WoW’s Raid-Ready Boost lets you skip most of Dragonflight, so why bother playing?

Starting the week of Dec. 11, World of Warcraft Dragonflight players can buy Blizzard’s new Raid-Ready Boost for a whopping $60. It gives you everything you might need in WoW Dragonflight: An instant level 70 character, pre-raid-quality gear, and even Renown. It feels like you don’t even need to play the game anymore.

WoW’s Raid-Ready Boost includes all of the following:

• Max-level character for Dragonflight (level 70).
• Immediate access to the start of the Guardians of the Dream campaign.
• Endgame-ready item level 424 gear.
• Four 30-slot bags and one 26-slot reagent bag.
• Renown System unlocked, with Renown 20 for the four major Dragonflight factions, and Renown 12 for the Loamm Niffen faction.
• Five Dragonriding mounts including the Winding Slitherdrake Dragonriding mount.
• All Dragon Isles Travel Network Waygates available, flight paths unlocked, Dragonscale Expedition talents purchased, and NPC craftable Tuskarr fishing gear unlocked.
• 5000 Dragon Isles Supplies.

While I normally don’t mind boosts, and I’ll use them myself when I don’t feel like leveling, this expensive shortcut feels like a slap in the face to all the Dragonflight players who spent the last year progressing through content to claim their hard-earned rewards.

With the new boost, not only do you immediately get a level 70 character, you also get almost fully maxed-out Renown and gear that could potentially take weeks to grind for. You also get all five Dragonriding mounts that are normally unlocked as a reward for completing the Dragonflight campaign quests across the Dragon Isles’ four major zones.

At this point, the Raid-Ready boost sends a message that anyone who played Dragonflight for the past year has wasted their time, when they could have just bought the boost instead. I understand shop sales are what’s keeping Blizzard afloat, but this is essentially invalidating half the content that players worked so hard to complete. On top of this, it makes me wonder whether Blizzard will offer similar (or more egregious) boosts in the future.

The Raid-Ready Boost has unsurprisingly divided the WoW community. While some believe it isn’t such a huge deal, others see no point in playing Dragonflight when the fanbase can simply buy their way to success. It’s true, boosts are a normal part of retail WoW, but this time around, it simply offers too much by invalidating a substantial portion of the game. As it stands, most Dragonflight content is nothing more than an obstacle for you to overcome before you can reach the end-game and start enjoying the Emerald Dream. But again, invalidating other players’ progress and making past patches obsolete is not the way to go.