WoW's Burning Crusade Classic servers are removing the time-honoured tradition of dungeon boosting

One integral part of World of Warcraft back in the day was powerlevelling: I remember a starry-eyed Harvey watching Protection Paladins on YouTube sweeping through hordes of the Scarlet Crusade for a group of lucky levellers. I was completely unaware of the economic underbelly supporting it, but it sure looked cool to see someone soloing a dungeon.

It was doubly helpful because levelling back then was a bit of a pain. Even without any fancy tricks in retail, levelling up an alt account today doesn't take much time—but back in the Burning Crusade? It was a journey. It also helped you rake in gold as a nice bonus, something that was also in more meaningfully short supply.

If you're hoping to recreate this experience on the WoW Burning Crusade Classic: Anniversary realms, though, you'll be denied the pleasure. As revealed on the official forums by community manager Kaivax, Blizzard has stepped in to stop dungeon boosting.

"We’ve observed a significant number of Burning Crusade players entering dungeons and then participating in no meaningful gameplay," Kaivax writes, "Often while only one party member plays through the instance. When this is prominent, it can lead to detrimental economic effects, among other concerns, so we’re implementing a series of hotfixes to address it."

The hotfixes in question? Firstly, no freebies—players need to participate to earn any experience in dungeons now. Secondly, non-boss enemies now drop loot based on how many players participated in the kill. This takes an axe to both power levelling and gold farming.

And while it's an uppercut to my nostalgia, I do kinda get why it's happening—even if the old days were more innocent (at least, with my rose-tinted glasses on), it's a different landscape out there. Real money trading is more rife, powerlevelling services are rampant, and the information required to perform it is more readily available.

You're no longer special if you have a kitted-out Paladin that can carve through one of these dungeons without trouble—and that's going to have a major impact on the economy, something that's notoriously hard to control in MMOs.

On the other hand, Blizzard now offers its own level 58 player boost on its official store. While services like these are a genuine attempt to cut down on real money trading and protect players from potentially bad actors (the equivalent of 'if you're going to drink, I'd rather you do it in my house'), it's still a fair point that removing powerlevelling routes does make these boosts more appealing. I wouldn't describe this move as a crash grab at all, but it doesn't help the optics.

Either way, the kibosh is being put on dungeon boosting when the next weekly maintenance rolls around this week. We'll have to see if Blizzard sticks to its guns on this one.