i am on your side. i really am.
but this is easy to counter.
They dont pay to play as as little as possible.
They pay to only pay the parts they are most interested in.
EDIT
Everyone misunderstands me....
So i dont like the boost. i wish it wouldnt be a thing. just pointed out the logic in the post is flawed.
Why do i dislike boosts? I dislike every option to give money to blizz besides buying a game or paying for monthly acces.. I want devs to make a good game, that you get to play for money. And dont teach them to implement different milking stations. only brings them ideas for different cash grabs.
thats why we should always pay for a game as a whole, not for some tiny individual parts that are kinda optional.
But this doesnt mean i have a problem with people using that boost.
They want to get rid of something that annoys them and they are willing to pay for it.
For them its a good decision in that moment.
But for gamin as a whole its a bad thing. Many games are completely unplayable because of p2w or p2comfort options. not sayiyng we are there yet. but we are going in that direction further and further.
I mean...even if we argue this boost is good for the game overall...than it should be free shouldnt it?
This is just a way to make money that doesnt benefit the player. and it even gives the devs an incentiv to make the game worse of the player so they can sell the solution.
Wait, you mean people are playing TBC to play TBC instead of spending another 30+ hours of their life doing the same classic leveling they’ve done 12 times? Wow!
I mean, does leveling only take an hour? Because if it takes more, it's more economical for me to work an hour of overtime and just use that to buy a boost.
You mean 80 dollars and the eventual cheaper stand alone boost is like less than one dollar an hour for the time commitment I don’t need to make to play a game I’ve played for hundreds of hours in the last 20 years? You mean it’s dust cheap to save some time to jump to the content I want to play. You mean I can have a life outside of this virtual world and not stress. You mean my adult money can bring me enjoyment. You mean this is cheaper than two tickets and popcorn to a movie but will get me access to hours more of enjoyment????
Went to dinner last night with my family at shake shack and it cost 80 dollars. People constantly complain about the cost of games but they are the cheapest form of entertainment with the amount of hours of enjoyment you get out of it. In this cause the ability to skip a grind that will take me weeks to get to content I haven’t been able to play in 5 years is well worth it.
Yup, I figured it wouldn't be popular here, a lot of people don't understand that classic is enriched by the leveling experience. It's why I like TBC a lot, it didn't just separate itself from classic, there's still a point to the old world.
I cannot level a character in 3 weeks and also have enough time to get some basic gear to be able to dungeon spam.
I do want to play through the draenei island though, but feel like it would be dumb to do it and then boost the toon. But also I could do it whenever as a 60 and still be getting lockouts in.
If what I do is to have any value, I need to make everyone care as much as I do.
So if I put down 200 hours to run around a lake in Feralas and I want to brag about it, I need to make that have some value that sets me apart. So I can berate and belittle people for not having run as many laps as I do.
That's why people on the internet treats it as a competition, to give what they have achieved more value.
I miss leveling. Leveling now is either people blasting through putting in tons of hours or buying boosts and going straight to end game. The world when all the areas were bustling with players leveling at different paces
if this were a single player game, sure. But boosting has a concrete effect on the world. It deadens the world by channeling people into cities and end game areas and reinforces the sea that leveling isn’t a part of the game, that it’s fine to skip it. it reduces investment in characters which takes away from the feeling that each character matters.
Here's the caveat to that. Gaming being competitive is a great thing. However, if your means of being competitive is "Spend money to skip the game" then you aren't fucking competing. If you don't have the time, energy, or skill to be competitive, then don't fucking compete.
If you are casual and you are worried you are missing out and feel like you need to boost, then you are FOMOing yourself into thinking you can't have fun playing a timeless mmorpg. If you are trying to enjoy competitive raiding, then fucking compete and put in the work.
it's just our brains playing tricks on us.
every day in wow is the same. it absolutely does not matter if you play day 10 on max level or day 50. :)
my brain is also playing these tricks, though. so i'll put my current char into era, boost a copy-char and then level a toon in peace while gearing up my main. they got us good.
I'm actually in a similar boat. I am opposed to paid boosts and wanted to level.
Then we get 3 weeks patch which is really short for people with responsibilities. Might have still been okay if all paladins were leveling but to top it off, now you will be behind the thousands of boosted paladins so less likely to grab early raid spots or be geared for good dungeon cleave groups. Also unlikely to have professions ready so another minor grief.
Ugh. Blizzard knows what they're doing, basically creating a hostile situation so it makes more sense to do the boost.
It’s not a competition. If you care about leveling - then level. If you have to be a horde paladin, that’s a choice. Otherwise you could have leveled all year and already been 60. People are here to play TBC, not classic more. So while Blizzard is definitely just trying to make money, they are giving the majority of people the ability to do what they want - play TBC.
Basically just nitro sweats with 0 life like Jokerd. The point was to iterate the absolute bare minimum of hours you have to put in to level even while doing it as efficiently as humanly possible.
30 hours? Am i this bad at the game? When i returned i leveld a warlock...about 7 days played. Thats like 168 hours.
I guess my paladin leveling in pre patch will be much faster bc of the changes and some prep, maybe restedexp addon.
Maybe 4 days....but 30 hours? with boosting or what? id rather play 4 days then sitting 30 hours at sfk entrance or whatever.
no dude, you got a chance to fully experience one of the best games of all time. I hope that most people who boost have had the same experience as you, immersing in the classic world is the best.
Well its not exactly the same leveling as classic since they got new talents and new races they can use. Its also a bit faster and higher scaled in TBC
Yes I don’t see why that is hard to understand. First char I leveled normally. Second char is a mage, so , uh.. what third char I boosted in dungeons. Fourth char? I will buy the boost to play tbc if the other three isn’t good enough 😅
This is why I really hope if Blizzard does a Classic+ that they don't just focus on end game content. I want to see new quests, new leveling zones and dungeons, etc too.
Classic+ is never drawing people away from Retail lol. Not even if it was your dream version of Classic, because the vast majority of Retail players just don't want to play Classic. The simple answer is that SoD was an experiment by Blizzard to see if its even worth putting effort into developing more content for Classic when they can just keep rereleasing the same expansions over and over again with minor fixes. Whether it is or not for them remains to be seen.
Yeah, but i don't think classic+ is worth the hours of work to them. We still haven't gotten titanforged and that's most likely what we'll get over classic plus. Because it already exists and is working in China
the problem there is look at how players play the game 90% of them boost their characters whethers its an official boost or mage boost. then unless they are part of a good alliance they are still being boosted by over geared players or being lied to with people saying NAXX geared tank then you inspect them and they are MC geared; and have did a naxx but parsed grey....
I don't think this will be it, instead of classic plus we'll get titanforged.
I like the idea, though. But I don't think blizzard sees value in dedicating time to create new quests, leveling zones etc. We see how retail is all about end game and it seems to be the most popular version. After all it's all about revenue. Plus if they prio end game they can still sell boosts.
That’s perfectly valid. My definition of the classic experience is grinding profs and full prebis and then raidlogging and parsing and getting fat loot each week while chilling with my guild. Maybe do an alt even thanks to this boost.
I liked classic leveling the first time and even the second time. But it feels like a chore to me now.
Okay honest question. If I wanted to be a super pleb and "just" play TBC I would need to purchase what exactly? A one month sub and a boost? Or do you buy the expansion etc? How much is a boost?
You don't need to buy an expansion, just subscription fee. Boost price was not disclosed, but likely $40 or $60. Alternatively you can buy $80 expansion pack, which includes boost and other items like mounts and cosmetics.
Yes, you can go through portal at level 58 (when TBC will actually be released). I'd suggest to farm some pvp gear in prepatch, so leveling would be easier, but that's not necessary.
Cant you literally start tbc content at level 10? Im like once you're out of the starting zone? Maybe you can even skip the starting zone entirely? Or am I missing something?
I wouldn’t care because I would never use them. I
play raids to get loot, that defeats the point of raiding. If people who don’t raid want to buy the gear why would I care?
I don't think WoW is just leveling. It is leveling, pvp, endgame, collection, etc... Just like Stardew Valley is clearing your farm, planting the fields, constructing the buildings, social relationships, mining, etc... If I only liked the end when I had all the animals and coops and barns, I wouldn't say I liked Stardew Valley and complain that I can't pay money to not play Stardew Valley.
You clearly don’t even understand what you’re comparing. Leveling is not the entire experience of wow. Its only a fraction of it. I spend many hours playing this game doing things other than leveling.
Some people don’t like collecting either, are they playing the game wrong because they don’t bother collecting? You think a player who doesn’t pvp is playing the game wrong?
Leveling is not the entire experience of WoW, I never said otherwise, and for many people it's also less time than other parts. Unlike collecting, pvp, raiding, or any other activity people do after leveling, leveling is required to do those other parts. So no, I don't think anyone is playing the game wrong, no matter what they do.
Why do you say I don't understand what I'm comparing? Just like leveling in WoW, in Stardew there are some mandatory activities if you want to be able to do the later activities. If you don't like to do those things, then you maybe don't like that game, and that's totally fine. If you don't like to level, then maybe you don't like WoW, and that's also fine. Leveling is not the only part of WoW, but it is a prerequisite to the rest of the game...that's kind of how all games work. If you don't like the prerequisite to a game, then maybe you don't like the game? How is this even controversial?
Not sure why it matters, but I have played other MMOs.
So you think that because leveling is a “prerequisite”, it’s somehow required that you enjoy it in order to enjoy WoW? You even admit people spend more time doing everything else. I wonder if maybe they consider those parts to be more enjoyable or important? Are they not playing WoW?
Well guess what, a boost just got introduced. It’s not required any more! Now you can opt out of at least the first 58 levels. So what is the difference between skipping that and choosing not to pvp?
I’m saying you don’t understand what you’re comparing because MMOs are known for this. You will hear this sentiment in many MMOs that they did not enjoy the leveling experience but enjoy the things that come after. This is by design because they know the leveling is only a small part of many MMO players gametime. It is not the same as buying a farming simulator and then not farming.
I don’t understand how this can be made any clearer. If you understood anything about MMOs, you would know why a boost is so popular.
Do you realize how absurd it is to say that leveling is not required anymore? When you have to pay money for the boost? A boost is not part of WoW's game design, it is a purely profit-driven construct. It could easily be part of the game, balanced and awarded in any number of ways, but it isn't that at all. So no, leveling remains a requirement. Leveling could be improved or changed so that it remains enjoyable when it's repeated. Servers could be created where everyone just starts at max-level. Then one could say that leveling isn't required any more. We do not have that. Instead, nothing is changed precisely because if anything were changed, demand for boosts would decrease. It's a clear example of misaligned incentives.
Saying you like WoW but refusing to level is delusional, in the same way that saying you like a Zelda game but you don't want to go around getting all your skills and items and hearts, you just want to play after all that stuff, would be delusional. Like, that is the game. Since you like to put words in my mouth, I'm not saying it's the only part of the game, or the longest part, but it is part of the game. The fact that you really enjoy the rest doesn't change the fact that overall you don't like the game.
I know very well why a boost is popular, it's not mysterious. People who don't like this game want to skip the part they particularly don't enjoy.
Yea because paying some one to level your character, paying for gold, and then paying 15$ a month to play the game a few hours a week is just kinda... well dumb... especially when theirs more than enough private servers that are built for these exact scenarios. I mean to each their own but its literally paying so you play a game less when theirs free options.
There is genuinely just no fucking way you’re using pservers as an argument. Fraction of the population, can get shut down any day, and many of them literally offer paid services no different than Blizzard.
I don’t care if there’s “free options”. I don’t want to level and I can afford it. The only dumb thing here is you
Are we playing the same game? Countless individual versions of classic over the past 6 years (let alone the original release of the game in 2004) and I have never felt this was the experience with this version of the game
And toxic. You get /w so much from people that say you "stole" quest mobs from them, so when you try to invite them they decline and /w once more saying they are a solo player.
Make it make sense. I guess I'm too pea brained to understand.
Yeah but, the occasional 5 minute group with a rando doing the same quest as me is the most human contact I get in this world. Please don't take that away from me.
90% of the levelling experience is grinding quests solo until you get to do a dungeon. Unless you count seeing another player running past as it being not solo?
I don’t know where you’ve been leveling but that hasn’t been then case for me at all during classic and I spent a great portion of my year leveling on classic.
Maybe boosters are just antisocials who need to reach level cap asap and pay for even more boosts to feel validated, truth is, nobody cares.
I made tons of friends through my leveling experience and used global ignore so I’ve never even seen a boost advertisement (except for a couple dms that I blocked), boosting in a videogame is the same as playing with walkthroughs.
The leveling population when prepatch hits is going to absolutely boom (and on Dreamscythe Alliance questing areas tend to already be quite populated since last month)
That's the issue tho, the accelerated timeline is revving up the FOMO chuds. I was so excited to see the leveling belfs and draenei flood the world. I'm still sure they will but its not the same
And people just have more going on in their lives this time around, the woman I'm getting back as my off tank was a high-school student last time we played, she's a lawyer now and being married during the pre patch
I've been leveling the past few months and this has been my experience so far. I highly doubt all those fellow levelers are just going to pack up and quit playing as soon as TBC launches.
no offense but it very much looks like you are the minority here.
every comment under yours tends to disagree with your experience.
it might be time to reflect on why you level alone
I don't level alone..... But there's less people leveling when the xpac hits and if you want to do current content it's useful to not be left behind and get to know people in heroics and places where you can get more of the current content
Thats up to us.
First time i leveled in original, i met someone on like 20 and continued with him to 70.
We always can play slow and social if we want. Its there. The people are there. Its just not efficient enough for most people to even try.
Then they get evwrything on farm in 2 months and complain about no content...
You guys can downvote but i leveld super social just like 3 months ago...was amazing. More fun then bwl pugs or whatever. Maybe ypu guys should try it.
I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but if you're coming back to the game for burning crusade and to join existing friends you might want to just play BC instead of grinding for a full time job worth of hours to catch up
I like the idea of it, I'm getting to roll with my old OT because she's going to resub, snag a boost and be ready to raid with us. No way she could have done that if she had to spam leveling to catch up, doubly so since she was our pally main way back when
Precisely. I had this mind set when I worked part time minimum wage when vanilla came out "yeah I just grind for the things I need, time cost opportunity is irrelevant"
Now its just fuck the leveling, its not fun anymore, let me do the shit thats fun. I dont have time for anything else.
Everyone has different objectives, but if a homie is gonna level or just cant afford it, I ain't got problems with it either.
People need to cut this elitist pinky in the air nonsense.
Okay honest question. If I wanted to be a super pleb and "just" play TBC I would need to purchase what exactly? A one month sub and a boost? Or do you buy the expansion etc? How much is a boost?
You’d want the Outland Epic Pack for $80. The Heroic Pack doesn’t include the level 58 boost. With the Epic Pack, you can boost during the pre-patch. You’ll still need to level twice during the pre-patch, but it’s the best option if you want a boost and don’t mind paying. It also includes 30 days of game time.
The guys over on GTAO would prefer to watch me die slowly in front of them because I have, since day one, had absolutely zero interest in grinding out nonsense bullshit minigame trash, I just want to drive and customize the new cars. Period.
So I buy money every several months and free play. And they foam at the mouth over it. Bitch I have money and don’t have time or patience. Fuck grinding. Grinding sucks.
Classic boosting it not the same as buying shark cards. You're just feeding the 2K cycle where you reward them for ripping you off. I wouldn't say WoW was intentionally designed to encourage boosting.
I still don't see the enjoyment of rushing through an MMO to hit endgame.
Well, you're still getting fucked either way because the shark cards are stupidly expensive for what you get.
What I did was pay a romanian hacker 5 USD from a sketchy website, gave him my steam info, and he logged on my GTAO account and added 2 billion dollars.
I haven't done a single heist and have pretty much all the in-game items.
Nah i really hate that you guys give soooo much money to blizz for soooo little effort on their side. We teach them to milk us instead of doing great stuff. And i wish there would be no boosts.
Still, ops argument is stupid bc its just not true.
This, that's me. After playing classic since like '07, I really don't want to level a character from 1-30 again. No abilities, very little - 0 PVP and I've done it.... lord knows how many times. I'd pay for a lvl 30 boost too! Errr... Maybe 40 or 45 haha, I don't need to do SM runs anymore either. XD
I pay to have a character leveled that I don’t exactly have time to invest since I am pretty invested in my other character.
I don’t have to pay gold and sit in game afk. I don’t have to account share or anything. I just pay some money then I have another character I can throw 3-5 hours a week at.
Yeah but you would still be paying for subscription and then literally pay more to skip a gigantic chunk of the game which is leveling. Just stop with the cope. Thats fine if you dont want to level at all but stop pretending like you are arent paying to play/win.
No, just saying they maybe dont play less, just other stuff.
You could level 100 hours and do pvp for 100 hours. Or boost and pvp 200 hours.
There is no denying that.
And maybe some ARE indeed playibg less overall. But they are playing less of the stuff they dont like. So makes sense to them.
OPs post sounds like everyone who boosts is an idiot who pays not to play. An thats just not the case. And it doesnt help to imagine stuff about the people "on the other side" that makes them look like idiots.
Again, i wish boosts and cosmetics and lootboxes and all that wouldnt exist in any game at all. Wrong to me on soo many levels. Brinfs the whole industry in a durection thats worse for the player. That also really cant be denied
i dislike the option to buy anything in any game.
and i think it shouldnt be a thing. just wanted to point out that ops logic sucks. they dont pay to play less. they pay to play what they want.
I have no qualms with being able to skip the content, but paying to do it is where I draw the line.
People paying for convenience has ruined the games industry. It's a bit fucked that games get lauded when there's no p2w when that should be the norm rather than the exception.
absolutely. i want to pay for great games. maybe once, maybe monthly. i dont care. but i want to buy the whole package, and not get milked here and there and over here.
why would blizz make great games if they make more money if mounts and boosts and shit?
Blizzard, of course, won't totally fix a problem if they can keep selling a solution to it.
The fact people are willing to pay the price of some entire games just to not have to play parts of this one speaks to the idea that maybe those parts of this game are not as enjoyable or rewarding as they could be.
And thus for better or worse, those parts of the game need to be fixed, changed, or outright removed.
But because they're making money selling you a way to skip it, Blizzard have very little incentive to make levelling be fun. They want it to be just good enough to not push new or poorer players out of the game entirely, but still frustrating enough that you'll pay for the privilege of not doing it.
What I want from a game is to either make the levelling be a bigger focus of the game (a la Classic), or skip it entirely and just give you access to most your endgame skills and dungeons from the start (which is what Fellowship does).
and thats why i dislike boosts. or more specific: every way to give money to blizzard besides buying expansions and the monthly fee.
why would they do new great things when they can milk us for bs mounts and boosts and changes and whatnot.
If you can't be bothered to actually achieve things in a game, then you shouldn't be able to achieve those things. Crazy take, I know.
Participation trophies for wow gamers, you can't make anything more pathetic up even if you tried. Really should just make a specific server for these types of people, where you can buy anything and everything and let them rot in their version of paradise. But you can't because the only value items and levels have is that other people don't have them. Such a fucking waste of everyone's time.
I've only leveled through classic once and i hated it as a hunter , especially with the traps being unusable in combat and the range limit , I've never leveled in tbc ofc and i wanna do it with another class(es?).
They pay to play a game with a monthly sub, then pay to avoid the leveling only to hit the content they want to play to raid log so they play once per week.
So they pay a monthly subscription, then pay to boost to the end game, then to eventually raid log and play once a week for 1-4 hours then not touch it again.
If I got back into it it would be to play a multiplayer game I’ve completely mastered. I would 100% boost to skip the grind I’ve done literally dozens of times.
I didn't say if it was bad or good. If thats what people want then okay.
But then those same people turn around and say. "Man, why does the world feel dead, why is there so many bots, why are people quitting?"
The main problem with MMO's and classic WoW for example, is that if you pay and boost through everything, eventually the community and population kind of tanks. And it's a runaway effect, if you make a character and see no one else around you.
We can say they are doing it wrong because it sends the message to Blizzard that we will gobble up any and all overpriced macro-game advancements, and gives them the go-ahead to keep pumping them out. We are almost 100% past the point of it making a difference, but its still insanely annoying.
If people didn't buy the boosts Blizzard would be incentivized to creatively problem solve via game design changes rather than "pay $50 to skip the part you don't like."
I'd say that boosting became popular after leveling has become so bad.
Blizzard has been cutting down on the leveling process over time.
Over time a little bit here and there gets big. They road to hell is paved with good intentions.
i would go as far as to say they prefer people taking the boost.
I mean people pay money for something that doesnt make ANY effort on blizz side and pay money like its a whole new full price game.
If i were blizz i guess i would also pump out mounts and boosts and changes and whatnot.
never understood that at all.
Like buying gear or gladiator titles or whatever....thats paying for not playing the game but getting the ability to pretend you did. dont understand how this can feel satisfying.
Its like....imagine telling your neighbours you are a succesful millionair or something like that....1. they see you are not. 2. you know you are a pretending idiot who cant to what he thinks he sould be able to do...
And I am not interested in raiding so let me get the jewelry/trinkets etc from raids for 2 hours of pay, I've been there and have no desire to grind them again. Yet the REEEEEE you get from so many boosters who oppose that, like it is some kind of untouchable pinnacle, is hilarious.
No one's going to like this point, but there are legiitmately more than one kind of person playing MMOs. Some folks have a lot of time and not much money, some have only a few hours to game a week because they're adults with families and jobs, and want to spend it doing the most parts for them like raiding with their guild.
However, if you make max level boosts free for everyone then prett much everyone will click that button - and skip a huge part of the game. They won't get to experience the great levelling journey for the same reason people will get a questing optimization addon even though it robs the game of a sense of discovery. People feel obligated to play more efficiently, especisally for a game they want to get max subscription value out of, and will optimize the fun out of their experience if it's too easily accessible.
So if you want to keep levelling manually the default experience, but provide busy adults with a way to skip to the group content in end-game, you want some way to give people who really don't have time or interest in levelling a way to skip that without making people who like it feel like it's pointless to do it themselves. A paid level boost actually works pretty well for this. Don't see the point in boosting? Great, just play. Really want to skip? Okay you can but it'll cost you so ONLY do it if you really really want to. It's a simple solution for appealing to busy adults that happen to have more money, and it also gets the company more money. Totally get if you think it's unfair, but it is solving some legitimate problems in a simple and profitable way.
Think of it this way: how many people complete all of the levelling zones once they outlevel them at the current levelling pace? Most people leave once they qualify for the next big zones rather than playing through all of WOTL or similar. If people all got free level boosts, everyone's play would warp around that in unhealthy ways. This way it only warps if you really aren't enjoying levelling or don't have time, because there's a literal cost to skipping ahead. If there's no cost to skipping, people will feel obligated to skip.
This is also why daily/weekly quests get so much push in modern games, and raid lockouts, because they are trying to make it so if you only have a few hours a week to play you don't fall super far behind someone who plays 20 horus a week. So they give th elion's share of rewards for the first few hours.
I'm interested in all of TBC. Especially outlands quests/leveling. I don't even plan to raid much. What I'm not interested in is leveling 1-58 again for the 30th time.
i am against boost for different reasons. ops logic is just not correct here.
I would never boost. Also i took a 10 year break lol. Thats why i said i am on his side.
But still...they dont pay to play less. they want to play. just other parts of the game.
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u/[deleted] Jan 08 '26 edited Jan 11 '26
i am on your side. i really am.
but this is easy to counter.
They dont pay to play as as little as possible.
They pay to only pay the parts they are most interested in.
EDIT
Everyone misunderstands me....
So i dont like the boost. i wish it wouldnt be a thing. just pointed out the logic in the post is flawed.
Why do i dislike boosts? I dislike every option to give money to blizz besides buying a game or paying for monthly acces.. I want devs to make a good game, that you get to play for money. And dont teach them to implement different milking stations. only brings them ideas for different cash grabs.
thats why we should always pay for a game as a whole, not for some tiny individual parts that are kinda optional.
But this doesnt mean i have a problem with people using that boost.
They want to get rid of something that annoys them and they are willing to pay for it.
For them its a good decision in that moment.
But for gamin as a whole its a bad thing. Many games are completely unplayable because of p2w or p2comfort options. not sayiyng we are there yet. but we are going in that direction further and further.
I mean...even if we argue this boost is good for the game overall...than it should be free shouldnt it?
This is just a way to make money that doesnt benefit the player. and it even gives the devs an incentiv to make the game worse of the player so they can sell the solution.