfair banns of course. A player who will feel like the company has unjustly banned him will⌠I wont say never but 99% will not return cause thats the highest insult you can do.
So in your argument âBlizzard is loosing moneyâ you suggest implementing a money wasting enforcement with a high risk of loosing money paying customers?
Yeah⌠will pass thanks.
You havenât provided any real reasons besides âme no likey boosts!â eitherâŚ
You donât have to be boosted to simply play âbellow somebodyâs elses standardsâ to cause resentment and toxicity. Try not to pin âboostingâ on EVERY game/community issue pleaseâŚ
you cannot deny it.
Some services still are able to sell in-game gold for real world currencies. I know someone who was recently banned for 2 weeks for buying gold. They already have the needed staff to check if someone was boosted or not. They already have systems in place to track in-game currency transactions. You are trying to argue that it would result in people being banned on the heresy or say-so of others. That is not likely.
Iâm just gonna say this.
A new or returning players logging in to the spam of boosts like an F2P game will completely destroy the long term of this game. Itâs a terrible look. No one will stick around with what is basically pay to win/ cheating in front of everyone.
The channel should never have been active by default.
Now, harsher action will have to be taken to protect the future of the game.
3 Likes
Yes and that did not happen before say in Classic or TBC(Chinese gold farmers, ring a bell?)?
To make it plainly short. Banns happened, they happened before and will continue to occur in the future. Cause thats the âcost of doing businessâ.
For your âI know 1 guy who got bannedâ, how can you be sure that 1000 or even 10 000 guys got through un-caught?
Its not the matter of some random âunluckyâ guy getting banned but checking the ratio of people getting through. If the current âthey already have the needed staff to check if someone was boosted or not.â amount can catch maybe 0.1% then they would need to use 50% of Blizzards profit to increase the manpower to catch at least 25% people? Yeah good luck, proving that its âeconomically viableâ.
I will repeat once more. Blizzard tried its crusade against Chinese gold farmers. For every operation they dismantled, 2 more popped up. Even the âgood Blizzard back in TBC/WOTLKâ era didnât had that much money to hire an legion of anti-money farmers to catch every farmer in ChinaâŚwont even got in the rest of the world.
Simply to put it. You are an idealist. You see things through a very narrow âno pollution = Earth is saved. YAAY!â.
Me, Uda and possibly others see it that the main polluters are heavy industry nations and those nations will fight tooth and nail like a cornered rat if you threaten their âeconomic strengthâ and will require a tremendous resources to even attempt putting a dent at them.
Well, not sure if i should raise a question towards you seeming to suggest that âchineseâ people are responsible for all the bad stuff. hmmâŚ
Calling me narrow minded, no matter how politely you try to word it, you are still not going to make the insult seem like a compliment.
As i already said, if blizzard announce that they would no longer tolerate boosting for gold services, because they enable and obfuscate detection of third party companies who actively engage in re-selling such services for real world currencies⌠then you would find that most of those âgenuinely goodâ boosters would stop boosting people, because they do not want to be banned for doing so.
Then when it can be proved that someone is still selling boosts, it would be ok to assume they are doing so on behalf of a third party company.