Money has destroyed the game

[mstg]

First of all, I play on Chinese server and I'm a pugger because I cannot play the game on a fixed schedule. Pretty sure this is not the case for US or EU, but for China, money has killed the game. 90% of the groups are about money, either the people who start the raids have no jobs and have to make money on Wow, or the players have no skills whatsoever and can only pay for gear and achievements, then once they get to a certain gear level, they no longer pay and want to be a "normal" raider, which means they go to pugs and wipe the raids. It's something like "pay 50 if you start the fight dead", "pay 20 if you know how to play". This kind of groups take countless tries to kill a heroic boss, the other kind of groups require a high gear level and achievement, maybe there's no money involved, but may still take countless tries to kill a heroic boss because the people who play used to be bosses who pay for the gear and achievement. Just thought I would share this.

[Loveliest]

It's not as bad on EU, but it's still there.
Once upon a time, you were laughed at for buying a boost. Then the long long neverending raid of Siege of Orgriammar appeared and its heirlooms that were going away at the end of the expansion. Along with unlimited lockouts, boosting became a thing - people justified buying boosts because it was only for those heirlooms that were going away.
Then, with the tokens and people being able to effectively pay for game time and other stuff in other Blizz games, getting money / gold became priority for most. I recall my guild wasn't even looking at taking the more social members once a boss was down, but trying to sell boosts for profit. The game started to deviate from being "a game" to being a source of income for some, an an ego boost through collecting bought stuff for others.
It's always been about money for the big guilds, but now every Tom, Dick and Harry tries to sell something. Every time someone brings up how boosting ruins things, there's a few people throwing it in your face that somehow it doesn't affect you. You give the perfect example of what boosting mentality leads to.

[Softbottom]

It's not as bad on EU, but it's still there.
Once upon a time, you were laughed at for buying a boost. Then the long long neverending raid of Siege of Orgriammar appeared and its heirlooms that were going away at the end of the expansion. Along with unlimited lockouts, boosting became a thing - people justified buying boosts because it was only for those heirlooms that were going away.
Then, with the tokens and people being able to effectively pay for game time and other stuff in other Blizz games, getting money / gold became priority for most. I recall my guild wasn't even looking at taking the more social members once a boss was down, but trying to sell boosts for profit. The game started to deviate from being "a game" to being a source of income for some, an an ego boost through collecting bought stuff for others.
It's always been about money for the big guilds, but now every Tom, Dick and Harry tries to sell something. Every time someone brings up how boosting ruins things, there's a few people throwing it in your face that somehow it doesn't affect you. You give the perfect example of what boosting mentality leads to.

Boosts have been in the game since Vanilla. My guild sold boosts in everquest to get gear 15 years ago. This is nothing new. Most boosts are still purchased for real life money not gold. Guild leaders want the RL money they don't give a shit about wow gold lol.

[Rigsy]

Wow has been pay to win for years but not many of us care to admit this, instead we bash other games for being pay to win.

[Deleted]

Wow has been pay to win for years but not many of us care to admit this, instead we bash other games for being pay to win.

Not pay to win, just pay to spend less time ingame. Only aspect of pay-to-win is when top guilds have to buy tokens to get insane amount of gold to get those insane TF BoE pieces, but anyway most of the top guilds have really big bank anyway. I am currently casual raider, only time I feel like I could pay-to-win is when I ding a alt and I want to gear it up as fast as possible meaning going straight to +15 & ToS HC. Tho, I haven't yet paid even single gold coin for boost, since gearing is still pretty easy. Few days and 920+ gear without buying boosting services. After that you are really good to go into weekly +15 runs & ToS HC. Of course having guild mates help, they make the first few days of gearing so much easier. We've done countless "120 avg ilvl upgrade in one night" fridays to our alts etc.

There is no chance this game is any possible way pay-to-win, since you actually can't pay to win. If winning is clearing content few months after first guilds did it, then yes, but that's not winning, anyone can do that if they can put few days into raiding per week. If winning is getting 2.4k+ 3v3 selfplay then yes, but as I see it, you don't win if you are not the best, and you know you can't be the best even if you played with two of the worlds best players carrying you. Your skill still compensates that much that the team falls ALOT. Also, glad boosted chars have been really actively purified.

TLR You pay to spend less time ingame.

[Strawberry]

It was actually a source of income for me when I was selling gold, and even though I had 2 or 3 bots, I was making quite some money, about €150 per bot per month.
I'm sure bigger scale gold farmers earned a lot of money there.

[Deleted]

At the moment the business model is extremely unfriendly for the customers. Instead of trying to make a game that people spend a lot time and enjoy the most of it, they are incentivised to make less content that needs to be repeated or skipped with real money. On top of all this there's (shitty but still) legendaries and high TF boes in AH again to not have to grind same content over and over for power.

[Frolk]

Ive never seen a bigger circlejerk than this thread, guess most of the posts in this thread can be illustrated with this.


People throwing the term "pay2win" most of the time have no clue what it REALLY is.
Pay2Skip is NOT the same as Pay2Win, P2W is buying stuff u CANT get normally in game, if i buy an ilvl 1100legendary upgrade token from the cashshop THAT is pay2win, buying raid boost is not.

[Noomz]

First of all, I play on Chinese server and I'm a pugger because I cannot play the game on a fixed schedule. Pretty sure this is not the case for US or EU, but for China, money has killed the game. 90% of the groups are about money, either the people who start the raids have no jobs and have to make money on Wow, or the players have no skills whatsoever and can only pay for gear and achievements, then once they get to a certain gear level, they no longer pay and want to be a "normal" raider, which means they go to pugs and wipe the raids. It's something like "pay 50 if you start the fight dead", "pay 20 if you know how to play". This kind of groups take countless tries to kill a heroic boss, the other kind of groups require a high gear level and achievement, maybe there's no money involved, but may still take countless tries to kill a heroic boss because the people who play used to be bosses who pay for the gear and achievement. Just thought I would share this.

There are boost groups that ask for gold but that's about it but those aren't pugs.
I'm not sure what to take away from your rant though. Nothing much I can say to it.

- - - Updated - - -

At the moment the business model is extremely unfriendly for the customers. Instead of trying to make a game that people spend a lot time and enjoy the most of it, they are incentivised to make less content that needs to be repeated or skipped with real money. On top of all this there's (shitty but still) legendaries and high TF boes in AH again to not have to grind same content over and over for power.

Nobody's skipping content with money... How can you even say that? There's no way to SKIP content with money.
Yes, the essence of an MMO is repetition. There ain't a single MMO out there that's different. In fact, most of them are far worse in that regard.

So in one sentance you complain about grinding. The next sentance you complain how there's gear being sold to help with the grind.
???

[dreamdaddy]

I'm not sure if it's all boosts. There's an item level inflation due to titanforges and weekly m+ chests and mission-board caches, weekly quest caches, etc. which has lead to heroic geared people being objectively bad at their role.

[dacoolist]

I'm pretty bad.. and not only do I get my myth+15 in every single week (since like forever ago), I also have AOTC... I'm typically broke from buying every pet/mount known to the game.. And tbh, on my server: you won't have sells like this that aren't IRL money (AKA against the ToS, and EULA aka get banned). Just pug.. I do without TOO much trouble...?

[Deleted]

Nobody's skipping content with money... How can you even say that? There's no way to SKIP content with money.
Yes, the essence of an MMO is repetition. There ain't a single MMO out there that's different. In fact, most of them are far worse in that regard.

So in one sentance you complain about grinding. The next sentance you complain how there's gear being sold to help with the grind.
???

Im saying grind is there just so they get some people to give them money to skip it. No one is skipping content with money? People are definitely skipping gearing up from world quests or heroic dungeons with gold, me included. Now that gold can be bought with real money it means people can do it with that too. Yes i know mmos have certain grinds and repetition, if you want to skip that however its not compelling gameplay itself.

On your last point you are already making my point, they are creating a problem and selling a solution.

[Teri]

Half the boost spam on trade chat seem to be bot programs that aren't even level 20.

Like seriously, selling mage tower skins?? that means they take over your account.... as it's a SOLO challenge...

[Mokuna]

Saying wow is pay to win is the dumbest thing, sure you can pay for carries to get achievements and gear, but what does it bring? absolutely nothing, you'll still be unable to do content, you'll still be a mediocre player, the only use you can make of it is lying about your achievements, great win right there

No matter what anyone says this game is still 90% about gameplay, a bad player with high end gear won't achieve anything, the only useful type of carry i can think about is a decent player paying to gear up fast after a break or a ban, but this kind of people usually don't need tht cause they could just find a guild

[bearlolzx]

just like real life : ^ )

the new diablo expansion allowed boosting due to: no lockouts and chance of titanforge gear

[Emerald Archer]

Not pay to win, just pay to spend less time ingame.

That's still pay to win though..

Hearthstone is pay to win, ofc you can get the cards by playing a shit ton, but you can spend money and instantly get ahead of majority.
A lot of mobile apps are pay to win, but you can still earn the items from most of them by just playing and farming currency. Sure it might take you a long time, but it's doable.

Ofc your idea of what "winning" is, comes into it. But by the sounds, your idea of "winning" is personally being good, so in your mind no game ever is p2w?

Possible WoW goals you can pay your way to;
High pvp ratings.
Early full mythic clear of new raids.
Very very good gear.
Collecting many things (Pets, toys, mounts etc).

And a few more things.

[Stiaar]

Very biased but I can imagine APAC region being like that, kinda sad.

[In Ogres We Trust]

First of all, I play on Chinese server and I'm a pugger because I cannot play the game on a fixed schedule. Pretty sure this is not the case for US or EU, but for China, money has killed the game. 90% of the groups are about money, either the people who start the raids have no jobs and have to make money on Wow, or the players have no skills whatsoever and can only pay for gear and achievements, then once they get to a certain gear level, they no longer pay and want to be a "normal" raider, which means they go to pugs and wipe the raids. It's something like "pay 50 if you start the fight dead", "pay 20 if you know how to play". This kind of groups take countless tries to kill a heroic boss, the other kind of groups require a high gear level and achievement, maybe there's no money involved, but may still take countless tries to kill a heroic boss because the people who play used to be bosses who pay for the gear and achievement. Just thought I would share this.

Greed destroys everything; hence, its inclusion as a sin. Anything else?