Gold only boosts have been around since long before most of you were even old enough to play this game. Why do you think they brought in the token in the first place? Where do you think people got the gold to buy boosts back in Vanilla? What do you think Blizzard tried to do about those external avenues people went to to get their boosts?
A US based company has only so much power. If you live in some backwater country you can steal, relabel and reuse Blizzards IP and they can’t do anything about it. Hell there is even a TBC Classic rip off game going around where they have not only stolen Blizzards IP, but they have modified it and I’m sure they have added a store to it to make money from Blizzards work, but they are not based in a country that Blizzard can stop them.
So what did Blizzard do about the boosting that has been around for SEVENTEEN YEARS? They realised the cost to chase all this up was too much, they implemented automated systems that can catch people, put more onus on the real players to report dodgy behaviour to help keep the game clean and added a token system.
Yes the token system brings in more $$$ to Blizzard, but who would you rather gets the money, Blizzard or some third party operating out of the Philippines or the Canary Islands? People have always been buying gold, boosts and specific items, you all just need to accept that it has mostly stayed hidden until the last few years. It’s been a rampart ‘problem’ for many years and the only solution, the only way we are ever going to combat the issue is what Blizzard have done, make a way for their players to legit buy gold to keep it all in house.
Because I’m telling you, the minute Blizzard say “Right, boosts are out” is the minute you start getting spam mail in game, spam to your mail box, spam whispers, spam in general and trade chat, level 1 alts running around /yell spouting something in Chinese like “想要以比竞争对手便宜的单次运行 100K 的价格出售地下城和突袭运行，多次运行的折扣悄悄告诉我交易”, only than you will all realise what a horrible mistake you have made trying to ban boosts.
Trust me, if they remove boosts and make them illegal, it will get worse.
Look, I’m really not trying to be mean here, but did this need another thread? The horse is bloodied, beaten, and quite frankly, a pile of mush at this point.
Maybe we do need another thread, maybe we need as many daily reminders as it takes to remind the masses until they learn, because take it from someone who has been playing this game longer than some of it’s players have been alive, and that’s just sad, but if they ever decide to remove boosts than they will lose another chunk of players.
You will find players like myself leave because I don’t want to deal with the constant spam from third party sites. You will find those who sell gold only boosts leaving because they have no in game income and nothing else to do, it’s not worth trying to stop it.
You say that now, but with the state of the game it’s not fine. This is the same attitude players have had for many many years, “Let them leave, it’s no problem, they are not wanted anyway” until we get to SL and all the “Where is everyone?” posts start.
What we need, what we all need, whether you think you do or not, is to change the game to appease as many players as you can to ensure we keep as many as we can otherwise the game really will die.
Everyone just boost raid logging. We’ve turned WoW into a mobile game where you just pay a fee to get past the next level. lol I mean, Candy Crush is owned by the same company, right?
Not quite. I know many players from my guild are now trying New World and FF outside of our scheduled progression raids, and even than we are finding it hard to get our raids going some days. I hope 9.1.5 brings them back in some capacity because that’s not good.
For as long as I have been here, aside from when I took breaks for personal reasons, I’ve been raiding and only once ever during a few weeks period my guild struggled to find 20 people for raid. At one point we have had three raid groups going.
Everything that happens has a flow on effect. Say 50% of the players have stopped playing outside of raids because there is nothing to do due to a slow release of content, than that’s 50% of players who are no longer in the overworld and for many that makes the game feel empty, plain, boring and for those who don’t raid or do keys, they leave.
Personally I don’t care, that just means the rares that drop mounts will be up more often for my own gains, but it doesn’t work that way. There are at least two universal things every player in WoW needs and if we don’t get them than the game dies and without players, we don’t get what we need.
For any active player we need servers that make the game run and content. And if players weren’t playing, and paying, than we would not get either of those and even players like myself who does everything in guild, I can’t play if there are no servers to play on. I need as many players to stick around playing as much as anyone else does.
We need 9.1.5 to be released ASAP, we need this whole gold selling thing to be sorted ASAP, we need players wishes to be fulfilled, like having a Dreanai druid as an option, or to remove factions in some manner, or to open transmog restrictions or whatever it is, if enough players are asking for it than they need to make it happen to appease and ensure we retain as many players as we can.
Gold only boosts are not a problem unless the groups that are selling the boosts are selling the gold for real money. Which I’ve heard is what a lot of the PvP groups that are selling boosts are doing.
Real money transactions that can bypass character development, be it gear, leveling, etc… have no place in a RPG. That’s my philosophy.
I never liked the token. I was indifferent on the cosmetic shop because I do understand that the company exists to make a buck, and those things never influenced the feel of the gameplay.
I don’t like games that sell EXP boosts, because then the leveling process is designed to promote those boosts.
I don’t like games that sell gold in their shop, because then gold has a real world value and earning it in game loses value, unless you are able to earn very large sums in short periods of time, which is rare.
For all it’s worth, right now, if WoW decided to just put the AOTC and CE achievements on their shop, or if they sold a loot box containing a random piece of the highest end gear, it’d be no different than being able to spend real money on gold and then using that gold to buy those things in game.
Heck, they might as well at this point. Why include the tediousness of having to log in, arrange a transaction and AFK for the duration of the content? Just allow us to buy the things outright. Become the mobile game design WoW is heading toward.
Candy Crush: WoW.
If there’s a wall in your way, slip it a dollar and it goes away.
You may as well just leave yourself with that attitude. You may think appeasing everyone is not the answer, and personally I only need about 40 people from my guild to play the game the way I play, but who do you think pays for the servers? Everyone else who I don’t care about pays their share to ensure we can all keep playing.
the biggest lie ever told was that modern wow is an RPG, it’s an action game that early on was an RPG but devolved/evolved depending on your perspective into an action game.
First I’d like to say thank you for being nice about your views on the game, you don’t really get that much around here anymore.
But I have to disagree with this because the token isn’t generating things from nowhere, it’s allowing the transaction of gold from one person to the other, the gold is still 100% generated in game.
I highly doubt they will ever add what some people consider a real P2W option in this game, like adding an AOTC to the store, or a nice shiny orange weapon, because things like that will generate power and wealth from nothing and that really will hurt the game.
So, because I don’t agree with your “the world is ending” mentality, I should leave? Thinking in only absolutes typically serves to cause problems, not solve them.
Again, who you’re referring to is GD, which is not a majority in regards to the active playerbase.
You mean the people that simply play the game, and don’t come to GD to whine? Yes, I would agree that they are in fact the ones who help pay the majority of the bills.
it creates a social problem in the game that strongly discourages players from participating in the world and group content. that social problem then in turn creates a much higher, more costly, and more frustrating barrier to entry for everybody else outside of guilds or who are looking to make friends and progress their toons. It’s not that it’s impossible it’s just way harder because these boosts exist in the first place.