[Icecrown] PvE Boosting

I've noticed a growing issue on Warmane - the prevalence of PvE boosting. In my opinion, it's ruining the spirit of the game. There are often more boosters advertising than actual players looking for help, and global chat is constantly flooded with boosting services.

What puzzles me is that PvE boosting seems to be completely fine according to the rules, while PvP (Arena) boosting is clearly prohibited. Why the double standard?

One possible reason could be that players buying boosts often don't farm their gold but instead purchase coins (via donation), converting them into gold. That, in turn, increases Warmane's revenue.

Meanwhile, many of the players offering PvE boosts accumulate gold, which they usually then convert to coins and sell externally for real money (around 0.6 per coin), which is clearly against the server rules.

So, it raises the question - is anything being done about this? Or has the community and staff simply accepted that boosting is here to stay, despite the negative impact it has on the game's atmosphere?

Would love to hear your thoughts.

I recently returned back to WoW and first thing I saw on global is: wts boost. I actually dont understand why it is happening, I dont think Warmane lacks $$$ from people donating, but it is business and you can always farm more $$$. As @Devyni9 said already, it is so clear that people: 1. Buying gold from real $$$ on warmane website, buying boost from Guilds and guilds selling coins for $$$. There is no other reason for top guilds to boost other people besides that.
Lets assume they don't sell gold for $$$. So they farm gold for what? Sell for coins? to buy what? if they are BOOSTING, I assume they already have BIS characters. The only reason I can see is buying mounts, but even then, there is not that much of them. Feels sad actually, since it looks like retail now with all the boosting spamming in global.

I've never liked that.
Those who choose this game know very well that some achievements will take time.

They should enjoy the game, calmly, I never understood all this frenzy.

Highly skilled raiders don't need full group, and only few items from the raid. If you can clear content with 22 players, why not take 3 extras and charge them for it?

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Originally Posted by mirekrock

So they farm gold for what? Sell for coins? to buy what? if they are BOOSTING, I assume they already have BIS characters. The only reason I can see is buying mounts, but even then, there is not that much of them. Feels sad actually, since it looks like retail now with all the boosting spamming in global.

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What are fully leveled and geared people to do? Do they start logging on the game just to stare at the screen? Do they quit the game? No, they usually just find something else to do, like hoarding gold, hoarding Coins, gearing alts, or even just repeating content they have fun doing. Feel free to provide real evidence that people are RTM'g and they will be dealt with, but until then stop pointing fingers with random conspiracy theories just because some people aren't doing what you want them to.

It's not a conspiracy to say that RMT involved in boosting. Entire Discord communities exist around it, filled with sellers boasting tons of positive feedback. The issue is that we only see Discord usernames, and without a direct link to in-game characters, it's extremely hard to produce real evidence.

Turning a blind eye to obvious red flags, like mass coin gifting or low-value BOEs being sold for hundreds of coins. It's being deliberately ignorant. If you're going to defend that behavior, at least be honest about what you're actually defending.

I am being quite honest, especially when calling it a conspiracy theory.
We limit the amount of Coins that can be gifted, we routinely do ban waves off RMTers, we track Coins being moved... yet someone who points out the conspiracy theorizing in this thread is "deliberately ignorant"? Sure, go on, tell me how Coins sellers prove the Earth is flat next.

I just think Boosting is a detriment to the community especially when it comes to people with LoD etc achievements having no clue and all the gear, and kinda doing naxxramas dps or rdf dps instead of properly playing. Then it creates a toxic environment for people who wanna clear the raid aswell as the boosted people because they don't understand that their performance matters once they got boosted for some reason. Had one such case yesterday. I think the best way to play the game is just progress, it's the whole fun.

But yeah i agree, the boosting scene has gotten out of hand, still sometimes getting an additional 8k gold for a raid i go to with a BiS Character is better than not getting anything, i totally understand that. But now there's 50 guilds etc trying to sell boosts for the most mundane things.

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Originally Posted by Cookoo

I just think Boosting is a detriment to the community especially when it comes to people with LoD etc achievements having no clue and all the gear, and kinda doing naxxramas dps or rdf dps instead of properly playing. Then it creates a toxic environment for people who wanna clear the raid aswell as the boosted people because they don't understand that their performance matters once they got boosted for some reason. Had one such case yesterday. I think the best way to play the game is just progress, it's the whole fun.

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That has a ridiculously simple counterargument: the real detriment is using achievements to gauge skill. Even without carries paid with gold, there are plenty of people who get carried for free to some extent and who wouldn't be able to play well in a group that relies on them being skilled/knowing the fight. On the other side of the coin, there are skilled players that have done the content multiple times on retail or wherever, know what to do and will perform better than the other 20+, but who get refused a place in a raid because they lack some achievement.

The "tOxIc EnViRoNmEnT" is created by players expecting something that is no real testament of skill to decide for them who to pick. It's a lazy, "quick&fast" brain-turned-off way to recruit people without doing any serious screening, and anyone using it shouldn't expect it to have 100% accuracy anyway.

Achievements, namely boss kill ones, are just participation trophies. You should start treating them as such too. You get it as long as you were there when boss is killed. You get it whether you lived throughout the fight, failed all mechanics, or died at start and faced the dirt as maggots ate your flesh while rest of the raid did 99.9% of the work again.

Having an achievement means nothing anymore. Characters and boosts can be bought, and you can always be picked by good (high ranking) players because you're their friend. You can easily judge a character based on achievements and gear they have, but have you ever considered knowing what kind of player you're bringing to the raid? That matters more if you actually want successful raids.

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Originally Posted by OhieMitzen

Having an achievement means nothing anymore.

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Very true, but NOT having an achievement means a lot.

I have several BIS toons and did boosting for quite some time. The reasoning being that it's just a lot of fun. I don't need gear and you're playing with highly skilled and geared players. It's just relaxing and a different way to enjoy the game. Plus ya you get a bunch of gold and you can invest in completing other toons or building a new one. That's mostly what I've seen with players I've boosted with, they just enjoy the game and take an extra along because they can.

I've also paid for boosts and that's also a lot of fun. It allows you to get into endgame way faster.

As far as it creating false achievements and what not... if you're joining pugs then you need to be looking at more than that anyway. It's very obvious by inspecting the other players in a group whether the raid leader knows what they are doing or not. Unfortunately there are a lot of really bad pugs. Half the time you can tell a bad pug just by the recruitment message. So it's really up to the individual on that one.

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Originally Posted by jmsvanbuskirk

I have several BIS toons and did boosting for quite some time. The reasoning being that it's just a lot of fun. I don't need gear and you're playing with highly skilled and geared players. It's just relaxing and a different way to enjoy the game. Plus ya you get a bunch of gold and you can invest in completing other toons or building a new one. That's mostly what I've seen with players I've boosted with, they just enjoy the game and take an extra along because they can.

I've also paid for boosts and that's also a lot of fun. It allows you to get into endgame way faster.

As far as it creating false achievements and what not... if you're joining pugs then you need to be looking at more than that anyway. It's very obvious by inspecting the other players in a group whether the raid leader knows what they are doing or not. Unfortunately there are a lot of really bad pugs. Half the time you can tell a bad pug just by the recruitment message. So it's really up to the individual on that one.

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I don't think most people are inherently against boosting itself, myself included. Boosting has always existed in some form, whether it's helping out guildmates, friends or random players. In a lot of cases, it's just players using their extra time to help others while earning a bit of gold on the side. That part isn't really the issue for me.

What's really frustrating and I think this is where much of the community frustration comes from is the constant spam advertising in global, trade, and general chats. You often see level 20 characters sitting AFK in cities, endlessly posting boost ads every few seconds. Many of them don't respond to whispers, which raises some red flags. Personally I think it's botting, but they're using an addon so they get away with it.

That kind of spam clutters communication channels and makes it harder for players to find groups or interact with the community in a meaningful way. It's less about boosting itself and more about how it's being promoted in disruptive, low-effort ways.

In short: boost if you want, help others, earn some gold - that's cool. But the way some of it's being advertised crosses a line and affects the rest of the player base more than people realize.

There's one player here that does most boost runs on the Icecrown. What do you think he does with that amount of gold? Keeping it? Hell no. He must be selling it for real money. He asks for like 150-170k for a boost run, imagine 3-4 people get boosted each week, that's 600k gold with current ratio gold:coins, you can get around 23 coins for 40k gold currently. It's like 345 coins before tax. A week, imagine he's been doing it for years. So the real question what is he doing with such amounts of coins? Keeping it? Boosting alts? You can boost alt to full bis with 300 coins. This matter should be looked into and his transactions - coin gifting.

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Originally Posted by devyni9

Very true, but NOT having an achievement means a lot.

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I don't think so, they are very subjective points of view.