History of Boost Services in World of Warcraft
Greetings to all Azeroth defenders rallying to Shadowlands! Tonight we are going to speak about the most controversial topic in our community – WoW boost. This industry actually began to rise in the early 2010s. Back in Cataclysm, you were pretty surprised to see something called ‘WTS RBG Hero/Glad rating PM’. Right now you can see such messages regarding almost every possible activity, but mostly about the headliners – raids, mythic+ dungeons and pvp. Let’s talk about why boosting service itself isn’t a threat to our game and only helps to keep it alive. We are not joking. Guys from one of the oldest websites – Leprestore WoW Boost helped us to reveal everything hidden.
How it all began
Mid cataclysm, high ranked pvp and pve players actually started to reach their 20 yo marks. And it’s pretty common, in your 20+ age you are really in need of money for college, university, family etc. As there were never a real eSports in World of Warcraft (we can barely name Raid progress or Arena championships a real eSport), the only way to get money off your skill is to help other people. Naturally, everything started with pvp. And to not actually ruin other player’s experience, boosting groups (there were no infrastructure at all yet) started to win-trade their customers up to glad or R1 rating.
Eventually, these actions were tracked by other people and Blizzard started to respond – huge ban waves affecting not only boosters, but their clients as well. Generally, win-trade boost died by the release of Legion. But that was only the beginning.
Time savers vs. Boosting
Let’s start with some sort of comparison. First major case of real donation and pay to win occurred in AAA+ title not so long ago. Yes, we are talking about Star Wars: Battlefront II. This game was designed to make it impossible for free to play players to grind their favorite heroes. For example, grinding to get Darth Vader unlock should have taken around 20 years on release. After thousands of complaints, EA changed the system, because it was too pushy. Next cases were made by Ubisoft in their Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. Big amount of purchasable enhancements to save time and make progress easier.
And the case is that single-player games are designed initially harder to push players for purchases. Boosting isn’t really a thing you have to get. It’s just a nice saver of your time without real influence on anyone. Real fluent case from Leprestore:
Customer X is 35 years old, a successful scientist, playing World of Warcraft since release. Now, due to COVID19, he has 14-16 working hours per day with no off days. But he loves to play the game in his spare time, and raid with friends. With the BFA system, he was not able to grind every day to keep up with the rest of his guild, starting to fall back a ton. But using the help of the pro boosters, his character was up-to-date and he was able to enjoy the game like if he was playing normally. Who would say it’s bad?
Gold and Money
Most of the spam messages in a trade chat on your realm (regardless eu or us servers) nowadays consist of gold boosting parties. Some of the readers would ask: ‘Why should I buy boosting for money, if I can get it with ingame gold?’. And Leprestore explains why.
Gold boosts are not reliable. Teams who are doing that, are not trusted enough to allow them to take money upfront. They don’t have guarantees, support and top players. In contrast with that, boosting services usually have fast delivery, professional support agents and many other benefits. Plus, it’s always more comfortable to be able to purchase a wide range of services in one place. And a major difference – boosting a company is a business with a best price, reputation, verified reviews and guarantees. While gold boosters can provide none of that.
Boosting in Shadowlands
Shadowlands brought a lot of fresh ideas to our beloved old game. And that means more and more grind along the way. Now we have to farm anima, work on covenants, run weekly Torghast, renown and much more. What is the common menu of a wow boosting service? Using the example of Leprestore, we can check what they offer.
First of all, new customers who are newcomers, start with some cheap but relevant services. Every end of an expansion AOTC and Cutting Edge achievements are becoming their tickets to a world of boosting. Majority of players do not raid so these achievements are mostly unreal to obtain (LFG groups require these achievements to just enter the raid).
Next spot to go is a raid carry. In Shadowlands, the first raid is Castle Nathria. 10 bosses, great looking loot, many legendary powers and conduits. That is definitely a hot pie and 100% top seller until the next patch. All difficulties are available, with mythic postponed to a later date. Obviously, to get people in there, guilds have to maximize their gear score first.
Mythic+ dungeons are the next favorite product due to speed of a delivery and rewards. With adding a Great Vault, Blizzard actually forced us to get at least 4 mythic+ dungeons done, with a maximum of 10 to get maximum reward options.
Naturally, that’s only the tip of an iceberg. Boosting companies are able to help with many different activities, including seasonal events, scenarios (like Torghast in Shadowlands, Horrific Visions in Battle for Azeroth or Mage Tower in Legion), raider and dungeon glories of old expansions.
In a nutshell
Boosting is not a threat to our favorite game. This is a huge industry creating workspace for a new generation of youthlings. Furthermore, boosting helps mature people who still have passion to stay up-to-date with their home and work duties. We expect a few more years of recognition before people would actually treat paid services (boosting) like a regular part of the game industry. But for now just remember, that everything new is made for people by people. First step is to deny the toxicity around boosting and we feel it’s happening.
