How Long Until Pay To Win Happens?

[iinverse]

wows been p2w since the introduction of wow tokens, asian-mmos level of p2w really

How much you win by buying token?

[Heathy]

How much you win by buying token?

the exact amount of time it would have taken to grind it manually. you win time. time is what you win. time you can spend else where. not grinding gold. time you could spend doing something that will move you forward, in gear or progression, or ilvl. gold you can spend on being boosted, on mounts, on boe's whatever it is, its something you can do instantly, vs doing it after you've farmed it yourself.

in an even playing field the only thing that would matter is the time spent in the game playing the game, the only influence on your personal progression. unless you have some sort of super rare item you can sell in the game, the chances of you stumbling on 100s of thousands of gold is basically zero.

its really not that complex but i can see the endless justifications churning away and the white knightyness is getting a bit boring if i'm honest. you don't have to defend the game.

[iinverse]

the exact amount of time it would have taken to grind it manually. you win time. time is what you win. time you can spend else where. not grinding gold.

As I said, gold grinding came from other usual game activities. Of coures if you do not want to play a game (lol), you will be forced to buy gold.
But its some kind of bad player advantage over other bad players. And you will have no any advantages over good players.
So its hardly p2w. Or shitty p2w lol.

[Heathy]

ok? I don't think anyone really cares too much where they rank in the millions of players playing. what matters ultimately is the amount of time wasted doing shit you'd rather not be doing.

going back to the auction bronto, if i had the money to buy 5mil golds worth of wow tokens and buy that mount outright with zero grind, i'd do that. rather than waste months grinding said gold manually myself. i just pay others to do it for me. so i get my mount instantly and then can spend time enjoying it and other things that are more fun than grinding gold for a mount.

this is going to be the same for nearly any game thats pay to win you can say 'oh just bide your time you'll get it eventually' yeah. but you can also get it now.

i'm playing bdo at the moment, i've played eve online in the past, both games are pay to win in the most literal sense, in that you can dump money into the game, and progress forward. but in both games you can also, get everything you can get by paying for it, or grinding for it, or waiting for an event to get it for free. both games are pay to win, but both games also offer all content, for free, if you either wait, or grind it yourself. what you pay for, is the time saved not having to wait for it, not having to grind for it.

[iinverse]

time you could spend doing something that will move you forward, in gear or progression, or ilvl.

I'm actually pretty lazy and hate farm, but I got 2,1 mil of gold during BFA (according to addon) from my usual activities (doing achievments, raid runs and key runs). I even do not have herb/mining on my main which I play the most of time.

gold you can spend on being boosted

Good players needs no boosts, they can easily do for example weekly key run by theirselves. And it will take the same amount fo time as boost (because of key timer).
also, there are no gold boosting teams on xpac start when all good players did their progress (because boosters needs to grind/gear theirselvers first).
So, as I said, gold boosts is just a catch up for bad players over other bad players.

on boe's

Almost all boes is a shit.

[ssjgohan4life]

Some people seem to think because the long neck mount is going to the BMAU in SL that they're "forcing" people to buy tokens to sell for gold to buy the mount before it goes away

I've seen that argument and it makes no sense, the people buying these expensive mounts don't spend real money on this game and would never buy tokens.

[Rendark]

You can make that same amount of gold and buy the same “power” I can buy.

The only advantage I gain is the time needed to get that amount of gold.

I bought something like 7-8 tokens in the last 2 years and the only power I gained is not having to farm to repair the equipment and bags / loom upgrades for alts.

Time is money as they say.

[iinverse]

ok? I don't think anyone really cares too much where they rank in the millions of players playing. what matters ultimately is the amount of time wasted doing shit you'd rather not be doing.

Well, you will anyway will do much shit without possibility to skip it with gold paying.
You cant skip all rep/AP grind, eccences unlocking and other endgame progressing.
Yopu can't buy high pvp ranks or rio or mythic raid progress with gold.
You only can buy mediocre progress (which all good players already have in a few weeks of new patch) some later (when gold runners gear up their raid parties) to win over shitty players.

going back to the auction bronto, if i had the money to buy 5mil golds worth of wow tokens and buy that mount outright with zero grind, i'd do that. rather than waste months grinding said gold manually myself. i just pay others to do it for me. so i get my mount instantly and then can spend time enjoying it and other things that are more fun than grinding gold for a mount.

Well, its the ONLY example of gold farm skipping in a whole game
And its pretty useless actually if you're not actively playing on AH (and therefore you will have a shitload of gold without spending rela money for it).

[Heathy]

shit for a brand new character trying to make the ilvl requirements for content. right ok, your justifications and hand waving are getting old, you can argue with someone else, i really give up trying to elaborate on the obvious, when its just being ignored. you do you. thats all i'm saying on this.

i've elaborated as much as i can and you keep spouting random shit that you can do, i don't give a fuck what you can do my dude what you do personally has no baring on this topic. 'i can grind gold super fast so its not p2w'.

even if there was no token, you can still buy an account from somewhere if you were so inclined to skip ahead to where you can be relevant. this here makes nearly any game with account selling pay to win, its just not supported by the game, but to imagine no one is doing it is kinda naive.

i've been in guilds with raiders in the past that bought gold, because they needed gold to raid with, and didn't have the time to grind for it. so they bought it, before wow tokens. i've known ppl to buy whole boosted characters because they didn't have time to level them up etc.

[iinverse]

Time is money as they say.

"Time is money" they said playing MMO

- - - Updated - - -

shit for a brand new character trying to make the ilvl requirements for content.

I have several alts which have zero problems with venturing into content just after leveling. I don't need ilvl to play good.

[Heathy]

good for you, again this topic isn't centred on you like you seem to think that it is. what you do personally has no baring on whether or not the game has pay to win elements. i'm astonished you can't see this. what the fuck is your problem with the fixation on yourself?

what does what you do personally have any relevance to the systems in the game, and the millions of other playing the game. you are using the sum of yourself 1, to make a broad claim that, its not p2w because i play the game and i'm good at the game, what does you being good at the game, have to do with p2w?

[dacoolist]

Lets be straight forward here:

You CAN buy a token and buy 455 BOE gear (for a FEW item slots) that can give you a slight advantage

But lets be honest: BigDaddyDac is still going to smash your face in pvp or pve even with that advantage

Pay2Win: That means you literally pay more money or pay vs the normal free or subscription players and just flat out WIN

Nothing in wow at ALL is just, pay blizzard money and you instantly get a W in pvp or pve or anything.. you're PAYING players to CARRY YOU.. said players COULD also take your money and leave you high and dry

P2Win is completely different and people need to play a mobile game to I GUESS understand it

[iinverse]

good for you, again this topic isn't centred on you like you seem to think that it is. what you do personally has no baring on whether or not the game has pay to win elements. i'm astonished you can't see this. what the fuck is your problem with the fixation on yourself?

I'm fixating just for describing poor gold impact on gameplay. There is no way of winning a good player with token throwing.

[Heathy]

the game isn't all pvp and you can't know for sure who is a good player and who isn't what if i'm an mlg pro and start playing wow, you seem to think that everyone using gold to get ahead is somehow automatically a bad player, maybe they aren't bad players. maybe they are better than you. then what.

[themaster24]

yeah and someone buying gold can spend more time doing world quests, that award AP over gold, or simply do less gold rewarding activities, and more rep and ap rewarding activities because... they bought gold and don't need to specifically farm gold.

so to finally put a fucking pin in this shit.

if one person buys gold and another person doesn't buy gold.

the person who buys gold can grind ap and rep, and spend most oftheir time doing that. BECAUSE THEY DON'T NEED GOLD.

while another person who doesn't buy gold, has to grind the gold, so they get LESS OVER ALL TIME SPECIFICALLY FARMING AP AND REP AND ITS SPLIT BETWEEN THAT AND FARMING GOLD, BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T BUY ANY.

1.) This implies that gold is utterly scarce, and that every player has to dedicate some asinine amount of time to farming it if they don't buy tokens, which is definitely not the case. I have more than enough gold to sustain me personally for the rest of WoW. It's not some insane amount of gold, but I never have to farm gold. When I do activities, gold is never at the front of my mind. I never choose to do a specific activity in game because of the gold I could make. A person buying tokens doesn't get this supposed advantage over me. In fact, there are plenty of players who probably make double what a player can get in a week through tokens just by playing the AH for a day or two.

2.)The problem, as I've said multiple times, the reason why this is such a divisive topic is because of the history behind the term P2W. In it's origins, you literally could become the best player in a game only because you spent money. Nothing mattered more in the game than the things that money could output. I had a friend who played a mobile game, and spent around $50k so he could be in the top 10 for his realm (and ironically complained about some saudi prince who spent more than him to be #1). The money he spent allowed him to have access to things that it would take a player who didn't spend money on the game YEARS to access. If all his stuff was destroyed, he could be back on his feet in a few hours, not the 4-6 weeks it would take a non-paying player.

Then you have people complaining about WoW being P2W because of the WoW token. Can you understand why there's a lot of people who feel that comes off as ridiculous? It certainly is a tiny dot on the chart compared to stuff like what P2W was coined to describe. So when someone like me hears people decry a game as P2W, when what exists is like what exists in WoW, it feels absolutely silly. Another term needs to be coined to describe stuff like this, not only to help have better discussions, but because it can put people off other games. If a new game comes out and people start saying it's P2W, someone might think of stuff like my example, when it might be something like the WoW token.

[iinverse]

Lets be straight forward here:
You CAN buy a token and buy 455 BOE gear (for a FEW item slots) that can give you a slight advantage

Actually, benthic with socket is better than 455 boe, so no advantage here

But lets be honest: BigDaddyDac is still going to smash your face in pvp or pve even with that advantage

I can add, that good players will smash buyers even having much lower ilvl

Pay2Win: That means you literally pay more money or pay vs the normal free or subscription players and just flat out WIN

↑ this

[KaPe]

This discussion makes no sense.

wows been p2w since the introduction of wow tokens, asian-mmos level of p2w really

"oh but not so much see look my narrowed down vision that prooves buying gold on a game that you can buy almost everything with gold is not p2w"

Go on, buy mythic gear before a guild boost you. Buy Essences. Buy HoA levels. Buy legendary cloak levels. Buy reputations for flying. Then tell us how it went after you fail miserably.

To claim that WoW is on the level of "asian p2w mmos" is asinine. These kind of games will even sell you fucking inventory space/skill bars - completely basic functionality, nevermind any actual power. That's on top of tons of ingame boosts to levelling speed, drop rates, crafting success chances and the like. But yeah, you sure need WoW token to buy some extra bags from AH, completely impossible to achieve otherwise.

[Clbull]

It's already happening. And I feel it's only a matter of time until Blizzard start selling gear boosts themselves.

Over the past few years Blizzard have been taking an incredibly lax stance towards players selling boosts, whether for in-game gold or real world profit. This is despite the fact that boost selling through either method cheapens the overall gameplay experience, allows incredibly prestigious in-game accomplishments to be purchased like some kind of low effort wallet warrior, and in the case of players directly buying & selling boosts for real world money, is against the game's terms of service.

Just look at the sheer amount of spam for such services in the game's official chat channels and LFG tools. Sometimes you can't even use Trade chat because they are being spammed by the very same culprits.

There is a commonly spammed website in-game that sells M+10 keys, Mythic raid and powerlevelling boosts for prices ranging from €15 to well over €150 for some of their most time-consuming BFA services. They sell Classic boost services too, but I've seen prices go well above €2000 for these due to what a gigantic grind that game is.

I will not mention the name of this website as it is still active, but they over 8000 reviews on Trustpilot dating all the way back to January 2017. Their website shows that they've been in operation since 2014. I am almost positive that the 2014 date is accurate and this website has existed longer than their Trustpilot reviews page has, because I've seen their name pop up time and time again all the way back to Shit of Pandaria and Borelords of Draenor.

I've had friends use this active website's very services over the past year to farm gear, pad out their Raider.io score and give the elitist and toxic fucks representing the game's LFG community a reason to invite them into their groups. To date they have not been banned by Blizzard, even though they could very easily check the trails, identify anyone who purchased boosts and slap them with the banhammer.

To put this into perspective, similarly illicit sites which I can name here because Blizzard shut down their operations long ago have lasted for far less time. Peons4Hire survived for mere months until Blizzard sued them into the ground and made them cease their operations.

And it's not even like Blizzard would struggle to shut them down either. They managed to take down not only Peons4Hire successfully but also WoWGlider and Bossland GmbH, and they were based in China, the US and Germany respectively.

Blizzard most likely turned a blind eye towards boost selling once they started raking in the WoW token sales. And that's sad, because I'm sure pre-Activi$ion Blizzard wouldn't have stood for this.

[Alvito]

Its kinda already here. Pay irl money for token. Sell token for gold. Spend gold on Mythic boosts with all gear funneled to you. So yeah. its already here

That is a pretty extreme way to do it and not something other than a tiny, tiny portion of the player base would even think of or consider, much less actually do. Sure for that 0.001% of players that do it the game is pay to win.

[Heathy]

1.) This implies that gold is utterly scarce, and that every player has to dedicate some asinine amount of time to farming it if they don't buy tokens, which is definitely not the case. I have more than enough gold to sustain me personally for the rest of WoW. It's not some insane amount of gold, but I never have to farm gold. When I do activities, gold is never at the front of my mind. I never choose to do a specific activity in game because of the gold I could make. A person buying tokens doesn't get this supposed advantage over me. In fact, there are plenty of players who probably make double what a player can get in a week through tokens just by playing the AH for a day or two.

this is a choice you've made, that not everyone will make, you are happy with your amount of gold great, maybe i'm not.
what this implies is there is a limited amount of time...

2.)The problem, as I've said multiple times, the reason why this is such a divisive topic is because of the history behind the term P2W. In it's origins, you literally could become the best player in a game only because you spent money. Nothing mattered more in the game than the things that money could output. I had a friend who played a mobile game, and spent around $50k so he could be in the top 10 for his realm (and ironically complained about some saudi prince who spent more than him to be #1). The money he spent allowed him to have access to things that it would take a player who didn't spend money on the game YEARS to access. If all his stuff was destroyed, he could be back on his feet in a few hours, not the 4-6 weeks it would take a non-paying player.

this is still true in the case of some items that you won't get without sinking significant amounts of time into grinding, or paying to be boosted. and getting items you wouldn't get if you couldn't pay for a boost.

Then you have people complaining about WoW being P2W because of the WoW token. Can you understand why there's a lot of people who feel that comes off as ridiculous? It certainly is a tiny dot on the chart compared to stuff like what P2W was coined to describe. So when someone like me hears people decry a game as P2W, when what exists is like what exists in WoW, it feels absolutely silly. Another term needs to be coined to describe stuff like this, not only to help have better discussions, but because it can put people off other games. If a new game comes out and people start saying it's P2W, someone might think of stuff like my example, when it might be something like the WoW token.

i think its ridiculous how far ppl go to white knight. just to justify it so they don't have to admit to some sort of negative aspect. because its infallible and nothing can hurt my precious. how dare you talk down to my wow.