Boost mages in WoW Classic are starting to tremble – Blizzard wants to address the problem, at least in the “Season of Mastery”.
Not much is left of the original “World of Warcraft Classic” experience on numerous realms. Often there are hardly any groups to experience dungeons together while leveling – as many simply get boosted. This is the most lucrative and fastest leveling method. In the Season of Mastery, this should not exist.
What is the problem? Anyone wanting to level a character in World of Warcraft Classic can do so laboriously the classic way – or pay some gold and hire a mage. They will pull characters through dungeons or particularly efficient farming areas for a few gold coins, where the XP essentially trickles into the character’s account. Thanks to extremely good crowd control, the mage can kill dozens of enemies simultaneously, thus amassing thousands of experience points in just a few seconds.
It’s so efficient that dozens of mages offer their services per realm, and they are gladly utilized.
What is the Season of Mastery? The Season of Mastery is essentially a “fresh” start of WoW Classic with additional adjustments. Blizzard aims to implement the individual phases of Classic more quickly while also making further adjustments. Bosses are supposed to be tougher, there is more XP, and some buffs, like the major world buffs, do not work in raids.
We explain more about the planned Season of Mastery in this article.
What does Blizzard want to change? Blizzard has not yet specified a concrete approach. However, they want to nudge players a bit “in the right direction” so that leveling happens through traditional dungeons and quests. Blizzard states:
[…] We plan to look at mage boosting in the beta for [Season of Mastery]. We have a number of ideas for adjustments that we can make to mitigate its impact, especially in current hot spots like Maraudon.
The proposed XP increases are entirely for quests. We currently have no plans to increase XP in other areas.
Just that alone should ensure that mage boosting loses a bit of its appeal – especially when the most popular boost dungeons see a drop in their XP gains.
How the community is reacting: Reactions are largely positive. In the comments under wowhead, there are almost only positive messages, such as from michaelphoenix22:
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of mages suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something wonderful has happened.
In the Season of Mastery, you can look forward to interacting more with other players again, rather than just paying a mage to level the character “for you”.
