A curious question, you could say… and trying to look at some underlying motivations here.
Why do players pay to either skip content or avoid playing it?
To give some examples of what I mean by “skipping content”:
Paid level boosts in general, allowing you to bypass all the content from previous expansions. With the wealth of content available, why are players paying to skip it?
Boosts and carries are a secondary example, if not necessarily involving real money transactions (a bit blurred with the WoW token, but I digress). But from a particular perspective, the buyer of these runs are paying someone else to do the content for them rather than do it themselves.
Harkening back to WoD, I recall players complaining about the mission table by saying that they were sending out groups of NPCs out on adventures rather than being able to go on adventures themselves. This technically didn’t pre-date the level boost, but only because the first level boosts were offered as part of the pre-order for WoD (and were looked at with some skepticism, if I recall correctly); still, I think the sentiment/perception against the mission tables and NPCs having adventures instead of the players probably stemmed from that time before WoD.
Still, I guess that was close to a decade ago now.
That being said, the irony of the reversal with boosts & carries being so common-place now is not lost on me… but I can’t help but wonder, why was there such a dramatic shift in the perception here?
How did the WoW community get from disliking the idea of being carried or not playing the game to accepting that approach as the normal or possibly even preferred mode of play?
As a quick closing detail, this has NOTHING to do with the legality of boosts and carries, which have existed in some form since Vanilla. Even if you take out the act of paying for the run, friends have often been willing to each other by bringing in higher level and/or better-geared characters to clear stuff.
This is about the motivations of those buying the skips.
Why are they buying level boosts and carries?
Why are they paying to NOT play the game for themselves?
I just find it odd that they’re so willing to cheat themselves out of the experience and enjoyment of doing the stuff for themselves. So why do they do it?
I mean, people can play the game however they like. Within reason and the rules, of course.
Because we discovered a long time ago that a lot of people wanna hop into new content instead of crawling through years of old stuff for a few days or weeks.
“Hey man come play dragonflight it’ll just take you a few days to boringly level by yourself” and…they quit.
People want to skip the content to get to something else is mostly what it comes down to.
Though I dislike that it’s also often used as an excuse to leave content poorly designed. Try complaining about leveling and you just get told “buy a level skip if you don’t like it”
I don’t wanna buy a level skip, I want leveling to be fun again.
Because their design structure is to make it all braindead and empty filler content that is, by design, not enjoyable and tedious. As soon as it isn’t “current” it’s just a different skin for the same boring and bad leveling experience.
If all of that content is nothing but a chore to get through it encourages people to get to the current content as quickly as possible and stay there.
Not caring for the contenting which is attached to the leveling process.
A strong desire to get into the endgame content, which is preferred.
An emphasis on getting there as soon as possible.
Would that be accurate?
Hmm… this implies a disconnect between the act of playing the game and it being a leisure activity. Are you saying that people aren’t playing the game because they view it as a chore?
Because that does have some… implications.
I would disagree… but to each their own.
I really do have to wonder why WoW players are so eager to look down on each other… but that’s something for another day.
Well, this is the opportunity for them to do so.
Ah, finally something of substance!
… but a bit too much to unpack at the moment, I may have to revisit that point later.
To follow up on that… why have you done stuff 50 times?
You’d figure someone would at least mix it up a bit to create some variety and/or to do something different. Heck, even playing another game or two (not even necessarily an MMO or online) to change up the pace is a valid idea here.
I think the people buying level boosts and the people buying carries likely end up being 2 different crowds (granted, there will always be overlap).
People buying level boosts want to get into endgame ASAP, because it’s what they care about, and what the game is balanced around. They’re likely planning on playing normally at level cap.
People buying carries aren’t interested in hardcore progression and self-improvement. They’re likely playing to relax after work or whatever and just want to chat and farm transmog / other collections / achievements without too much stress.
While I can understand the latter group, I do think it’s detrimental to the sense of accomplishment of doing it normally for those who aren’t buying carries. Of course that depends on the individual and how they perceive things though. I wish Blizzard would have put a stop to this instead of openly endorsing it.
