The 58 boost was the cause of 90% of TBC Classic’s problems and set the scene to mass imbalancing, dead levelling experiences leading to no new players.
This isn’t meant as a “I told you so” thread but a reflection of how Blizzard’s major change to TBC has majorly exacerbated current problems in the game.
The level boost killed levelling aka people being out in the open world, made botting vastly more profitable and thus worsened its effects on the game, and allowed any group of people to boost an opposite faction instantly to 58 which makes balance even worse.
The appearance of a dying realm due to vastly less people being in the open world also causes panic transfers to bigger servers, which also changes the faction balance significantly.
Dead realms, one sided pvp servers and botting is a symptom of a greater problem put into TBC classic from the very start as a cashgrab for people to skip over a core part of the game/any MMO.
Those who can’t see such common sense in front of their eyes are blinded by lack of knowledge or in the “pro-boost” camp aka denying reality because they personally don’t like levelling.
39 Likes
100% agree, the 58 boost caused all this mess all for blizzard to make a quick buck, pretty sad really.
15 Likes
Just to play devil’s advocate here. Just like with mage boosting
You have no idea if people were to make the alt at all if boosting and the 58 boost didn’t exist.
First time players sure, but any established player may have never even made the character if not for the boost feature.
I’m anti boost too, mostly because I hate p2w in games… but 1-50ish leveling was pretty dead in classic too… people don’t just endlessly level when end game is as bad as tbc is right now
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Boosts instantly made the faction imbalance so much worse. Anyone who wanted to reroll to the perceived superior faction could do so with almost no effort. Incredibly bad thing for Bli$$ard to add, but who’s surprised?
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The worst part is most of the people who pushed for the 58 boost no longer play the game. That’s just the community now though people want fast and easy fun then abandon.
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The biggest factor is just the way people play on pvp servers these days.
We know where the better play experiences are, no one was going to stay on a dying server regardless of how painful blizzard made it to switch.
The only difference is that more would simply quit rather than transfer.
Head here for working methods to help fix this problem while we wait on Blizzard to do what only they can do:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/en/wow/t/how-to-identify-report-troll-bots-screenshots-edit/1147119
Blizzards extremely absurd changes to arena killed off the pvp community, which is a pretty large portion.
The boost exacerbated all the server balance issues
Blizzard just epic failed to deliver TBCC.
I don’t even see any hype or excitement for classic wrath anymore.
13 Likes
Hmmm. I sort of agree.
But the three guilds on my server who were ally all of classic but switched to horde in TBC started on their new server in February, long before the boost was available.
They wanted good gear to level / prog with including things like badge and other difficult to get trinkets. Also needed a bit to recruit and form a team going into 6/1
So kinda? But if you were serious about rerolling you did it long before the little 2 week prepatch thing.
the worst is leveling a new character, there is nobody anywhere to quest with in the old world. I loved when those zones were alive, I guess that’s why they made SoM,
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The majority of the paid boosts at this point are fresh bot accounts every time the old get banned. The endless cycle of big money.
Most people I know who used theirs, did it hastily on a server/faction they no longer play. Including me. 
This is what keeps the demand for mage boosting alive.
I would also say, an unfortunate consequence of leveling fast and easy regardless, you are more ready to walk away from a character you didn’t put that much /played into.
So you’re probably right, 58 boost leads to quitting.
The game is never going to be the way it was 10+ years ago. There are a multitude of reasons for this with blame to be placed on both the community at large as well as Blizzard.
We all have to accept it or move on.
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SoM had a little bit of the feel but now that many are hitting 60 and just spamming AV to get the pvp gear it’s losing that tiny bit of magic it had, but you can still do old school dungeons with people so that’s fun if you like that
Yeah, you’re wrong.
The 58 boost is actually the smartest thing blizzard did for TBC, and realms would be even deader without it.
The biggest issue TBC is facing right now is a lack of new players joining the game. Not bots, not faction imbalances.
The boost is the single best thing blizzard did to encourage new people to play.
Bots aren’t also as problematic as people say. The economy issues are almost exclusively a result of mega servers and excessive scarcity in real world farming spots. Bots greatly alleviate issues in the economy and make consumables cheaper for everyone.
WE don’t have data that tells us one way or another if bots are bad or good for the game as a whole. What we have are people who insist bots are bad because they’re unhappy with the game for a variety of reasons they don’t fully understand.
7 Likes
boosts are awesome, leveling is boring.
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Eh, I think while it’s a factor, the bigger and more prominent one is being unwilling to cap server sizes and not closing transfers to full realms.
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It’s a common misconception that the effect of having over 100 bots per faction looting chests and herbs in dungeons etc reduces the prices of consumes.
The fact is that even if a Terocone sells for 5g40s on a relatively bot free server like Grobbulus while only costing 4g40s on Whitemane doesn’t account for the fact that your gold has a lower relative value in general on Whitemane.
You’ll notice this is you had some pie in the sky dreams of being able to afford a crafted epic or win a bid in a gdkp with your bonafide farmed gold against the gold buyer with 50k in their bags.
Boosting didn’t kill the low level brackets. They eventually die out on their own, and actually already did before crusade or boosting even got here. It did however make things worse and prevent crusade from reviving the low level brackets like it would have for some time. Since everyone can now boost, there’s no reason to level except on a new race that can’t boost. Personally I’m bringing up a human paladin (never bought a boost, never will), but I’m soloing most of the game. I was lucky to still get runs on most of the dungeons, although some were carried (not paid but I was allowed to tag along).
I must be playing a different game. Leveling a pally right now and I see many people out in the open world.