WotLK Do people actually buy boosting runs for ICC 10/25 HC?

[Bomesssor]

For quite a while the advertisements for these boosting services have flooded the global/trade chat channels.

Out of curiousity I always ask the chat spammers for the price and I see above 50k for the 10HC and way above 100k for the 25HC. Now of course, these are rookie amounts for people in the AH business, but considering that the average player who actually plays the game for fun can barely scrape enough gold together for a decent starter gear with all the enchants and gems, plus the fast flying, makes me wonder who would actually buy these boosting services from guilds, which are basically just a huge gamble for 50k-150k gold. Either you get lucky with the loot or you don't, but even if you do get extremely lucky and get literally all the BiS loot from a 25HC run, along with the tokens, (chances are one in a million), you're still not BiS, not even close, and at these post-squish prices, if you sold that gold for coins on the website, you'd still get many BiS items, but this time guranateed. So why would anyone do this? Are these just all a scam? I'm guessing you have to pay forward because if you don't they won't start the raid. Or maybe you pay a given percentage after each boss.

People with money to donate who are lazy to raid will just buy the BiS items from the store, people with huge amounts of gold are probably BiS on their main anyways, and for their alts they'll just join the alt raids in their guild. People who are newbies won't have 50-150k gold laying around for a gamble raid loot table, they'll just join a chill friendly guild and progress to their BiS gear the normal way. Of course for Paladins/DKs/Warriors, you won't get SM from these booster runs obviously so you'll either donate, join a guild and do the grind or sell gold to get your desired weapon...

So the question remains, who would spend this amount on a huge gamble? If you don't get any gear or tokens for your class you just wasted reasonable amounts of gold, I mean at these amounts you're better of investing it in a smart way on professions and you can easily double or triple it, then sell it for coins and get all the gear you need, if you're that lazy to raid...

[tyroflas]

There are so many factor why a player would buy boost. I don't need to explain them. People even buy LoD boost for the achievement bcz they dont want to invest time on finding pug to LoD, so they end up buying LoD boost with Invincible RESS, Lol! There's not explanation of why you 'wouldn't buy a lod boost. On Lod you have the chance to get BiS items, also so many non bis items , that no one would need, since there's 1 user of each armor on every boost approximately. Just ask people that buy boost for more info, i dont get your point. In the end of the day, the prices you mentioned would make 2-3 items i guess with current ratio which is nothing, why you wouldnt risk it, you more likely end up geared with 1 bis and 5 trash to be-replaced items.