I’m crap at PvP I can’t and won’t deny it, but sometimes when getting pummelled in Wintergrasp, pausing for a cup of tea whilst letting a Rogue dance about and rip me and my crappy PvP robe to shreds, I think, wouldn’t it be nice to have some

arena gear so I have some sort of chance, but that’s never going to happen.

BUT WAIT! There may be an answer! It comes in the form of the cheeky and notorious Vinnayo and his arena boosting services.

Who are you? tell us a bit about yourself!

Hello everyone, my name is Vincent I am 22 years old and I live in The Netherlands. I’m studying to become a social cultural worker with specialisation in music and troubled teens (think about chavs and girls that get pregnant at the age of 14 and offer you BJ’s in exchange for weed!)

I can recommend this study to everyone since your work experience consists of hanging out with them, playing games on the Xbox/PS3, making music with them and sometimes we even get drunk together! Now who wouldn’t want that?

In game however I play a rogue called Vinnayo (formerly Vinna) and I’m a certified trade spammer. I have been playing a rogue for roughly 3 years now and my biggest interest in this game is PvP.

How long have you been into PvPing and how did you start?

I have been into PvP’ing ever since I hit level 10 and entered the battleground with my brother and cousin. Warsong Gulch wasn’t enough for us so after buying all sorts of potions, making over 80 bandages and discussing all kind of strategies we decided to go to Crossroads, my brother had read something about it on the internet and told us that would be the place to PvP. We had just dinged level 17.

We spent ages waiting outside crossroads for someone that was equally or lower level then we were. Myself and my cousin (both rogues) would hide in some bushes and my brother would /taunt the players

and enable his PvP. So…after 20 minutes the first player showed up, a Troll Mage. He attacked my brother who was playing a squishy priest and we sprint in spamming all of our cool downs and killed the Troll. All 3 of us burst out in laughter and PvP became my passion.

In the beginning I thought I would never be any good and considered giving up on PvP. But then it happened, as I was reading the forums for hints and tips I came across this movie called World of Roguecraft, I watched all 3 episodes and finally I had a goal in WoW to become as awesome as the rogue in World of Roguecraft and surpass him. I learnt a lot from his movies and I entered the BG’s again, this time with success, I got the hang of it and eventually began to end up first place on the scoreboards.

TBC came out and so did arena’s, I decided to level up to 70 as I liked the arena concept. Once I hit 70 I bought a 2v2 team with my real life friend Sapulidi and we played a retarded double rogue setup, dropping way down to 1300 and eventually we agreed that we should probably improve our gear!

After a few months we decided to try again and it went surprisingly well, the new season just started and we played it up to 1600 and we were really happy with our achievement. People however would laugh at my ratings and call me “noob” or “FAILURE” and as I couldn’t stand that I decided to work away to get higher ratings.

Driven by this will to prove myself and the will to be the best rogue on Emerald Dream I started playing arena every evening for 4 hours and I my ratings increasing from 1500 to 1800. The people that would laugh at my ratings now lost to me in duels and it felt great!

Season 3 came and I got officially arena addicted, more and more high rated people would notice me duelling outside Ironforge and thus I got asked to join their teams with increasing frequency. At one point this priest asked me to play 2v2 with him, at first I declined as I was playing 2v2 with my Girlfriend but after he nagged me for weeks I gave in. This probably has been one of the best decision I could have made.

The priest in question was Grieve and we hit 2170 rating in 2v2 after about 400 arena games which back then was about 150 rating short of getting Gladiator. When we played 2v2 together it was great fun, Grieve is probably one of the most hilarious players I have ever met on this game. Of course we raged at each other at times but we always stuck together, we would drop 150 rating in one night and be so frustrated but then the following day we would gain 200 rating and laugh about all the crazy shit we pulled off.

Toward the end of that very season Grieve some how tricked the Mage I had been wanting to do Rogue/Mage/Priest (RMP) with for ages, the almighty Gladiator Xidrr. I have a huge amount of respect for Xidrr as a player, playing with him was a great honour. We worked up to 2000 rating in 3v3 with only 2 losses. After that it felt like everything went really fast, the PvP community noticed how me Grieve and Xidrr did extremely well and I started to get known by more and more players on Emerald Dream. I earned my spot and people started whispering me asking if I could boost them. I felt honoured, but more about that later.

In season 4 my Girlfriend cheated on me, I lost my job because of extended absence, I simply couldn’t be bothered with work anymore and then I sort of found comfort in playing arena. With no Girlfriend or parents pushing me to get a new job I had loads of free time, at one point I would wake up at 3pm and go to bed at 6am spending all that time playing arena, I was totally hooked, my entire life evolved around arena matches. Looking back at it I think it’s really sad and pathetic.

At the end of Season 4 I was playing like a machine and I even made it to the Gladiator cut-off. If it wasn’t for a certain Paladin who couldn’t stand it that the team was performing way better with me then they did with him I would have got Gladiator that season. It happened to be that he was the leader of the team and that he felt it was necessary to kick me from the team to force the others to play with him, which they didn’t cause he sucked. I am still after the Gladiator title and I won’t stop playing WoW until I get it.

Why do you do it, what’s in it for you?

I do it mainly because it’s the most fun thing to do in this game, it’s way more challenging then anything else and I love the competitive aspect of it. I am a born winner whenever something involves competition I just have to win, kind of a bad habit I guess. Also I am very lucky to have 2 amazing partners for 2v2 and 3v3. Playing arena always leads to laughter whenever I play with Grieve or Xidrr. It also is a very nice way to relax after school or work. Sometimes I also play whenever I get back from the pub in the weekend, which leads to even more hilarity at times.

Can you describe what boosting is?

Boosting in arena simply means getting a certain person a certain rating. People want these ratings to get a certain arena item with a rating restriction. Most of the time they either have to little experience to get the rating themselves or they are just lazy.

How does it work?

There are 2 ways of boosting:

The first one is the most common, I will join a players team and take over the leadership, playing with them until we get the rating they want. While doing this I will tell the player I am playing with what to do, I also tell them all kind of tactics and tricks that they may have never realised. Once the rating is achieved I get gold and I pass the leadership back. ( It’s important to ask for leadership as people can easily scam you ). This can take a while, depending how well the person listens and understands commands

The second one is my favourite one, I will log on the persons character and I will ask Xidrr to log his secret mage (that no one knows about) to play, we share the loot of course. This way of boosting is really fast and it gets you the rating you want in less then 4 hours. It is however hard to earn the trust of someone, I have never stolen something from a character I have boosted. In fact I played a rogue that had more than 100k spread across all of his characters once.

How much do people pay?

It depends on what rating the person wants and the way he/she wants to get boosted. Most of the time it’s between 1000 and 3000 Gold.

What kind of people want to be boosted?

Hmmm that’s a tough one, I would say all kinds of people but I noticed that most of the time it’s people that enjoy doing BG’s but they just get 2 shotted because of their gear. Also I have had a few people that just don’t have enough time to get the rating they want. And then some others just want to get boosted so they can pretend they got to the rating themselves which makes it easier for them to find better partners.

What is the highest you have boosted someone to?

Ermm, I boosted Xidrr and Grieve to 2380! (JOKE) The highest rating I boosted to by playing just my char and the boosted player is 2050 rating. The highest rating I have boosted someone to by me playing his/her char is 2200 rating.

Isn’t this against the rules?

Boosting someone isn’t against the rules, account sharing however is but that isn’t my problem!

How much do you think you have earned from boosting and how many characters have you boosted?

Hmmmm…it must be somewhere between 15k and 20k gold. I think I have boosted over 30 people.

Do you have any funny stories?

I won’t forget this young boy I was boosting, his Dad played WoW aswell. At one point we met his Father’s team in 2v2.  We won and a few seconds later I got whispered by the Father saying he was going to report me for boosting his son, I wished him good luck and said that I thought he was pathetic for not wanting his son to get higher ratings then him.

A couple of games later we faced his dad again and we won. I could hear the dad going mental in the background, throwing stuff around and shouting at this young boy on Ventrilo, I know it’s evil but I couldn’t help crying from laughter.

Also I think it’s quite funny that Grieve, the priest I am still playing with was a guy that I was supposed to be boosting. Quite ironic how he got Gladiator and I didn’t!



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