No, you have insanely low hit rate against someone +30 to you in vanilla. This is impossible.
With rampant boosting and sales, gearing is rarely “time and effort”. Also, if people need this type of gameplay, there’s numerous trash KMMO’s they can play instead. WoW was NEVER like this until recently.
If someone is better than me, then they deserve to win. That is time and effort, gear is not.
Well you wouldn’t find any subs near that number, most of their games are free… Meaning they will have games with larger player base, not sub.
Wrong, this is one, but not the only way. The game has lost popularity globally, it’s not the most popular MMO in Asia, Europe, Australia, South America, and Africa. The united states is its biggest base of operation, outside of data collection there are a vareity of add on’s that record numbers, websites, and various places to get estimated numbers most of which are close enough but off, also to answer your next question.
To answer that question, yes.
getting gear is time and effort. the people doing the sales spent time and effort to provide the service. The fact you think wow has never been about boosting, sales, or gear is comical. Vanilla: you had the Chinese farmers that you would pay real money to buy a boost for. People offered services for gold all the time whether running through dungeons or helping with finding the rare pets for hunters. Gear priority is the progression system in EVERY MMO. you have to have endgame content to keep the masses entertained and getting gear is a way to do that. People need a way to progress. Even this forum is about how solo players have a hard time progressing in end game content. How they can’t get gear and they want it handed to them instead of following the original point of this game. (PLAYING WITH FRIENDS)
I will admit that the accessibility for gear is outrageous now, it became that way in legion when Mythic + became a staple for gear. instead of the original. PvP and Raiding. But, Blizzard is countering this by reducing the amount of gear that drops. Making it harder to just gear someone without having to run a lot more instances.
End of the day, this game is an MMORPG that means to do better in-game you need to play with other people. Blizzard has and always will want to keep MMO because that was the staple of what made this game amazing. WoW still is leading in endgame content which is raiding, mythic +, and PVP. Because of their unique ways of providing them, it has allowed them to dominate the past 16 years while the only other MMO to come close or equal is FF14.
So, like everyone else who makes these claims, you have speculation and nothing more.
Finding, or speculating about (they can’t actually find anything), information related to Subs is only available in things like Armory and API. All of which leads to nothing more than, wait for it…speculation about sub numbers. Blizz intentionally keeps that information hidden from everyone.
No doubt, but…
You do not have any actual proof about this, you only have speculation which amounts to nothing at all.
Wasn’t a question. No question mark (?), no question. It was a statement, admittedly typed incorrectly on my part. What I mean to say was…
“You are making claims as though you have some inside knowledge…”, which you don’t actually have.
Umm actually I do, when many were laid off many broke the NDA and dropped subs which is how everyone knew FF14 had more subs along with classic wow. You’re welcome to tell yourself absolutely anything you’d like if its easier for you.
Nice to see 12/12 mythic raiders defending raid selling. You really make it obvious you’re a seller and the bane of this games existence.
“I earned the right to sell raids” lol. Actually disgusting.
Raid selling has been happening since vanilla… Sorry to burst your bubble… I also don’t like selling either, and try to not participate as much as I can (obviously if my guild needs help, then I’ll help cause… they’re my friends, but if I can avoid it then I do), but stop using it to push your agenda. It’s been a thing for a loooong time.
Okay. If you say so.
I have seen nothing but you stating things you can’t know based on only speculation just like everyone else. If you have some proof of this, again… Please enlighten us. Otherwise you are doing the same thing everyone else does… Making things up and hoping someone will believe you with no proof.
You may be right, but you have nothing but, well…nothing to back up what you’re saying.
Besides that, this whole conversation was started with you taking statements out of context so I’m unsure why I continue to engage. Boredom I suppose. 
Happy Election Day!! 
The #1 guild on my server never sold a single raid in Vanilla. It’s rampant now, it was incredibly rare back then.
Raiding was harder to get into and get the gear, that’s why. On top of it, for the longest time, your server was majorly PvP not PvE. it wasn’t until the last couple of years when midwinter formed that it gained popularity in the raiding end. In vanilla, boosting raids and dungeons were done. It was just more rare. Blizzard has made it easier to get into the raiding scene and so boosting is more popular.
Do you want SS?
WoW devs have occasionally confirmed that number in interviews. However I dont think there’s a good estimate of how many of those accounts were chinese gold farmers. (probably not really that many, but a couple million is plausible)
What I think is really interesting about WoW’s population isnt their currently active subs, whether thats 2 mill or 4 mill, or the over 100 million players who have tried it.
What I think is interesting about WoW’s population is the seemingly millions of people who dont actually play anymore, but still post actively about it on the Reddit and watch Bellular videos.
The funny thing is, your way of arguing is trying to belittle how I play the game. Trading gold for carries has always been in the game. No difference from people buying a warlock summons or a mage portal. As one demand falls another rises. It’s the economy. And thanks to wow tokens it’s easier than ever to buy the service.
As a reminder 12/12 mythic CE is 2-3% of the population. So how is the very small minority the issue?
To use the new vogue term in WoW discourse, the way you play the game is degenerate in every way you can look at it.
People buying gold from Blizz to pay you to skip content is shady AF.
While some people will never accept that their favorite MMO can be pay-to-win, that behavior would be called pay-to-win if this game were developed by anyone except papa blizz and by anyone except fanbois.
No one cares how long that shady activity has been in the game. Murder has been a thing for a long time too, that doesnt make it a celebrated tradition.
The funniest thing is, the very fact of the existence of mythic carries is one of the best arguments that Raiding should no longer enjoy a gearing advantage. Its content people obviously do not want to do and that they’re willing to pay a great deal of money to avoid.
I hope you get caught up in the next gallywix purge.
And? What you’re asking for is no different. At least the people buying runs had to actually do something to get their chance at gear.
Ya… The game has grown up. Many things are rampant nowadays that weren’t rampant back then. I’d say that if we still had all raids under the old lock out system and zero ability for cross server grouping… the majority of this raid selling would be dead instantly. (so would the game, not suggesting we do that)
I don’t think you can just link selling straight to the reward system. Things are more complicated than that. If that were actually true, then we should’ve seen rampant selling throughout vanilla seeing as vanilla was the MOST anti-casual the game has ever been.
Regardless, as I’ve said previously in the thread. I agree with your concerns regarding PvP gearing vs PvE gearing. What I don’t think should be done is to destroy the entire PvE gearing system to fix your PvP problem. Please think up PvP solutions to fix your PvP problem. (eg PvP stats on PvP gear, PvP tier bonuses, etc.)
Hey guys if you dislike the game just stop playing it, no one is forcing you to play. Otherwise shut up and play. This guy is just Regurgitating the same posts typed up differently and you guys are feeding his troll stomach.
I don’t think its Millions anymore.
As long as “gear is gear” is a philosophy, then it will be.
Because wow under ion is a fullbred MMO, Not an MMORPG. And MMO means only the content for the top 1% of players matters. Its sad