- Author: Pride
- Date: June 22, 2022
- Updated: June 22, 2022
- Expansion: TBC Classic
Boosting took off in popularity during Classic, greatly distorting the economy. Blizzard thus heavily nerfed boosting in the Season of Mastery version of Classic, taking several measures to discourage players from AoE farming low level dungeons for gold and experience. TBC was not as AoE-prone and thus boosting was somewhat less lucrative, in large part due to the damage cap for AoE abilities.
However, if you’re on a medium to larger server, you’ve doubtlessly seen that it’s still very much a thing — with global chat channels, such as Trade, LookingForGroup and World being filled almost entirely with boosting advertisements. Several dungeons, such as Scarlet Monastery, Straholme and the Slave Pens, are still very lucrative for boosting, and
Blizzard adopting a “better late than never” policy decided to finally address this issue, with Kaivax announcing that at the same time as the 50% experience buff “Joyous Journeys”, TBC dungeons will be receiving the same mechanics as Season of Mastery, effectively putting a stop to boosting. Additionally, WotLK dungeons will also have these mechanics when WotLK Classic finally launches. These are the specific mechanics that Blizzard applied in Season of Mastery:
- Having a significantly higher level player in the group significantly reduces the experience that everyone in the group receives.
- Dungeon monsters become immune to slow effects 30 seconds after being engaged and immune to roots 30 seconds after that.
- Some specific monsters will additionally get a movement speed buff 30 seconds after their root immunity kicks in, in instances where the terrain permits players to kite them without slows and roots.
Kaivax also reminded players that spamming boosting services outside of the Trade channel is against the Terms of Service, encouraging players to report those who spam other chat channels. Here’s hoping Blizzard will actually take those reports seriously, because most public chat channels are practically unusable on larger servers, due to boosting advertisements.
What are your thoughts on these changes? Are you happy that Blizzard is finally taking action regarding boosting? Do you think it’s too late? Or would you prefer that they kept things as is? Let us know in the comments below!
One of the most common pieces of feedback we’ve received (and observed ourselves in our own adventures) is the concern about pervasive sales of dungeon boosting services in-game. It often overpowers chat with advertisements and makes certain channels hard to use for their intended purpose.
It’s also no secret that the gold from many boosting groups is used for illicit activities such as Real-Money Trading (RMT), as much of the gold that players pay to boosters is then sold for real money back to other players.
Now that we’ve seen the final major content release of Burning Crusade Classic, we will soon adjust the behavior of creatures in most dungeons (including the new dungeons coming in Wrath of the Lich King Classic) to make it significantly more difficult to endlessly snare and kite enemies. Additionally, we will implement a reduction to group XP earned when there is large disparity between player levels in the same group.
We’ve experimented with similar changes to most dungeons on our Season of Mastery servers, and we’ve found these changes to be very effective at reducing the efficiency of boosting groups. We plan to roll out these adjustments to Burning Crusade Classic realms at the same time as the Joyous Journeys XP buff 705, which should happen sometime in the next several weeks. Stay tuned for more information about that and when you can expect to see these changes hit live servers.
This is also a good opportunity to remind everyone that spamming chat channels with advertisements for boosting services outside of dedicated Trade channels is against the Terms of Service, and you should take every opportunity to report players that you see advertising for boosting services in channels such as General and Looking For Group.
We’re really looking forward to players joining us very soon in the Wrath of the Lich King Classic Beta, and hope to be able to share more about that very very soon as well!
About the Author
They could fix these problems by being harsher on gold buying, and better at detecting it. Now I can’t even boost guildies for free. Thanks.
This is stupid. I played retail and had everychar on the highest level until pandaria. Now I play classic and have already 5 70 chars. So why tf should I level and grind like a jerk this content over and over again, thats stupid to me. Boosting is the only way I can save my time.
Right?
Yeah this is only way we can save our time with getting boost at least for some hours
boo hoo
So, all the players that played for thousands of hours back in the day have to re level every single toon again? then grind for thousand more hours after that? Maybe you could fix your out dated, boring as shit, grind feast leveling system? instead of punishing players, and that is exactly what they are doing, for paying for runs with gold that they grinded for. oh…but paying real money to boost a toon all the way to 70, is totally %100 acceptable? fck you blizz
You have to hand it to this guy. He’s 100% right about Blizzard’s double standard.
instead of punishing the folks selling gold for cash, they decided to punish everyone else..
looks like my mage i was leveling to be able to farm mats / gold for crafting etc will be a dedicated portal service provided i keep playing. i stopped playing the original WoW right at WotLK roll out. depending on how badly the dungeons are nerffed, perhaps history repeats itself.
This will punish players who do nothing wrong or against the game. As it is the second release of this game I do not have any desire to waste time re-leveling characters so my boyfriend and I boost each other. This way we can enjoy the content we like: raids on different toons. The grind of leveling is just not what brings us to the game. Is blizzard making this change so that they can cut the competition and sell gold themselves?
it doesn’t “punish” anybody. it’s just no longer possible to bypass content. play the game as it was designed or play something else
Thats not how it was designed. It was designed with the ability to boost toons via dungeons. They have CHANGED the original design.
History repeats itself. Blizzard punishing their actual playerbase and murdering their own game. Off to P servers again everyone will go. See you in 10 years lads.
I mean boosting is kinda shitty for the community imo. I like to actually run dungeons when I’m leveling but it’s impossible. Everyone just want to buy a boost instead of playing.
Exactly. This is a game where you aren’t expected to level ten times in a few hours. If people want to level quickly go to retail ffs. Stop crying about Classic. Classic is a grind. New players don’t have mass amounts of gold which means they’re stuck with barely a handful of people to do dungeons with or can’t at all. I feel sorry for them, not the ones crying about boosting being gone.
I believe that this does not help to solve the process of boost service and its sale and purchase. The difference now is that the XP boost sellers are selling loot run ( raid – hc – arena ) boost service and even the changes applied to the mobs in the dungeons only make the dungeons harder and longer for low level players… this is only a matter of erasing the problem. There is no solution to it.
No, it’s a step to bring the server communities back together and provide newer players who’re leveling characters with no gold a proper f*ckin group to do a dungeon with. It’s sad that boosting for gold even became a thing.
And it’s sad that it got so out of hand that casual boosters (Guildies helping guildies through a low-level dungeon for a level) are being punished as well but it is what it is.
I get the people that are happy boosting is dead, honestly so am i, but i main a mage and a pally i love clearing old dungeons or even current ones solo, its challenging and i get some raw gold for my investment but with these changes i can hardly do it, if it were up to me id just cut exp to like 25% with a max lvl in the party or something not adding new mechs for old content to stop people who enjoy soloing content.
I just got back into the game after a long time to experience TBC and WOTLK again. I started leveling up different classes from scratch and this nerf came up, so I’ll comment on its effects from my perspective.
1) Classic used to mean that the game, its content and game mechanics were off limits. This is a complete violation of all principles.
2) There are very few tanks and healers in the game because there simply aren’t 60 million players playing the game like 12 years ago. On my realm, getting a low lvl dungeon group in chat is just as annoying as it was years ago (well, until the advent of Dungeon Finder) but Blizzard has made it worse now. Because there will be no Dungeon Finder and boosting in any form has been basically made impossible. No one will simply boost you up a few levels(5-10lvl) by untanking or unhealing anymore. You have to get players with a specific level range, or the game penalizes everyone. I’ve had more than one instance where I was simply kicked out of an instance because I got 1level too many, or I dinged inside and others were penalized enough to take someone else. Ridiculous.
3) You’ve ruined the game mechanics of AoE spells, fundamentally damaging several popular and fun classes. You also damaged the game’s economy, because low lvl resources from grey solo instances were being acquired and sold by players of those classes. Who’s going to bother going there now for no profit? Probably only the real gold farmers/bots anymore. You have thus destroyed one of the fundamental ways for non-raiding players to earn gold and get resources for professions or flying.
4) If you wanted to make it impossible to trade gols, you had various ways to do it. For example, prevent sending gold between different accounts. Or restrict trading between characters… But that was never your point, because gold farmers bring Blizzard a lot of money in subscription fees. So you just punished all the regular casual players.
5) With the season boost +50% exp you nerfed the crown. The player is forced to either stand in chat, sometimes for hours, looking for a suitable group to finish chain quests or get gear. Or by simply leveling at LFG, he runs the risk of his level being OP for the instance and not looking there again in a normal LFG group. In a normal situation he could still get a boost that way, which has now been basically made almost impossible by both Blizzard and the reporting players. Therefore, very few people dare to offer or ask for a boost in chat these days.
6) One last comment. Not all of us are HC players who raid and progress regularly. Lots of people just play for fun after work…now maybe even with their kids. They level together or just solo their characters for weeks at max level because they have limited time. They’ve all been hurt by this because instead of enjoying the game, they now sit for hours in LFG chat to go through the content they want to go through or just have to skip it.
Good Job Blizzard.
In addition to reducing the xp you get from boosting, they ought to eliminate the green and higher treasure drops as well. All these people whining about how “oh, boosting is gone so now I actually have to play the game to level my characters”. It’s an RPG. Your charaters are suppsed to be getting experience by actually having to fight and defeat monsters, not by riding through the “dungeon ride” in the kiddy section of the amusement park. If you aren’t going to play the game, why on earth are you even here? I have never seen a generation so obsessed with getting something for nothing.
Well said.
I don’t get how people actually consider leveling your character content. 99.99% of this game is what you do at max level, most people here are adults and have done this long ago and I don’t see why it was a problem to let them have an easy way to get max for the irelevant part of the game (don’t pretend the 5 players who actually enjoy reading quest text count for the majority of the playerbase) , since blizzard won’t let you buy more boosts unless you make another account so they have another subscription
If people want to pay for boost, let them. Why does it bother you? Why does everyone have to play the game according to how you want it to be played?
Man these changes are so damn wrong. Why not ban the people abusing this instead of ruining it for EVERYONE?
well blizz im gonna be honest with you and sorry if my english is bad.
if you kill this boost thing you killing your own game, like everyone said, not everyone have the time to play this game 24/7 , even when they are they have to gearing up at raid etc etc, this boost this is the only thing they can keep up fast and gearing up fast.
better do something like making a channel to selling this rather kill it, because many, i repeat many people need boost, and if you kill it it will kill the game too.
beside, its like a tradition from classic about this boost thing, and it went really well until now so why have to kill it ?
i love this game really, but day after day with everything thats going on you only making this game harder and harder and people just to tired after work lvling a toon from lvl 1, making the raid harder its fine, just dont kill the boost when everyone need it so bad
Then go play retail? Leave our game alone.
You’re really only speaking for a small group. The reality is that this game is meant to be played, not “By Passed”. Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy boosting alts but that’s usually because there is no one at low level doing dungeons. I have recently started levelling a new alt and there are LOTS of people now doing lower-level dungeons. This means I can now play the game it was meant to be played. And it’s been AWESOME.
It won’t kill the game, it has made it better!
I totally agree with people on this post, I came back to classic because I did t like the way retail was going. On classic I have 1 level 70 but like to play lots of other classes at high level, boosting is the only way I’ll ever get to do this as I have a family and I work full time. Get rid of gold sellers not people boosting for god’s sake. People boosting is more likely to boost the number of people playing the game aswell!!
0 debuffs on paladins still dp slave pens and strath even bether GG blizzard
Its awesome that they are removing dungeon boosting, WoW is supposed to be played in the open world, not just spamming one dungeon for weeks str8 on a character, or paying for someone else to level you. These changes are great.
Now maybe there will be an economy for lower level dungeons as people level up. Great news. Sure people will be upset because they’ve ingrained in themselves that everything MUST BE MAXIMUM EFFICIENCY. Oh well.
yeah you can say welcome to toxic groups ,noob players and spending time to gather a group for mara/WC/and … while u could get boost and skip this kind of toxic part of wow
Or maybe that was how old wow was anyway? Kind of the whole fking point is to slog through all the noobs and bad groups.
All I can read in this forum, are people who have hard to adapt to changes. Blizzard might allow some bad stuff way to long. They try to make it right and that mean some will quit the game and other will come. If you cant adapt to those new change *QUIT* the game. You will not be missed, blizzard will not thank you all all. They just happily claps in their hands cause you played the game for so long and gave them endless money and your time. You promoted their game and you do it now. 🙂 Adapt or quit the game all there is to it.
Go play a single-player game. There are toxic people everywhere. LMFAO.