The practice of purchasing World of Warcraft character boosts from services like https://leprestore.com/wow/ has grown substantially in recent years. While convenient for quickly accessing endgame content, boosting also has wider impacts on the in-game economy and social dynamics that are less often considered.
This blog post examines some of the key effects – both positive and negative – that the prevalence of boosting has on economic systems, group play, and social connections in WoW.
Economic Impacts of Boosting
The most direct economic consequence of boosting is the injection of large amounts of raw gold into the game economy. When players purchase a boost, they essentially convert real-world money into in-game gold supplied by boosting services. This expands the gold supply within WoW.
Some potential effects of this inflated gold supply include:
- Higher Prices – More total gold in the economy drives inflation. The prices of many goods, services, and assets like gear or rare items increase.
- Devalued Professions – When more players can simply buy gold and gear, professions that provide gold or gear generation like farming and crafting may become less profitable.
- Easier Access to Items – On the plus side, the easier gold acquisition does enable more players to afford coveted items like mounts. But it diminishes the prestige of expensive goods.
- Subscription Tokens – The WoW Token allows players to exchange gold for game time. More gold from boosting likely translates to higher Token prices.
- Auction House Impacts – Commodity speculation and economic manipulation become more prevalent with more liquid gold. Prices fluctuate.
While free-flowing gold provides certain benefits, unchecked inflation can severely damage a game economy. Blizzard does attempt to counter this with gold sinks like mounts, transmogs, and consumables. But boosting does risk devaluing achievement in some parts of the game.
Social Dynamics and Communities
Beyond just the economy, character boosting also affects certain social dynamics, group play, and community impacts:
- Less Connections While Leveling – Leveling traditionally builds bonds as you group up and slowly progress. Boosting bypasses this, reducing connections with other levelers.
- Undermines Accomplishment – A sense of achievement comes from reaching the max level manually. Boosting erodes this, angering some players who leveled traditionally.
- Enables Playing With Friends – On the other hand, boosting does let you quickly join friends who are already max level and established.
- Less Knowledge of Class/Game – Boosted players often have big knowledge gaps about their class and the game, which can cause tensions in group play.
- Potential Stigma – Some players look down on those who are boosted over leveling manually, creating a social stigma around boosting.
- Questionable Skill Level – Due to lesser knowledge and experience, boosted players may be seen as less skilled, rightfully or not.
Blizzard has sought to address some of these concerns by requiring a level 70 character on the account before allowing boosting. But social growing pains still persist between boosters and non-boosters.
Should Boosting Be Limited Further?
Given the above impacts, some players have called for Blizzard to restrict or heavily limit boosting activities. However, curtailing boosting too aggressively could drive it to unsafe black market sources with security risks.
Here are two perspectives on whether boosting should face heavier restrictions:
The Case for Limiting Boosting
Given the above impacts, some players have called for Blizzard to impose heavier restrictions or limits on boosting activities. However, being too aggressive in curtailing boosting could simply drive it to unsafe black market sources with security risks.
There are two main perspectives on whether boosting should face stricter control. Those in favor argue that boosting hurts class immersion and skill progression by allowing players to skip leveling. It cheapens the journey to the max level which usually provides a great sense of fulfillment once achieved manually.
Boosting can also contribute to toxic “pay-to-win” mentalities, undermine the prestige of difficult achievements earned without shortcuts, and create skill gaps in group play. From an economic angle, widespread boosting likely contributes to inflation and other issues.
The Case Against Heavy Restrictions
On the other side, supporters argue against heavy-handed restrictions because boosting allows friends to quickly play together rather than leveling alone for weeks first. It provides access for time-limited players who still want high-level characters. Boosting lets players avoid the most repetitive and outdated leveling content from past expansions. It generates revenue for Blizzard and can potentially bolster populations on lower-activity servers. Finally, boosting is already somewhat restricted, like requiring a level 70 character before allowing a boost.
Blizzard faces difficult decisions on how to best manage boosting. While problems certainly exist, boosts remain highly desired by many players. Removing boosts outright seems unlikely. However, additional moderate tweaks could help ease the most negative side effects of excessive boosting.
Mitigating Boosting’s Adverse Effects
Rather than outright bans, more nuanced solutions could alleviate boosting issues while preserving the practice for players who desire it. Some potential ideas include:
- Require completing more content manually before allowing boosts, like the entire previous expansion.
- Implement level band caps so players can only boost up to a certain threshold, like level 50 or 60, not all the way to the current cap.
- Limit how frequently accounts can use boosts, like only once per expansion.
- Provide boosts only for brand-new expansions, not older ones, to keep content relevant.
- Develop more advanced starter tutorials for freshly boosted characters to guide learning.
- Create solo challenges that reward lore/backstory for key plot points missed while boosting.
- Incentivize manually leveling up additional characters on already boosted accounts.
With creative systems tuning, Blizzard could support boosts for players who want them while reducing wider economic and social disruptions.
The Bottom Line
Boosting provides quick access to endgame content, but also affects WoW’s economy, achievement prestige, social dynamics, and player skill trajectories. While boosts will likely remain available, Blizzard could implement more nuanced restrictions and guidance to smooth disruptions.
In the end, players themselves must be conscientious about boosting moderately and being respectful of others in the game. Prioritizing learning and skill growth mitigates many issues stemming from the overuse of level boosts. As with all systems in WoW, pursuing enjoyment and engagement in a thoughtful way provides the healthiest path.