Before I get started, the EU WoW arena forums have this pinned from a blue:
As part of our continued efforts to combat cheating and unfair play in World of Warcraft, we’ve recently made a change to our policies regarding PvP disqualifications.
Any player who is found to have engaged in unfair practices that result in their disqualification from end-of-season PvP rewards will also have their ability to queue for rated PvP matches immediately revoked. This restriction will continue through the remainder of the season in which they were disqualified.
This change is intended to minimize the impact that disqualified players have on those who are playing legitimately while the PvP season continues, and is just one aspect of our ongoing commitment to upholding the competitive integrity of World of Warcraft PvP.
The boosting is really, really bad in this version of the game, and is super evident and likely to impact honest/legitimate players because of the lack of participation (smaller playerbase than usual) especially in 3s/5s.
Nearly every single r1 player is involved in this, unfortunately I can’t name them due to CoC but it should be pretty obvious to tell based off the kind of data Blizzard has. A majority of an entire season is spent doing self-plays by the same players, using the rating reset feature, purposely tanking rating, and even going as far as deleting/restoring characters to reset mmr/cr.
I know for a fact Blizzard has enforced ladder integrity in the past and issued suspensions/DQs, and even AWC participation bans, to players who repeatedly tank their rating to assist with completing boosts.
Restore ladder integrity to TBC anniversary and set a standard going forward.
Not every buyer is dead weight. You know there are duelist xp players that do try to buy glad or even r1 spots every season? Happened all throughout 2019 classic from tbc to now MoP. For them to get glad/r1, they had to beat other glad/r1 range teams. Game is so solved. The skill level gap between a regular glad team, a r1 team, and multi-r1/tourney team is just so large.
Rating reset should not exist. Personal Rating (No Arena Teams) should not exist. Blizzard ruins Classic World of Warcraft with every change. The love letter to the Real Classic Playerbase is lost every patch, every release.
I would go as far to say that rating requirements need to be removed from the shoulders/weapons, as sad as that would be. The boosting is really that bad and rating requirements are a massive driver behind that.
I have shoulders from 3s. I didn’t even feel a sense of accomplishment because it was mostly an uphill battle into RMPs and r1 boosters doing self-plays. Ladder is terrible, queues at 2k are multi-minute and you just fight the same few teams over and over.
Boosting is lame. I think another problem with arena is there is no catch up if you started late in the season. No one has any gear and it’s super annoying trying to find partners who have gear.
I guess shoulders are one of the more visible items from a cosmetic standpoint and that is why, I get what they were going for but most people care about titles and mounts, not gear.
Because shoulders were a prominent prestige piece that you could identify from afar.
Many sets only had any meaningful artistic detail or expression in the shoulders.
It works with like military ranks on shoulders, too.
You weren’t around back then.
And nobody cares about those things now either.
You do not see 1 single post in this forum. This isn’t retail.
You will see a lot of people caring about gear though…
Not sure you even play this game now that I think about it..
The real solution is to remove rating requirements from the weapons and massively increase their cost. That would kill the boost market for everyone except those who really want an unearned glad title.
The original idea behind the rating requirement was to prevent the weapons from easily being acquired for pve purposes especially since they are very close to the PvE equivalent. Nowadays, however, pve content is cleared by basically everyone. It isn’t as exclusive as it was in 2007.
This begs the question: why even keep the rating requirement at all? Prestige? Isn’t that what the titles are for? Too much of an easy alternative to pve weapons? Increase the cost then. Make it so you would need to do arena every week for 50 percent of the phase to acquire one weapon. Problem solved.
But to be fair…when some say boost, they can also mean piloted runs. they open up a remote session and a good player runs their char. Now it 2 or more good players!
that is harder to prove. since most times that is run direct payment on a 3rd party website. there is no tracking 20K gold to player x. that player….CC swiped a few hundred dollars or paypal’d it.
