Boosting Rule Adjustments

[Wzrdm1]

Just posting my two cents here - I fully support the GDKP ban and advertised boosting services, but there's a good percentage of players that enjoy bringing a high level guildee through dungeons for fun, and players that like to multibox level-boost their own alts. Both seem like "playing the game" to me, just slightly different than intended. I don't feel like that is negatively impacting the game like broadcasting in /world and encouraging RMT for boosts for in game gold... which also encourages RMT from gold buyers so people can pay for GDKP.

[Kestrel]

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.

First off, thank you for making the effort to not only jump into the forums and share your opinion, but also to type up your thoughts in an organized and calm manner <3 I will try to answer these best I can but please do follow up if I miss anything or trigger any follow up questions.

1.) This is a concern of mine and something that we will be keeping an eye on as it develops. Turtle was in an interesting spot in terms of them actively trying to balance this out when they shut down, which leaves it to us to find a more suitable long term strategy. One of the things we absolutely want to solve is the issue of grouping being overly penalizing when trying to level.

2.) The change to prevent warmode being able to be turned on/off was to make it functional as an actual leveling challenge, rather than a clone of retail WoW's war mode feature. If it does get to a point where the predominant method of rushing to 60 is to spam BG's 1-60 then we will likely be making changes to adjust that.

3.) The change was not made to target RMT sales, but rather made because RMT investigations brought to our attention that this was occurring already on the server. Once we realized, we had a quick internal discussion, and mistakenly took no internal pushback as an indication this would not be a contentious change.

The core of this decision is around how boosting affects the server as a whole, and the gameplay experience of everyone. In the same way that instant 60 boosted characters degrade the leveling experience for those that never intend to buy a boost, we feel that the endorsement of this type of in game level boosting also degrades that experience for everyone.

We do a lot to try to prevent RMT from occurring on our server, and also do not plan to make any gameplay or game design decisions around the preventions of RMT. We feel that the fight against RMT is one that is best fought with enforcement and killing the demand through public action and consequences.

4.) I absolutely agree. I think that our rules section is a bit wordy and difficult to parse through as is, and also our modifications have not made that any better. The fact that they are a copy paste with a few (non obvious) modifications only makes it harder to parse through.

We are working on some bigger changes to the website to (hopefully) better communicate the differences between what people experienced on Turtle WoW (or other turtle like servers) and what they can expect here on OctoWoW. We will be including a section on the updated or changed rules as well.

5.) This is something we need to work on to get the rule to a more easily understood place. Judging by some of the discussions we have seen around this rulechange, many clearly misunderstand what is, and is not, allowed. The intent of this rule change is to prevent level 60's characters from clearing dungeons or large swaths of mobs to funnel experience to a lower level toon. One thing to keep in mind on our server, if you are doing something you shouldn't but it is reasonable that you did not know or realize, you will not be penalized on a first infraction.

6.) This is probably the best point here IMO. You are right and it is something we should have changed first thing upon starting this server. When we started this server, we had hundreds of decisions to make, and this one fell through the cracks.

I empathies with being burnt out on the leveling experience, it is something I think we all experience at one point or another. I am sure that the recent movements in the private server community only compound that as it feels like nowhere is safe.

Our long term goal is to provide people a place that they can be certain their progress will last. One of the things that I personally felt with Turtle WoW, and drew me so deeply into it, was that I had faith it would always be around for me. I did not feel like I needed to do it all ASAP. It will take time, but I hope our server can be that for others. With this change I employ players to sit with that, there is no rush, OctoWoW and the characters you create here will always be here <3

[Kestrel]

I believe they never banned boosting because they did not have the moderation capacity to do so.

I strongly disagree with this. TWoW made more than 8 figures and they actively paid GMs and moderation staff allowing them to have a sizable and expandable team. Capacity was never a concern.

Perhaps it was instead that they (with more foresight than I) foresaw this difficult community discussion and felt it better to work around mechanically than to have a conversation with the community. Either way it is clear they indented to manage/get rid of boosting through the implementation of modified EXP mechanics.

I don't think the picture of TWoW paints this as clearly as you are making it sound. What would have been clear is them outright prohibiting it within the 8 years of operation. History shows that they changed the way some mechanics worked in-game which is fundamentally different than what you're trying to do here now. The justification does not match the history or lived experiences.

I disagree with your statements about the effect boosting does or doesn't have on the world. While I don't think it productive to stick on this point as I won't likely change your mind, your same arguments could be used to justify straight level 60 character boosts through in game stores or even sold via gold. At least with things like Heirloom items or exp potions players still have to engage with the content and the world (we have no plans to add these either).

Boosting a friend or guildie or someone you just met in-game because you want to help out or w/e is not even close to the same thing as buying a boost to 60 for gold/money, or exp potions, or w/e it is that servers like Ascension peddle. In my case, our friend group would always boost each other on TWoW and we treated it as a social activity. Human interaction and teamwork was required for boosting to work -- a tag team effort. Equating this to exchanging money for a level 60 character is dishonest.

On the subject of this change, no one had any issues with the previous server rules (gdkp, RMT boosting, etc) prior to this change-up. Switching the experience up now feels somewhat vindictive -- as if someone on the team didn't like this part of TWoW and is now using the opportunity to make their own desired change to a very significant and core component of the historical experience.

Again, I think this is a negative change and I strongly urge you to reconsider this because it significantly affects everyone.

They made adjustments to the EXP calculations to make in dungeon lvl 60 boosting no longer viable. Players found a work around through dropping group right before the mobs die. This is very clearly a loophole/work around that players have been exploiting. We can agree to disagree about why the turtle team did what they did, but this work around was not something they intended. We have implemented this rule to patch this work around, in retrospect I wish we had found a more mechanical solution to the work around but we have limited development capacity and now here we are.

Many people had different experiences with boosting, some were surely social and positive as you describe. What I have seen much more of is the lone person boosting their 5th toon to level 60 alone in an instance. Even then though I don't really think a mage or paladin AOE clearing instances involves a "tag team effort" with those being boosted. You can view this as dishonest if you'd like, but I don't see how that characterization fits. What do you suspect is the "honest" motive for this change? The entire team was in agreement here, there was no singular vocal vindictive force driving this decision.

Side note, need to step away for a bit for IRl activities, but will be back for more responses in a few hours.

[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.

First off, thank you for making the effort to not only jump into the forums and share your opinion, but also to type up your thoughts in an organized and calm manner <3 I will try to answer these best I can but please do follow up if I miss anything or trigger any follow up questions.

1.) This is a concern of mine and something that we will be keeping an eye on as it develops. Turtle was in an interesting spot in terms of them actively trying to balance this out when they shut down, which leaves it to us to find a more suitable long term strategy. One of the things we absolutely want to solve is the issue of grouping being overly penalizing when trying to level.

2.) The change to prevent warmode being able to be turned on/off was to make it functional as an actual leveling challenge, rather than a clone of retail WoW's war mode feature. If it does get to a point where the predominant method of rushing to 60 is to spam BG's 1-60 then we will likely be making changes to adjust that.

3.) The change was not made to target RMT sales, but rather made because RMT investigations brought to our attention that this was occurring already on the server. Once we realized, we had a quick internal discussion, and mistakenly took no internal pushback as an indication this would not be a contentious change.

The core of this decision is around how boosting affects the server as a whole, and the gameplay experience of everyone. In the same way that instant 60 boosted characters degrade the leveling experience for those that never intend to buy a boost, we feel that the endorsement of this type of in game level boosting also degrades that experience for everyone.

We do a lot to try to prevent RMT from occurring on our server, and also do not plan to make any gameplay or game design decisions around the preventions of RMT. We feel that the fight against RMT is one that is best fought with enforcement and killing the demand through public action and consequences.

4.) I absolutely agree. I think that our rules section is a bit wordy and difficult to parse through as is, and also our modifications have not made that any better. The fact that they are a copy paste with a few (non obvious) modifications only makes it harder to parse through.

We are working on some bigger changes to the website to (hopefully) better communicate the differences between what people experienced on Turtle WoW (or other turtle like servers) and what they can expect here on OctoWoW. We will be including a section on the updated or changed rules as well.

5.) This is something we need to work on to get the rule to a more easily understood place. Judging by some of the discussions we have seen around this rulechange, many clearly misunderstand what is, and is not, allowed. The intent of this rule change is to prevent level 60's characters from clearing dungeons or large swaths of mobs to funnel experience to a lower level toon. One thing to keep in mind on our server, if you are doing something you shouldn't but it is reasonable that you did not know or realize, you will not be penalized on a first infraction.

6.) This is probably the best point here IMO. You are right and it is something we should have changed first thing upon starting this server. When we started this server, we had hundreds of decisions to make, and this one fell through the cracks.

I empathies with being burnt out on the leveling experience, it is something I think we all experience at one point or another. I am sure that the recent movements in the private server community only compound that as it feels like nowhere is safe.

Our long term goal is to provide people a place that they can be certain their progress will last. One of the things that I personally felt with Turtle WoW, and drew me so deeply into it, was that I had faith it would always be around for me. I did not feel like I needed to do it all ASAP. It will take time, but I hope our server can be that for others. With this change I employ players to sit with that, there is no rush, OctoWoW and the characters you create here will always be here <3

Thank you for a detailed response! I think one point of clarification (not asked in my initial wall of words, but has also popped up during this thread) would be on just general grouped content not with the clearly massive XP boosted component. The most common one is alts/friends/guildies "leeching" xp in Dire Maul East lasher farms, but could also just take the form of doing grouped quests with an alt more than just one instance of an elite quest. The xp gain, per mob, is ~166xp at level 45 with rested xp in Dire Maul East from lashers. This overall is not great xp per hour between resets, limitations on pulling the packs within xp range, etc. It is "boosting" but seemingly a boosting style that varies quite significantly from dropping group mid-pull for a massive xp difference. I realize this makes policing harder, but would hope that ultimately it could be something that feels like a middle ground and avoids situations like having to turn xp completely off on characters when doing runs.

I realize in the coming days there will be lots of changes/potential rule rewrites based on your response so I totally get if there is not answer to this now, but just food for thought. Thanks again!

[Amawrath]

This is good.

[Azure]

Boosting, in any form, should never be allowed on any serious server, ever.

[Cudie]

If the boosters can't mob tag/aoe farm, they'll just do it the hard way and charge more. I'm not saying you shouldn't implement changes because "you can't ever fully shut it down" and so there is no merit to trying to make it harder for them, but it does punish I would say 20-30% of your community for the actions of a 1%.

"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.", I 99% agree with this, part of the fun for me personally, at least originally was levelling... I have to say I'm so sick to death of it now... I want to get to end game to pvp and raid with my friends.

I don't personally even care what twows intention was, twow was 90% business, 10% love. I feel the ratio is the other way for octowow, if we want to imagine good intentions I would say you guys have it. I appreciate all the work you and GMs are doing to keep the servers fair, I know they're not getting rewarded the same way twow gms were. So I think, even more than twow ever was, octowow is really here for the love of the game.

Having said that, I hate this change. I was fully intending on trying to entice former guildies to come join us on the new realm with the offer of mob tagging for them, not from 1-60, but from 10-20 or 25-30... I don't want to be boosting someone for 3 hours in a row either, it's not fun... but I would do it to get a friend back in the game... there are people that just don't have time to do the grind to 60 at 1xp and look maybe this isn't the server for them you might say... but if the rules were left as they were for 8 years with turtle it might be the server for them... you can have your internal debates with 5 devs and a few gms and make your loot council decisions, but you are making it harder for us to get people we want to play on the server to play on the server. I feel like turtle struck a good balance. You could make every server 0.5xp or 0.25xp and REALLY make people earn it and force them to do every last bit of custom content if they want to make it to end game but that balance would be wrong. I feel the balance on this is just a little bit off. No one can say if it will or won't help the server in the long run, I know it doesn't help me convince my friends to come back, that's not something that be can quantified. I feel octowow is going to grow in time, but it won't be because you made this change. And I don't like it. I wish it would have been polled, so you would at least see the percentage of people that are not happy with it.

[Nightehawk]

I'll jump in to say I welcome this change. It was both jarring, and obnoxious, to see 60s power leveling low level toons in twow. As someone who did this previously, while I will miss dragging low level friends through something like deadmines to get them on their feet and jump start them some, but I also cannot imagine a more mindnumbing and dull leveling experience then following around an alt and killing mobs as they tag them, especially with the broadcasting limitations in place.

It both sounds like, and seems like, there is interest in a conversation about time to level and where we are at now with prior twow balancing (e.g. rested nerfs) and where we would like to be going forward as a community.

[Lightforged]

Project Epoch had a system where if there was a 20+ level gap between players in the group, the exp gain was reduced by half (or something like that). This prevents exploitation while still allowing players to help friends or alts attain loot that drops from specific instances. I would suggest implementing a similar system instead of issuing account bans.

If you dislike leveling 1-60 then vanilla probably isn't for you. There are alternative server options that allow you to bypass the challenges of the game entirely if you choose.

Vanilla was designed to encourage social interaction and grouping with other players to achieve a mutual goal. Helping an alt with an elite quest or something similar is reasonable. AoE boosting a character to 60 degrades the quality of the server and shouldn't be allowed.

Boosting negatively affects the game for reasons such as:
- Reduces social interaction.
- Lets players skip the normal leveling experience.
- Can hurt the in-game economy if it becomes widespread.
- Makes low-level dungeons harder to find groups for because many players choose to be boosted instead.

OctoWoW is NOT Turtle WoW. They do not have to run their server the exact way that turtle did, and shouldn't be expected to.

I fully support the Octo teams decision to preserve the integrity of the game by prohibiting level boosting and I hope they stand firm in their decision.

[Derektm99]

I'm curious how this affects more niche scenarios. For example, I have often used my main to run a low-level (non-challenge) alt through a specific dungeon 1-2 times to complete all quests for that dungeon. I don't mob tag/drop group at all, just essentially 2-man the dungeon. Is less sweaty stuff like that also going to get warnings/potential bans? Or, what if it is a high-level guildie running my low level through the same way (again, without any mob tagging/group dropping) simply to complete quests or get specific items?