How Long Until Pay To Win Happens?

[Big Thanks]

I haven't played eve for nearly 2 years now i think.

heres my chars on zkill

https://zkillboard.com/character/577823138/
https://zkillboard.com/character/559735020/


heres me in bdo right now

https://imgur.com/a/g9plieW

So you have the gaming experience of P2W...
How in the hell did you come to the conlusion "WoW is pay to Win"...

Nothing against you, but i THINK this is another case of all MMO-Champion users being "literal" and "google/wikipedia readers"
Ive done it myself...we are all "bots" spewing what we read in the internet.

But when someone says "WoW is pay to win" because you CAN pay to win rewards....thats too much IMO
Yes you can pay to win, you are right...
But WoW is not pay to win dude...the same way league of legends is not pay to win. (i think, i havent done a new account and check how hard it is to get new champs....maybe is extremely hard now, idk)

[Beefhammer]

I haven't played eve for nearly 2 years now i think.

heres my chars on zkill

https://zkillboard.com/character/577823138/
https://zkillboard.com/character/559735020/


heres me in bdo right now

https://imgur.com/a/g9plieW


what matters is how much it really affects your gameplay, if the answer to that is not at all or marginally, then really who cares.

what i have learned by playing these p2w games is that, its all based on time, you either want it now, or you are willing to wait for it to come, with time. throwing money at a game that lets you do that, pretty much just reduces the time it takes for you to get what you want sooner.

Exactly. So by your own definition WoW is not P2W since those purchasing boosts, or tokens to by BoEs or carries, has no effect on your game play.

[Heathy]

you know what i was typing something out, although i've typed it enough times already go back and read my other posts if you need some clarity. i'm sick of typing the same thing over and over in various different ways. its not that complex.

buy wow token, sell wow token, use gold to make progress, either by buying boosts, or spending time not farming gold, because you don't need to waste time grinding gold, when you already have said gold.

person A buys gold, spends less time specifically farming gold, more time doing other thing, maybe things that have a greater impact on overall progression.

person B buys no gold, spends a split amount of time, farming gold, and doing other things that are more focused on progression.

the person buying gold has effectively removed their need to spend time farming gold, so that is time saved and can be spent on something better.


i really can't elaborate this anymore i've already said this multiple times in various ways, it cannot be broken down any further than this. this is as ELI 5 as it gets. the next step is me trying to explain this in the noises toddlers make.

if time is no problem for you, if you don't care what other ppl are doing then ofc you won't find it p2w because its not affecting your game. its not something that is in your face all day all the time. its subtle. its likely not a big deal at all, over time though, it could have a significant impact. if paying to skip the shit you don't wanna do isn't some form of winning, we'll have to agree to disagree, i would say time is what you are winning or buying.


I don't think you can win an mmo, I think they are designed to be perpetual and winning is a very abstract concept in a game where the goal posts shift so often. winning to one person is different to what someone else conciders winning, someone doing pve has a different definition of winning than someone doing pvp. I think you only win an mmo when you quit playing it.

Exactly. So by your own definition WoW is not P2W since those purchasing boosts, or tokens to by BoEs or carries, has no effect on your game play.

it does have an effect on the person buying the stuffs gameplay, mine, not so much, the person who now has more time to do the things they want to do rather than the things they have to do because, funding. on the short term this is minor, over the course of a year, multiple years, who know how much time is saved if you always buy a token and use that to get your funds. its time saved for grinding gold for enchants, and consumables, its time saved so you can play alts and gear them up faster. you are buying time, not 'wins' in the strictest sense of a win, you are winning your time back by paying to skip.

[Beefhammer]

you know what i was typing something out, although i've typed it enough times already go back and read my other posts if you need some clarity. i'm sick of typing the same thing over and over in various different ways. its not that complex.

buy wow token, sell wow token, use gold to make progress, either by buying boosts, or spending time not farming gold, because you don't need to waste time grinding gold, when you already have said gold.

person A buys gold, spends less time specifically farming gold, more time doing other thing, maybe things that have a greater impact on overall progression.

person B buys no gold, spends a split amount of time, farming gold, and doing other things that are more focused on progression.

the person buying gold has effectively removed their need to spend time farming gold, so that is time saved and can be spent on something better.


i really can't elaborate this anymore i've already said this multiple times in various ways, it cannot be broken down any further than this. this is as ELI 5 as it gets. the next step is me trying to explain this in the noises toddlers make.

if time is no problem for you, if you don't care what other ppl are doing then ofc you won't find it p2w because its not affecting your game. its not something that is in your face all day all the time. its subtle. its likely not a big deal at all, over time though, it could have a significant impact. if paying to skip the shit you don't wanna do isn't some form of winning, we'll have to agree to disagree, i would say time is what you are winning or buying.


I don't think you can win an mmo, I think they are designed to be perpetual and winning is a very abstract concept in a game where the goal posts shift so often. winning to one person is different to what someone else conciders winning, someone doing pve has a different definition of winning than someone doing pvp. I think you only win an mmo when you quit playing it.



it does have an effect on the person buying the stuffs gameplay, mine, not so much, the person who now has more time to do the things they want to do rather than the things they have to do because, funding. on the short term this is minor, over the course of a year, multiple years, who know how much time is saved if you always buy a token and use that to get your funds. its time saved for grinding gold for enchants, and consumables, its time saved so you can play alts and gear them up faster. you are buying time, not 'wins' in the strictest sense of a win, you are winning your time back by paying to skip.

So someone gets some stuff a bit faster than you. Hiw dies it affect your gsme play? Do you feel forced to raid more or run more M+ to keep up with a random nobody that you have no clue if a boost was used or a token sold?

[Heathy]

its not a bit faster though is it, it could be instantly.

random specifics have no baring on whether or not its possible.

but it could be used for this or that, that is neither here nor there, the fact is, its possible.

i don't think it matters if it affects your gameplay or not, in pvp this would matter, in pve not so much, again it doesn't really matter if it affects you, the point is whether or not its possible. and to some degree it very much is.

ppl can keep quoting me and bringing up random tangential anecdotes but it doesn't change what is possible.


i have nothing against the wow token, if it stops gold selling spam great. I only came in here to say that, yes it is, to some degree p2w, but if you dive deep enough you'll find some form of p2w in nearly any mmo, even if it is 3rd party rmt. no game is completely devoid of ppl who have bought some sort of account or character. to say one specific mmo is immune to p2w, i don't think there is one in the strictest sense. someone in your game paid for a win, whether they did it in game or out of game, the end result is the same. real money was used to skip some aspect you didn't want to waste time on.

time is one of the only things that separates the haves and the have nots. and also your own volition, but with enough time, the have nots can also become haves.

there are ppl who will vehemently defend this game to the death, my goal was to criticise not to rile up the most stoic defenders of the game, i have no agenda other than to point out the obvious. but i guess it wasn't so obvious. or i'm up against said stoics.

if we wanted to lay this out in a more understandable way. take two players who have JUST started playing the game. one buys wow tokens and sells them for gold, the other guy doesn't buy wow tokens and manually farms everything themselves. the dude buying gold will progress faster in various ways, assuming they actually spend that gold on progression, enchants, consumables, boosting professions (with gold you can go straight to the auction and buy everything you need to max out a crafting prof pay to win, pay to skip the grind, same fucking thing.), buying mounts, twinking alts (affects pvp) etc. all of this is a fuck load easier to achieve in a shorter time frame if you are dumping money into the game for gold. to say otherwise is simply disingenuous.

[Alvito]

See, I thought the cap was changed to 20 in a week? That's what their website says, so I'm not entirely sure.

If that is what the site says that is what it is now. I don't normally buy more than 2 or 3 at a time now with gold and would never buy one with cash.

[Kaykay]

Lets compare two good players:
Player 1 will do it by himself.
Player 2 will do it for money (glod via tokens).

Lets assume that its expansion day 1:
Player 1 will level out his main in a day or so (because he is good, and for a 3-4 of last expansions leveling gets at about 8-10 hours).
Player 2 will forced to do the same, because on day 1 there are no boosters for gold! Or he can wait till boosters will available, level after for gold and lose to player 1.

After leveling: both players will be forced to grind rep/some sort of AP thing to unlock new skills and dungeons.
Player 1 will do it normally by himself.
Player 2 will be forced to do it by himself too, because there are no rep/AP thing boosters for gold!

This will continue to 1st week of raid starting.
You see, player 2 still can't buy any advantages for gold and forced to do all by himself.

Lets assume that both good players will do stuff till 1st week of raiding. If the both good, they will already unlocked all reps/stuff before raiding start (I usually do it this way, and I'm a pretty mediocre player). Because they both good, they already will have some gold collected from activity that will bу enough ot buy food/flasks (I usually have food by myself nand leveled my alc/herb toon right after, so I can have consumables for literally free).

Normal/hc raid week started.
Player 1 ready to go in raid, and get to it.
Player 2 ready to buy a raid run but... yep, therу are NO gold boosters in a week 1, because those boosters need to farm/gear their raid groups before starting sell runs. So Player 2 will be forced to go in raid normal way or wait till boosters will be available.

Raid week 2 started. Mythic unlocked.
Both players will do at about half of the hc progression usual way (no gold involved).
Player 1 will venture into mythic keys.
Player 2 is ready to buy key runs, but there are no gold key boosters on week 1!
And still no gold boosters for raid runs on week 2.

Raid week 3 started.
Player 1 capped weekly mythic key cash.
Player 2 will be forced to do it usual way, because still have no gold boosters! Or he can do nothing and wait till gold boosters becamу available and therefore lose to player 1.

Raid week 4 started.
Player 1 will finish hc raid and ready to go mythic raid.
Player 2 can wait till gold boostes will be available or will be forced to do hc usual way or will be lose to player 1 in terms of progression.

Raid week 5 started.
Player 1 will go mythic raid, continuing to do keys and hc raid every week. He already have curve, so it will be no problem to ahve group. He already have pretty good starting rio, because he do some kaey runs in a couple of weeks. So he will be no prob to get into key runs via party finder.
Player 2 will be forced to do exactly that player 1 did, or he will lose progress competition. Or he can wait till gold boosters will be available and already lose progress race to player 1.

I will not talk about buying BOE gear, because with all those titanforged shit almost noone will look at ilvl, almost all good groups will look on your raider.io progress, and you can't buy a good progress with gold on first weeks of expansion.

As you can see, gold has no influence on starting progress for good players.
Gold may be envolved to do some progress catch up later if you couldnt start playing at the beginning of xpac. But its definitely no p2w, because you already lost progress race. Of course, you can later buy gear (that means almost nothing), or some key runs for weekly chest, or even a curve, but a good player already have curve, full gear and good rio, so you just some sort of cathing up, but even with tons of gold you can't buy good progress (for example, mythic bosses, glad or 2k+ rio).

Pay to win doesn't have to mean "only paying" to win. mythic player clears all content, levels an alt and pays to get it geared up. Multiple characters in bis gear. There's not enough alt runs in the world to funnel loot to all his characters, but with money he could make it happen.

You fail to understand it's not only "bad" players who have money. All things being equal, a good player with tokens and a good player without, you'd have to be daft to not see one has a major advantage.

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Again, for the slow kids .... BLIZZARD IS NOT SELLING GOLD! They have provided a means for other players to sell you gold and they take a commission for it. But you are NOT receiving the gold from Blizzard. It is not magically poofed out of thin air into your bags. I have to earn that gold to give you for your money, Blizzard just gives us a safe non-scammable way to do it.

calling people slow but failing to pick up on the point, being that something being against the TOS or not being against the TOS is a big difference. Players werent allowed to sell their gold before, now they are. THERES A DIFFERENCE :P and it has nothing to do with how the gold is created.

Pay to win is a scale, from stash tabs in poe that help you efficiently play the game, but caps out around 30 dollars in when you got one of each tab, to the highend scale which is buying guns that are straight up better than the ones you can get from the game in battlefield or call of duty.

Somewhere in there towards the higher end of the scale is being able to buy gold to deck out all your characters in the best gear, saving a bunch of time in the process.

For many people, looking at a new game, the adversity to any level of paytowin is in my friendgroups very high. Able to buy potions that speed up exp or skill acquisition? that's a huge red flag. Same way buying gold in wow lets you skip the tedious tasks and focus on those that improve your character.

"but other activities in the game also grant gold, so i wont have to buy gold." Not really, you would need alot more gold than quests or dungeons can provide you to keep up with the benefits a token buyer has, you'd need to farm gold for all your professions, boes and consumeagbles, time that the token buyer can use to grind ap or progress in raids.

[Clbull]

Fair enough. Something to think about though is a recent world first race where more than 100,000,000g was spent by a single guild to gain an advantage. I'm not sure if it was necessary, but they obviously felt it was and they did end up winning.

WoW's dungeon and raiding content really isn't that hard until you reach later Mythic bosses.

The issue is that a culture of elitism within the game's community has led to a catch-22 situation, where you can't enter groups because you lack curve and you can't obtain curve because nobody will group with you because "curve or gtfo noob."

They are uncapped now. Before you could only buy 10 a week in game and as much as you wanted out of game with cash.

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Huge difference in game type there. That game and many mobile games are 100% p2w. You can't buy your way into the top end game any way like that in WoW. You can't drop 50k and all of a sudden you have a spot on Methods starting line up and secure a world first kill. You can do the Clash of Clans equivalent with money. It isn't even close to apples to apples. Sure some people will drop a few tokens for a mythic carry, a few others will do it for the carry and gear, but they are far and few between. Only a tiny sub section of players even kill the final mythic bosses while they are current. From that tiny pool of players, even less buy their way in.

First of all, that was in response to a comment claiming that nobody would pay absurd amounts in WoW tokens for boosts through the hardest content in the game. That would cost a fraction of the amount that Jorge Yao blew in a week for the sake of hitting Rank 1 in CoC. If anything, the sheer amount of fame and notoriety he got from the game's player base over what is essentially piss-poor financial decision making is disgusting.

Secondly, if I hadn't quit WoW already over the disgusting way Blizzard treated Blitzchung, and over the lies that unravelled over the WoW Arena prize pool this Blizzcon, I would have absolutely tried this as a YouTube experiment to prove a point.

I know you can't literally drop 50K and join Method's roster. But what if I were to purchase hundreds of dollars in M+ and Mythic raid boosts to to pimp out my raider.io score and item level, then end up being able to join a world class progression guild from that? Or what if I did the same but with Arena boosts instead and basically bought my way to Gladiator with WoW tokens?

I think either of these is possible, and I think a YouTuber who does this while putting on an Athene-like persona about how he's the best in the world and others are fucking trash, while he blatantly throws cash at the game would be a good caricature of the modern gamer.

[Alvito]

WoW's dungeon and raiding content really isn't that hard until you reach later Mythic bosses.

The issue is that a culture of elitism within the game's community has led to a catch-22 situation, where you can't enter groups because you lack curve and you can't obtain curve because nobody will group with you because "curve or gtfo noob."




First of all, that was in response to a comment claiming that nobody would pay absurd amounts in WoW tokens for boosts through the hardest content in the game. That would cost a fraction of the amount that Jorge Yao blew in a week for the sake of hitting Rank 1 in CoC. If anything, the sheer amount of fame and notoriety he got from the game's player base over what is essentially piss-poor financial decision making is disgusting.

Secondly, if I hadn't quit WoW already over the disgusting way Blizzard treated Blitzchung, and over the lies that unravelled over the WoW Arena prize pool this Blizzcon, I would have absolutely tried this as a YouTube experiment to prove a point.

I know you can't literally drop 50K and join Method's roster. But what if I were to purchase hundreds of dollars in M+ and Mythic raid boosts to to pimp out my raider.io score and item level, then end up being able to join a world class progression guild from that? Or what if I did the same but with Arena boosts instead and basically bought my way to Gladiator with WoW tokens?

I think either of these is possible, and I think a YouTuber who does this while putting on an Athene-like persona about how he's the best in the world and others are fucking trash, while he blatantly throws cash at the game would be a good caricature of the modern gamer.

You would have to be able to perform to the level of those kills and mythic plus runs. They would look at logs, they would see you run with varied groups 1 time, it would be pretty easy to see through what you were trying to do and end up spending that time and money to get nowhere. People aren't going to pay out like the CoC person you mentioned, because they don't get nearly the same level of return.

[avajones77]

I dont see it happening.

[sam86]

-snip-

nice play on words
here to be clear
selling gold for real money is illegal, anything else isn't
FF14 as game itself isn't a serious competitor to wow, it is a far away 2nd, that's why its shop size is meaningless in comparison since the game itself is a 2nd degree mmo (if i have to rank mmo currently, wow is 1st degree, ff14 2nd degree, rest are 3rd and lower)

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It was illegal, but extremely common amongst players. Blizzard tried several times, but people will get their hands on what they want no matter how illegal you make them. Just like drugs.

there are still illegal drugs, or firearms, illegal stuff will still exist, u can never 100% ban it, u just try control it at best u can, not embrace it urself
TCG was still a very limited thing, nothing like the literally infinity source of income that is token wow, there used to be for example only 100 tcg mount code that will never increase, that is limited, it only grew more with (also acceptable method) BMAH

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And if we will look at KJ hc numbers - 40% of gamers did it. I suppose that there is a little number of donaters here, but hey, its 40%!

no it isn't, there shouldn't be that option in first place in a sub-based game

I suppose, you didnt even see FF14 shop lul.

already answered that

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Go look again. Like mentioned earlier, above it has over 400 items for sale and they are pretty aggressive pushing the items on the launcher. Not counting character services I think WoW has had under 50 total items since 2008.

already answered that

[Elim Garak]

nice play on words
here to be clear
selling gold for real money is illegal, anything else isn't

It really isn't. ToS is not a law.

[iinverse]

Pay to win doesn't have to mean "only paying" to win. mythic player clears all content, levels an alt and pays to get it geared up. Multiple characters in bis gear. There's not enough alt runs in the world to funnel loot to all his characters, but with money he could make it happen.

You fail to understand it's not only "bad" players who have money. All things being equal, a good player with tokens and a good player without, you'd have to be daft to not see one has a major advantage.

As you can see in my prev post - good player 2 with a lot of gold has no advantages on good player 1 without much gold in terms of tier progressing.
That's the reason good players never buy boosts - they do not need it, can do all runs by theirselves.

[Kaykay]

As you can see in my prev post - good player 2 with a lot of gold has no advantages on good player 1 without much gold in terms of tier progressing.

You're wrong though.
Two players same skills and time to invest in the game.

One has unlimited gold so he buys bis trinkets and boes as they become available on AH, consumeables 24/7. Spends ALL his time progressing his character towards raids.
Player 2 has no bis trinkets, no boes, consumeables only for progression, otherwise he ends up spending time farming gold while player one is progressing his character.

Gold has value, even at the start of a tier, but further down the expansion even more so.

If it takes player one 5 hours to grind enough gold for his bis darkmoon trinket or whatever at start of a tier, thats 5 hours the paytowinner will be spending grinding artifact power, or getting a significant gear advantage if player one decides to skip the gold grind and go into progression without the trinket.

It's an advantage, one has many options, the other doesn't.

That's the reason good players never buy boosts - they do not need it, can do all runs by theirselves

Good players buy gold too, i dont know where you get this idea that only bad people want to skip the gold grind. Many good players dont want to carry bads through weekly m+ or risk depleting a stone in a pug. Something everybody will experience since they cant have a guild/friends online to play with 24/7.

If you want to gear up an alt, boosts will always be more efficient, wether it be from guildies or boost teams. And rip your guildies if you expect them to boost your newly dinged alts without recompense. Two players with a sick main, but newly dinged alt. The one who buys the boosts will catch up to their main the fastest.

The only way wow isn't paytowin, is if your definition of paytowin is so narrow that no games except korean virus's would be defined as paytowin. Paytowin is a scale. And for wow to get anymore paytowin, will be difficult (but who knows, maybe we'll see early access to raids for premium subscriptions in the future, or similar.)

[Beefhammer]

already answered that

Actually you didn't. You claimed there wasn't much in the FF14 shop when there is 1000% more items and they have services that let you complete quests. WoW only has cosmetics and a taken you can sell for gold that allows you to buy already purchasable BoE's, carries, and boosts the the minimum level needed for the next expansion.

[FelPlague]

FF14 as game itself isn't a serious competitor to wow, it is a far away 2nd, that's why its shop size is meaningless in comparison since the game itself is a 2nd degree mmo (if i have to rank mmo currently, wow is 1st degree, ff14 2nd degree, rest are 3rd and lower)

FF14 and they don't have much in shop either

What are you talking about? The FFXIV shop is pretty big, huge compared to WoW's. I just checked and it has 474 different things you can buy.

i meant there is no more serious competition in mmo genre, that the only actual real mmo that exist is FF14 and they are still miles after wow, so u can't compare wow with anything anymore

blizz stopped release numbers because FF14 beat them in subs imo
now that no one know how much active subs in wow, no one know which mmo is the king: FF14 or WoW

Remember when you said this?
lol, so at one point FF14 is "bigger then wow" but now when people point out how shitty FF14 is because of its MASSIVE STORE IN COMPARISON TO WOW you just say "well its way smaller so its incomparable"
You keep lying and making stuff up, idk how anyone believes you anymore.
"ff14 beat wow, and thats why they stopped showing subs" proven false by many different things.
"ff14's store is miniscule" its over 10x bigger then wow's store
"Well you cant compare ff14 and wow cause ff14 is so much smaller" you just did, many times over, while also saying ff14 IS BIGGER

Please make it your new years resolution to stop being such a horrid liar.

[melodramocracy]

ITT: I don't know what p2w is but i don't like blizzard so I'm going to be loud and wrong, and you can't stop me!

Until blizzard puts something that gives your character power that is unattainable anywhere else, it isn't pay to win. Everything in wow can be bought from trading in-game. Spending your rl money just speeds things up, but doesn't grant you any additional character power.

wrong.
/10char

[Jikate-Stormrage]

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

I guess we all have different definitions of pay to win.

In a shooter/resource game, buying the better more overpowered weapons or buying a surplus of resources creates an arms race. A race where if your opponents don’t do the same, they lose. No other outcome is available.

Players buying the tokens to purchase boosts is just not the same result. Once they find a boost group, they are dragged through the content, maybe getting a few pieces or a mount or title. They would have to spend a great deal to receive a full set.

And if that happens? That’s it’s. They aren’t guaranteed anything else. They have a full set of gear, maybe a mount and title. They aren’t one shorting people in PvP, nor gaining instant invite to other mythic raid runs or M+.

They still have neither the skill or ability to use that bought gear to do anything with. Without rio score they still won’t get invited.

The difference is in the result. They aren’t overpowered in any meaningful way.

[Heathy]

I don't think there are any significant mmos, at least none that i've played that directly sell power (power you can't get by just playing the game) what they sell is the means to become more powerful by shaving the time it takes between gaining certain items that allow you to move forward. a game that sells power that you can't get in the game seems like it would be a game that not many would play, if there is such a game i'm betting its not very popular.

black desert is the best example of how you don't directly buy power, you buy the means to become more powerful, there is still rng, it is pay to win in a few ways, mainly its pay to win because of how the enhancement system works and the fact that you can directly pay to make this less of a grind, but to join the game and dump money into it until all your gear is TET or PEN, would cost you some ungodly amount of real life money.

just a set of pen boss gear, no weapons no accessories is at the moment, 77 billion silver, you can sell 15 cash shop items per week, the best ones to sell are probably costumes as they fetch for the most, which is about 300 million silver per costume that costs 30 bucks. so you'd need to sell 7.700 costumes at 30 dollars a pop to join the game and pay to win to top tier gear. this comes to a grand total of $231,000 this is just for armor, not weapons or accessories. (i'm not an amazingly good geared player but i can make about 300m per day without too much trouble, at the top end you can make 200 or so mil an hour so the conversion rate in bdo is super shittt) it is possible to do this cheaper but if the goal was to just join the game and get all the best gear asap without touching the enhancement system yourself, it'll cost a fortune. I imagine there are some who have dumped 1000s into the game, but i'm betting very few millionaires have dropped a quarter mil on the game. its a p2w game but to do so to the extreme that would actually matter, its likely very few have.

then you're limited by selling these 7.700 costumes 15 a week for 1100 weeks 21 years. you'd still have a character with zero skill points (no talents) that you'd then still have to grind for months to catch up to the skill point cap not to mention you only got armor for that quarter mil so you now need to do the same for the rest of your gear. so just because it costs about 3 quarters of a million dollars to jump into bdo and get full bis, does this make it less pay to win, no. how much it costs is irrelevant, whether or not you run into that person, is irrelevant for the most part you likely have zero control over this anyway, you may never meet that person, or you may run into them several times in one week. if their gear is better than yours because they bought it, and you go up against them, and they have learned how to play their class, and they aren't a bad player, and its not raining or whatever other random shit seems to factor into this for ppl. you lose. and they, paid for a win.

i'm not sure what the twink scene is like these days but it really wouldn't be that difficult to jump into wow, level up a char to a twink bracket, buy boes off the AH and crush in that bracket. for the top end, the boes are going to be limited but if two players join the game, both boost to max, one guy buys gold and uses it to max his professions and get boe's to make the ilvl requirement for the LFR and normal/heroic pugs, that guy is getting to the meat faster, while the guy who didn't buy gold has to grind that gold manually and will be reaching that ilvl requirement later than the guy who bought the gold. likewise, they probably won't have the money to just flat out power level their profession to max and start making things that are useful. where as the guy who bought gold can do that. with those maxxed profs you can then start making gold off of it. in terms of time, the guy who buys the gold could get saved to raids while the guy who didn't buy gold doesn't have the ilvl yet and has to miss a week and not get saved. so the guy who bought gold, can hit the LFR week one and the dude who didn't buy gold, might be able to do the same, but at a cost of needing to spend more time playing to reach that ilvl requirement.

I don't think there are any mmos that let you throw money at them and become amazing with zero effort, all you can usually do is just make it so you have to grind less. eve is the same (albeit with a much better conversion rate on irl money to isk), you can throw money at that on day 1 and have all the skills and ships you need but you'd be clueless to how the game works, so you'd still have to spend effort into learning the game before you win anything. all it would save you from is grinding and waiting for training times. time. the key element is definitely time. the difference between getting something now and getting it later.

[dacoolist]

Remember when you said this?
lol, so at one point FF14 is "bigger then wow" but now when people point out how shitty FF14 is because of its MASSIVE STORE IN COMPARISON TO WOW you just say "well its way smaller so its incomparable"
You keep lying and making stuff up, idk how anyone believes you anymore.
"ff14 beat wow, and thats why they stopped showing subs" proven false by many different things.
"ff14's store is miniscule" its over 10x bigger then wow's store
"Well you cant compare ff14 and wow cause ff14 is so much smaller" you just did, many times over, while also saying ff14 IS BIGGER

Please make it your new years resolution to stop being such a horrid liar.

Whenever I see someone say FF14 is bigger than WoW I always like to remember when FF14 originally came out and fony made that copypasta video that literally made him famous overnight

FF14 is a cool game, but it's nothing compared to WoW and it never will be: WoW is just too good - and even as a white knight, I still find ways to hate WoW, but FF14 just has wayyyyyy too many issues to even fathom thinking it has more subs or makes anywhere near the money WoW makes.. not to mention MF'n CLASSIC just destroying the scene even retail in some aspects