The last couple of days have seen some videos coming out from big (ex-)WOW streamers that confirm what I've said previously about most players: Normies Don't Do "Git Gud".
(I recommend that you play these at 2x Speed; these are not short clips.)
These videos talk about WOW, but this is a problem across all MMORPGs, and it shows the fact that Normies don't do difficulty as entertainment.
When Normies do entertainment, they come into it expecting that they will not need to put in work to get the reward of a satisfying experience. If their entertainment becomes difficult--if it requires effort, and therefore work--they get mad at record speed. Now that social media is a thing, those mad Normies can and do hollar at the developers about this and complain online about how they find the game to be bad because it requires work to get the rewarding experience they were promised.
When Normies run into jumps in difficulty, that's what Josh Strife Hayes calls a "Quit Moment". Normies react to these moments in three ways: Bulldoze, Skip, Quit. If they have to do it, then they will resort to brute-forcing their way through it; in gaming terms this means overgearing and overlevelling it to get the power needed to bulldoze it. If they don't have to do it, then they will skip it; this is what the boosting talk is about, as it is a means of skipping diffcult challenges as well as tedious bullshit. If they can neither skip nor bulldoze, they will never improve- they quit every single time.
For the business of MMORPGs, this is bad. That's why the moneybags and C-Suite inevitably pressures MMO developer teams to make the game open to Normies by making content a clown show of low-effort bullshit, or by tolerating Real Money Trading (that's what "RMT" means) in some form (including doing it themselves; that's what the WOW Token is) which turns the game into Pay To Win predatory bullshit.
Fortunately, some MMOs are holding the line against such pressure at this time, but many just gave up and let the whales control the business with their wallets.
But the players, as I can confirm, are no less to blame. They not only showed their Revealed Preference for efficiency in content consumption, they also showed a Revealed Preference for no-risk content consumption- especially in multi-player content such as dungeons and raids. The reason is also due to these requring effort--work--to complete, and if you put in work, you better get paid.
The more friction involved in getting something done, the greater the demand to be compensated substatially for the bother. That means guaranteed loot, gold, etc. in a gaming context; this only happens if you succeed--if you beat the content--so the result is that Group Time Is Company Time. You are expected, and therefore required, to meet a standard of power and ability to participate at all; this is most pronounced in WOW, but even FF14 has this going on at its top end of PVE and PVP. Competitive gaming, be it direct competition (PVP) or not (PVE raid racing), means min-maxing to cook the odds in your favor as best you can; this means no tolerance for anyone that isn't up to standard, it's Best Or Benched.
Normies square this circle of wanting the best rewards without wanting to Git Gud by paying others to carry them--to skip--and that's what Pay To Win is all about. They want the benefits without the work, and they want to flex on those that are unwilling or unable to swipe a card to cut the line.
Now you see how this very same business model led to it become the norm in mobile trash like Stupid Irvine's Pay To Win knock-off of Diablo and damn near every Chinese, Japanese, and Korean mobile trash game. You see all of these complaints as being normal in the mobile trash sphere, and people are stupid enough to brag about being a whale; the disdain for skill over literal purchased power, and then dominating entire competitive seasons to accrue prestige that only the most dominant players receive to further flex on the poors, is not to be dismissed as a trivial concern.
The first-order distortion effect is that others seeking to participate--not be a top-tier competitor, just get in the door--are pressured to go along with it because they get left behind otherwise. No one wants to bring you because you're not keeping up; you're benched, permanently.
The second-order distotion effect is already being felt in AAA Gaming worldwide--remember that Stupid Irvine is a late-comer to this party, and thanks to some intern shit-talking Xi Jinping their true reveune got kneecapped; don't believe the hype, as Fake Mobile Trash should have brought in at least 10 times what is reported but no China access makes that impossible and Bobby's gonna be mad at not being able to get another yacht.
Similar cancerous cheating is rampant in AAA shooters like Call of Duty: Warzone and Apex Legends. Entire YouTube Channels got launched around exposing it. (h/t BadBoy Beaman) It's still going on and only getting worse. The reason is the same: the companies benefit far more from the cheaters than the honest players, so they are disincentivized from fixing the problem.
Ultimately, this has to be nuked from orbit using state power because it is that far gone of a problem, and that will not happen until the Pay To Win problem--which, I remind you, involves inflicint gambler's psychology upon children--hurts enough working class parents to generate the social pressure necessary to generate the political will to kill it.
Which means that, with very few expections, there are no solutions that are viable until the corporate leadership is complete replaced by one means or another, and given how bigger geopolitical and real economy concerns are swiftly overtaking the globe that's not going to be addressed anytime soon.
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