Dungeon XP and Mob Behavior Changes to Combat Boosting

[Staff 1,388]

 

Blizzard will be addressing concerns of boosting via dungeons in Burning Crusade and WotLK Classic, by reducing the XP gains when player level disparities are large, as well as making it more difficult to kite mobs.

Dungeon XP and Mob Behavior (Source)

One of the most common pieces of feedback we’ve received (and observed ourselves in our own adventures) is the concern about pervasive sales of dungeon boosting services in-game. It often overpowers chat with advertisements and makes certain channels hard to use for their intended purpose.

It’s also no secret that the gold from many boosting groups is used for illicit activities such as Real-Money Trading (RMT), as much of the gold that players pay to boosters is then sold for real money back to other players.

Now that we’ve seen the final major content release of Burning Crusade Classic, we will soon adjust the behavior of creatures in most dungeons (including the new dungeons coming in Wrath of the Lich King Classic) to make it significantly more difficult to endlessly snare and kite enemies. Additionally, we will implement a reduction to group XP earned when there is large disparity between player levels in the same group.

We’ve experimented with similar changes to most dungeons on our Season of Mastery servers, and we’ve found these changes to be very effective at reducing the efficiency of boosting groups. We plan to roll out these adjustments to Burning Crusade Classic realms at the same time as the Joyous Journeys XP buff, which should happen sometime in the next few weeks. Stay tuned for more information about that and when you can expect to see these changes hit live servers.

This is also a good opportunity to remind everyone that spamming chat channels with advertisements for boosting services outside of dedicated Trade channels is against the Terms of Service, and you should take every opportunity to report players that you see advertising for boosting services in channels such as General and Looking For Group.

We’re really looking forward to players joining us very soon in the Wrath of the Lich King Classic Beta, and hope to be able to share more about that very very soon as well!

[Wrock 0]

Changing the group experience in dungeons is an understandable thing.  Most of us certainly recognize the problem being addressed.  I don't know how to address this problem but do note that sometimes it appears as if we cut off our leg below the knee because our toe hurts.  PL'ing our friend's and family's alts through dungeons both for gear and XP has always been a favorite thing for "my gang" to do.  We often invite strangers to fill the roster and none of us (to my knowledge) have ever charged for it.  I personally have played WoW for 15 years and never charged** for a port, enchant, craft or dungeon run and have run somewhere between 4,000 and 10,000 dungeon runs for others (sometimes several hundred in a week).  The runs for gear will still exist but the fun of leveling alts this way is removed.

Another way to fix the problem?  No idea.  Was impressed with how well you stopped the botters by identifying injected commands.  Wish this RMT problem was so easy.

**Try to refuse tips but that's more difficult when you're time constrained and redoing enchants several times because people simply refuse to allow you to do it for free.

[Andser 34]

Thats one way to cut their playerbase in half. This won't look good to the guys in suits even if the playerbase is happier

[Eduard 0]

This is why i do not play wow classic mastery. One or two times doing the quests is enough. Parties for dungeons, very often the case in the past, lack tanks and take forever. Players want to play the end content and not the required boredom before that. Unfortunately this group is less vocal. I was hoping to do some tank boosting myself for some alts (i have multiple accounts) but it will probably be stopped.

If the guild looses a tank ... quickly getting a new alt from guild minded players will be a thing of the past. Same for other roles like healing.

Hopefully when Blizzard applies this change they will cut the required xp per level drastically.

 

Edited June 23, 2022 by Eduard