Boosting Rule Adjustments

[Kestrel]

First off, I would like to say that the team and I clearly made a mistake with our recent rule change in that we underestimated the portion of the player base that was either actively boosting or planning to boost down the line. Regardless of if we agree or not on whether boosting has a place on our server, I think we all agree that the decision and rule change should have been handled better. I would consider our server in a Beta state not only from a technical perspective, but also from a communication and community management perspective. I appreciate you all understanding this and being patient with us as we get things ironed out.

Onto the meat of this post.

Boosting is contentious. That much we can all agree on. This post is not intended to change anyone's mind, we don't think that is a reasonable or productive goal. This post is intended to share with the community why we made the change that we did, how we feel it will help our community, and how we go about making these types of decisions so you can decide if this server is one that you want to commit your valuable free time to.

The act of boosting at its core, is an attempt to speed past or skip large swaths of content in order to have access to more resources, or more ways to play the end game content. I can personally relate to the person who has 3 level 60's and just would really love to have a 4th that can fill in as their own personal alchemist and herb farmer, but they don't feel they have the time or energy to do a full traditional 1-60 playthrough again.

I similarly relate to those that are sick of walking all the way to the wailing caverns from Darkshore because they don't yet have the Astranaar FP and there is no level 20 warlock in the group. I understand and relate to those that are sick of finding an awesome new hunter melee weapon, only to realize they have no weapon skill with polarms and their wing clip misses 8 times in a row and they loose their HC character (don't ask). In this game that we love so dearly, there are things that we love a bit less.

Some of those (like having soul shard take up 2 full bags) our team, the turtle team, and we'd like to think the community, agree are unnecessary and can be improved upon through QOL adjustments. Other things, like having to level your characters to 60, we feel are such a core part of this game, and that they need to be actively protected and fostered.

We do not fault those that desire a more streamlined gaming experience than our server provides, but we will not be compromising what we want for the sake of those that wish it was something else.

We firmly believe that this change to no longer allow boosting will serve to improve our community and server in the long run. We don't expect everyone to agree with this, but do expect everyone to abide by these rules and behave themselves in discussions around the issues. Please keep in mind no matter what your opinions are, we (the majority of the community, not just the OctoWoW team) all want what is best for this server and game. We are all on the same team.



To those that would argue that this not how Turtle WoW was, I would ask what you think their intention was with their changes around boosting EXP. From our perspective their intention was clear, and if given more time I am certain they would have patched the loop holes that they missed that allowed boosting to continue. We of course are open to trying to patch those holes ourselves from a systemic standpoint, but don't think allowing boosting to continue in the meantime is good for us or the community. If this is a deal breaker for you, we'd rather you know now than 3 months from now when we push changes that get rid of your preferred boosting method.

The situation that led to this change being made when it was, revolved around our ongoing fight against RMT. While investigating some RMT allegations, it became apparent to us that RMT boosting is something that we will never be able to adequately detect and act on. The entire Dev team was on the same page when the discussion happened and that is why the change happened in the way that it did with little fanfare.

As one final point of clarification, we specifically are banning "Using a high level character to rapidly aquire EXP on any lower level character. General assistance is not considered boosting but a level 60 AOE farming for other lower level characters is and it is forbidden.". This is rule change meant to ensure a level 60 character is one that someone actually made it to level 60 on. You are still welcome to (on non-challenge characters) use a higher level toon or friends to help with difficult quests (like the whirlwind axe).

I look forward to reading your differing opinions on this in the responses, and of course fielding all questions in game at our fireside chat this Tuesday.

[Hepallzx12]

I think boosting needs to be formally defined if it is going to be forbidden. Can you dualbox two characters to 60 since dualboxing is allowed in the rules? Is that boosting the second character? What if you're lasher farming a paladin to 60 and dualbox another toon in DME? Neither character is level 60 so is that boosting? Is boosting to get gear from a dungeon allowed? The rules are very vague right now and I can see why it can be interpreted as "Not allowed to help with whirlwind axe cuz thats boosting". Why not just keep this change to the hardcore realm since they're "hardcore"?

[Mrsneed]

To those that would argue that this not how Turtle WoW was, I would ask what you think their intention was with their changes around boosting EXP. From our perspective their intention was clear, and if given more time I am certain they would have patched the loop holes that they missed that allowed boosting to continue. We of course are open to trying to patch those holes ourselves from a systemic standpoint, but don't think allowing boosting to continue in the meantime is good for us or the community. If this is a deal breaker for you, we'd rather you know now than 3 months from now when we push changes that get rid of your preferred boosting method.

The situation that led to this change being made when it was, revolved around our ongoing fight against RMT. While investigating some RMT allegations, it became apparent to us that RMT boosting is something that we will never be able to adequately detect and act on. The entire Dev team was on the same page when the discussion happened and that is why the change happened in the way that it did with little fanfare.

TWoW never explicitly banned boosting. They did make it tougher to do so through a few key changes, but they never outright banned the activity. In the interest of preserving the TWoW experience, I think that this change will negatively impact a lot of people and actively hampers how some people want and/or choose to play. You don't need to be boosted to play and have fun, you don't need to go through the 1-60 leveling experience to play and have fun; But in either case there are people out there who choose to play in either way because that's how they get enjoyment from the game. This was not something that impacted the in-game economy in TWoW and I don't think allowing it to continue is going to have any ramifications, especially considering that TWoW was alive for so many years without the issues you are describing actually plaguing it in any meaningful capacity.

Concerning RMT, the logic behind tying this decision to RMT boosting seems flawed from my perspective. If you can't tell when people are RMT boosting, then you're not able to tell when they aren't -- and I foresee both a ton of work in your futures and a lot of misfired punishments for players who, possibly from a GM perspective, appear to be boosting.

Again, I think this is a negative change.

[Paltoforum]

Thank you for sharing this.

I wasn't aware that this was an issue and I fully agree and support the banning of boosting. It is in direct opposition to the spirit of the game, and to the spirit of our predecessor - Turtle WoW, who's name says it all. This game was meant to be savoured, not blasted. Each new character is a journey onto itself.

I understand that there will be many people who are opposed to it, but I don't think that their expectations/wants align with the classic/turtle philosophy.

I wholeheartedly support the position of the OctoWoW team on this decision.

Let us preserve what makes this special.

(Notice how fun servers come and go, but servers that are grounded stand the test of time, until they are forcibly shutdown. This is just me drawing a parallel between boosting and fun servers. Fun servers are all about skipping the game in order to obtain power. Its a fire that burns bright and fizzles quickly.)

[Cartmanbrah]

TWoW was wonderful. I miss TWoW everyday. This project is trying to recreate TWoW with the goal of building on its legacy (I hope). That said, what was TWoW in its first iteration? Hint - 'turtle' isn't a coincidence. It was to slow down and enjoy the 1-60 experience. Did they make adjustments to that mantra and support the 60 raid community? Yep. Did they forget the levelling experience? Hell no.

So if the devs want to make a Hella controversial decision to just tap the brakes on everyone a bit, I'll keep an open mind. I hope you do as well.

The devs call this iteration of their work 'beta'. Expect hard turns and rapid adjustments. Lean into and see how it feels for you. Dont like it? There are a plethora of options and you can abandon this three month project.

[Provocation]

"Bad change is bad, and you don't like it, but we're doing it anyway."

Got it. Thanks for the clarification. I'll not be wasting any of my money on QOL items on this server.

[Sublime]

People will cope and seethe regardless if you do any change

I feel that as far as major rule or gameplay updates are concerned this is probably the best outlet for those, as in-game world chat immediately becomes an unusable shit-flinging fest whenever this stuff is communicated there.

I understand from the standpoint of it trying to be more "community like" with discussion in game but clearly there are way too many people unable to be civil with it. Its a shame because I completely understand the community perspective, but some of the people here are really unbearably entitled and immature.

[Tims]

Hi! First time using the forums, but wanted to give some feedback as it was recommended by an in-game GM. I really hope this post comes off as civil as it really is meant to be. Also, shoutout to Valette in game who really did try their best to answer a lot of these questions, so kudos to them! I know this will probably be really longwinded, but I'll try to keep it concise.

1. Max efficiency players are just not going to interact with the game the way this rule change I think probably hopes they will. Currently, we have:
-Rested xp is nerfed (compared to what it was at one point on turtle adding ~25% to leveling time)
-Dungeon xp is nerfed overall
This does not encourage people to group for dungeons if they are trying to get to 60 ASAP. Grouping for quests also does not feel great with the group xp penalty and that is if people even leave a city to group for said quests.

2. War Mode is just going to be the fastest way to level now. It already rivaled mob tagging once you hit ~50. This is I guess good in some ways as it makes these q's more frequent, but poorly geared alts sitting in bgs never leaving a city does not feel like the emergent gameplay this is trying to push. This meta will also do nothing to the world feeling full/alive which I am going out on a limb and assuming is the "core experience" that is desired. The new war mode change also makes this feel very bad as I believe you cannot turn it on and off at will like you could on Turtle so characters made before this change, with boosting in mind, are now stuck.

3. General rollout (I know you mentioned this is still in Beta for the team which I can appreciate!). It seems like the change was initially targeted at preventing RMT/Account selling based on what GM Pig posted in World Chat (I'm operating on a screenshot in the fan discord so I apologize if this is a mischaracterization, Pig). This post seems to pivot the change to a more "defensible" PR stance of protecting game integrity. I'm not saying it cannot be both! But, it does feel a bit disingenuous that this was more of a footnote compared to the gameplay concerns. Blizzard has made several, similar, baby out with the bathwater decisions in recent years that have shot them in the foot trying to do that same exact thing when fighting RMT. This becomes a slippery slope towards breaking other parts of the game like gold farming etc. because it leads to RMT issues.

4. Rule clarification on the website needs to happen for people coming to Octo/currently playing here. Boosting has several, conflicting definitions within the rule set. "Boosting services are considered paid or tipped runs where a notably higher leveled character will complete a dungeon for lower leveled character(s) in exchange for compensation." This makes it sound like boosting/boosting services are paid/tipped (especially when combined with the GDKP rule). It could be pretty easy to misreading the following to also require a pay component "Using a high level character to rapidly acquire EXP on any lower level character. General assistance is not considered boosting but a level 60 AOE farming for other lower level characters is and it is forbidden." Comingling the definition for "Boosting" to be not paid services and paid services is really easy to misunderstand. I realize the rest of the rules are a copy/paste from twow's original ruleset, but I think a rewrite that more directly fits Octowow is needed.

5. More concise language in the rule would also be appreciated. What is a higher level character? +/- 5 like in hardcore? Honor range? Same BG bracket? Why is AoE farming specifically mentioned, but not mob tagging? This does not read like "for example", but as a specific ban. After chatting with Valette I realize that is not the case, but again that is not clear.

6. Why not just ban if from the beginning? Surely, boosting in its current state was a well-known thing on Twow. If the team truly felt that Twow as a whole would have not wanted this given a longr life why not ban it from the beginning? Especially, when there are played that started early who will likely have alts that were leveled like this. Breaking it now feels more like missing out on an "Abuse Early" gameplay loop.

As someone who has hopped to a few different servers since Turtle died I am fairly burnt from the level experience. I realize that is 100% not the teams problem, but I wouldn't be surprised if others are in the same boat. It also feels a bit worse when "rebuilding" the Turtle characters that were lost which is why I think this was, seemingly, taken a lot worse then maybe the Dev team though it would. The fun part of MMOs, to me, is playing how you want and gameplay loops having massive changes abruptly that restricts what I find enjoyable is kind of a bummer. Especially when folks who enjoy the journey more already have loads of options to change their gameplay and slow it down.

I really appreciate anyone that took the time to read this post. I know it is heinously long and please forgive any poor formatting/grammar. Nursing that 4th of July hangover Ultimately, the teams decision, but wanted to add my two cents.

[Kestrel]

I think boosting needs to be formally defined if it is going to be forbidden. Can you dualbox two characters to 60 since dualboxing is allowed in the rules? Is that boosting the second character? What if you're lasher farming a paladin to 60 and dualbox another toon in DME? Neither character is level 60 so is that boosting? Is boosting to get gear from a dungeon allowed? The rules are very vague right now and I can see why it can be interpreted as "Not allowed to help with whirlwind axe cuz thats boosting". Why not just keep this change to the hardcore realm since they're "hardcore"?

I agree. I think that a more well defined definition of boosting is absolutely in order so that it is clear to everyone. That being said, nobody will be banned for their first offence for boosting, the GM's will be issuing warnings (as they do for most infractions) before any action is taken.

As for specific scenarios feel free to ask in this thread or start another where maybe the community can work to get a more pinned down definition. Using a max level character to get a gear set for a lower level character is not boosting. Using a max level character to AOE farm an instance and then dropping group before mobs die to cheese the experience gain is boosting (and clearly not intended by the Turtle WoW team).

[Holydruid]

What is this message lmao.

"We see that we acted wrong, and people didn't like, but guess what, fuck the community and we are pushing it anyhow".

Legit this is the dumbest thing you can do... 75% of the community in TWOW was part of boosting one way or another.
They/We do not want to level another character, going through quests for a hunderd time over the last 20years.
I can tell you already, that i will never ever have an alt anymore. And so will 99% of the community most likely.

For the love of all that is right, revert this actually dumb decision, and just make it you cant boost if the person has ANY CHALLENGE active. That's all you need.