The boosting will shift back to Kara/PvE for Season1 and Season2.
PvP Gladiator Rewards will simply be “repeat customers”
You own the team, you have 100% of the games played, you simply invite Carry-Guy to your team, play your weekly 10 games, then he leaves and goes onto the next team.
One important factor people in here haven’t mentioned, rating during TBC / WoTLK era was not specifically personal rating. You have a CR that starts at zero, but it is tied to a team and if you leave that team or get kicked off the team, you lose all your rating.
This makes it harder to swap around and play with anyone you want (no LFG either). However, boosting is still as simple as having a team with a decent rating, inviting someone and then playing until they catch up to the overall team rating. They will get a lot more points then the other players (the boosters will drop some points initially as loses will be harsher for them then wins) until it evens out.
Then the boosters go back to pushing the rating with their normal good team to boost the team back up again (teams can have up to 6 people on them). Rinse repeat until the boostie is at the rating he wants.
Hunters have no deadzone in 2.4.3 as it was removed in 2.3. Hunters still cannot shoot in melee range but there is no deadzone where you can neither shoot nor melee.
Idk how serious boosts will be in tbc. I feel like it will be less of an issue, just due to the punishing nature of the old game. But I guess it depends on how competitive the playerbase for arena is.
I think the better gear gets the more realistic boosting will become. But early expansion / seasons I think it’ll be kind of a non-issue.
Gear differences in tbc are definitely something you notice. So late game a full brutal dps is going to be something really not-fun to q into at low mmr. That being said, tbc is punishing. And you can absolutely punish weak links. Bigger mistakes or misplays can end games instantly. Which is true today, but since TBC damage isn’t built around modifiers and damage cooldowns in the same way that retail is, these windows are more frequent.
To be clear though. Boosts were a thing in og tbc. They’ll be a thing again. Just how dramatic compared to live. No clue.
Boosting will not be nearly the issue that it is on retail because it would require the booster to be your same faction (can’t have 2 factions on the same acct on the same server) on your server, and on your team. And with how long it takes to level characters and only 1 boost being available per account to lvl 58, it’ll drastically cut down on it.
What you will likely see are higher rated players in low MMR outside their bracket (2v2 vs 3v3, etc) and more pilot boosts - which hopefully Blizzard will be paying close attention to. Though with the only gear discrepancy being weapon and shoulders, even then it’s not gonna be like having a 227 rolling up in your 1400 bracket the way it is on retail.
That being said, unless there are #somechanges, alt and late player catch-up is virtually non-existent, so if you’re gonna push do it early.
It’ll exist to some extent I’m sure. But without a wow token to buy/trade and being confined to buying a boost on your specific server for gold then I don’t think it’ll be too common.
Also the power creep between honor gear and conquest gear is close enough to keep noobs like me competitive. A 1500 player will still be able to buy every conquest piece except shoulders and wep. For pvers they have a lot more gear accessible through the badge vendor, kara is beginner friendly, rep grinds, professions, etc. Just not much of a reason to dabble in pvp unless you really want to be there.
most of what you said is wrong but this is especially wrong