Blizzard/the Classic WoW team seem to be taking a stand against RMT and now is the time to take that one step further.
During SoM(Season of Mastery) they broke boosting.
If the Classic team wants Classic+ to have long term growth and encourage new players to start they need to break boosting again.
Much like GDKP boosting is objectively bad for the game as it inhibits people’s ability to find dungeons once the initial rush of players levels past them.
Boosting like GDKP also encourages people to buy gold.
Is everybody that is Boosting buying gold? No.
Does everybody that does/did GDKP buy gold? No.
Does that mean that those two activities don’t encourage gold buying? Also no.
If the Classic WoW team wants Classic+ to retain the vibe of Classic(Vanilla) there needs to be no token, no boosting, no character boosts, and no GDKP(as a continuance off the SoD & Anniversary GDKP ban).
They also need to start punishing cheaters(gold buyers) more severely to discourage the more or less common practice of buying gold. Two weeks on first offense for buying gold isn’t enough. It needs to be a month on the first offense and account closure on the second offence. People will be able to dispute their bans, a month gives Blizzard more than enough time to deal with responding to potential false positives. Those false positives still happen now under the current system.
The Classic WoW Team/Blizzard also need to be more proactive in responding to reports of botting. Instead of ban waves every month or two they need do them every week on reset.
TL;DR - No GDKP + No Boosting + More severe gold buying(cheating) punishment + More aggressive bot bans == healthier in-game economy for Classic+ and a better environment for new and returning players.
I am coming back to classic after like 15 years. Also giving up on retail but that’s another story.
I’m approaching it like I would in 2004, kind of a fresh, classic play through. I didn’t even know what boosting was when someone offered it to me. A random guy invited me on a free run of RFC while i was waiting for a group, so i did it. I gained 2 levels and was like “ok this is stupid”. It’s very clear how this affects the game and I’m not sure why it’s allowed. It completely disincentivizes doing the old dungeons which I think are really fun.
Boosting and gold buying is so antithetical to what traditional wow should be that it does hinder the experience for people who actually want to play the game from 1-60. Allowing for gold buying/tokens also creates a have and have-not population and really messes with the economy.
Also, if you’re a WoW player who just wants to buy and boost your way through the game, why are you even playing?
RMT should be a perma-ban from the first offense but Blizzard are cowards. Has anyone in the history of time bought gold, been caught, then been like “oh dang, I guess I won’t do that anymore”? This is not a rehabitable character trait, you’re either a gold buyer or you are not.
TL;DR: The main takeaway from this that I have is that you feel a more aggressive approach towards banning RMT and botters would lead to better experiences. There is also the tacked-on opinion that you feel the GDKP ban of SoD/Anniverary as well as the anti-boosting of SoM were helpful. I agree with the former.
This is quite the claim.
This is also quite a claim, but bringing GDKP up (yet again) as a topic is, at this point, in my opinion at least, a rather political and polarizing thing. You’re saying it’s objectively bad, and I’m sure we could come up with some metrics gathering framework to support this claim, but we could also very easily do the reverse: show that it is objectively good for the game.
This part, at least from my perspective, seems like the first well-reasoned statement that you’ve made. You’re giving a clear objective: “to retain the vibe of Classic (Vanilla)” ← whether one agrees or disagrees with it, at least it’s a clearly stated opinion.
This is a pretty decent TL;DR → I would recommend putting it at the top, since that’s where TL;DRs are useful. If it’s at the bottom, it is a summary.
I don’t disagree, per say, but I wonder if a lot of it is a problem with Classic in and of itself. MMO’s were never meant to live this long in the exact same content loop
With C+ they can constantly progress content and keep players engaged in new (unoptimized) content as they go. Just like it was with Vanilla to TBC to Wrath. That can help keep ahead of mass boosting and the hyper optimization that comes along with content that never changes
Boosting & GDKP will be a net negative on the game even with new content.
GDKP in and of itself would be fine without RMTs but there’s no way to fully remove RMTs from the game so GDKP will always be corrupted. Doubly so when the proponents of GDKPs refuse to self-police.
The only guilds affected by pugs whether they are GDKP or otherwise are the bad guilds. Guilds run by either corrupt leadership or leadership that are bots getting carried by its members.
Any guild that clears raids well and hands out loot fairly is not losing people to pugs. Only bad guilds coping about pugs stealing their members. Fix yourself and your guild and that won’t be an issue.
Absolutely not. Here’s why: A member in my guild was recently banned for buying gold. He used the gold to boost his character to max and buy BOE gear to start raiding. Only at that point did he get caught in a ban wave, when most of the use for the gold was already established. Upon his return from his two week vacation, he still had all the BOEs, he was still level 60, and perhaps most surprisingly, he still had all the remaining gold he hadn’t spent lmaooo
In regards to the boosting, believe it or not, leveling is the worst part of the game to some folks. A lot of people like max level pvp or raids. Leveling is something they suffer through in order to get to the part of the game they actually like.
This is my favorite part about gdkp. The ability to be free from guild politics. Nothing like dealing with horrible humans in management positions at work just to be forced to bow to the will of your in game managers (guild leadership) in your recreation time.
Also, being able to join a pug any day of the week instead of having a guild dictate when you are required to play is another bonus.
Some folks are just plain miserable people who crave power but only find it inside our virtual world. The idea that people can bypass their gatekeeping is a threat to them.
It takes people running dungeons far longer to find groups because people are boosting. This leads to more people boosting out of desperation just to get their quests done.
Boosting also encourages RMTs in the same way that GDKP does.
If players(The WoW Community) took a hard stance against gold buying then GDKP and Boosting wouldn’t be as detrimental to the game as a whole. If people actively started kicking gold buyers from their guilds/raids there would be less people willing to cheat or at least willing to openly cheat.
If they broke boosting(as they had done in SoM) there would be more groups running dungeons which is good for the longevity of the game as any fresh rolls(New and Returing players) will be able to find groups for the lesser played dungeons(like BFD).
They used difficulty to find dungeons as a reason to shut down Chaos Bolt(RPPVP on SoD) despite the server having 10,000 active raiders. That logic should apply to boosting.
