In WoW Classic, boosting may soon not be worth it anymore. Blizzard is implementing strong hurdles aimed at making boosting unattractive.
If you ask players of WoW Classic and Burning Crusade Classic what they find most annoying in the game right now, the answer quickly boils down to: boosting. On most servers, the trade channel is simply no longer usable, and low-level dungeon groups are becoming increasingly rare because hiring a boosting player is so cheap. Blizzard wants to put a stop to this.
What is boosting? Boosting in online games refers to superior players – whether through skill, higher levels, or better equipment – escorting inferior players through content to provide them with rewards. This can be powerful gear or simply a lot of experience points in a short amount of time.
In WoW Classic, boosting mainly involves accompanying players through dungeons so that the “smaller” characters can quickly gain a lot of experience points. Payment for such services is usually made in gold, but sometimes also illegally with real money.
What does Blizzard plan to do? In the official forum, Community Manager Kaivax revealed some details about the plans that will apply to Burning Crusade and therefore Wrath of the Lich King Classic in the future. Boosting is intended to be less attractive, so there will be some adjustments:
- The behavior of creatures in dungeons will be adjusted so that it will be nearly impossible to endlessly slow them down or prevent them from ever reaching the player. Endless kiting should no longer be possible.
- There will be significantly fewer experience points for the group if there is a large difference between the levels of the group members.
The adjustments are similar to those Blizzard has already experimented with in the Season of Mastery and has had good experiences with.
There is no exact date for the changes yet, but it is likely to happen before the pre-patch of Wrath of the Lich King Classic.
Is boosting actually allowed? In principle, yes. Both boosting itself and promoting such services – at least in the trade channel – are allowed. However, Blizzard is aware that the gold from these deals often flows into real-money transactions and that players feel disturbed by the constant boosting spam. Therefore, Blizzard wants to make boosting simply less attractive without banning it entirely. Because “carrying smaller players through dungeons” has always been part of World of Warcraft, although it was not utilized as much in the past as it is today.
What do you think of Blizzard’s efforts to limit boosting?
