Is WoW Pay 2 Win?

[Dhrizzle]

All of those terms are under the umbrella of p2w.

I disagree because calling all those things pay-2-win takes away from the mechanics that are actually pay-2-win, paid featured that give an advantage players can't match without also spending money.

Buying gold in WoW might be convenient but players with more time can get themselves to the same level without much problem.

[BattleHammer]

I disagree because calling all those things pay-2-win takes away from the mechanics that are actually pay-2-win, paid featured that give an advantage players can't match without also spending money.

Buying gold in WoW might be convenient but players with more time can get themselves to the same level without much problem.

You are answering yourself by making an non equivalent comparison, why are you comparing 2 clearly different players?

[crusadernero]

Oh bugger off with that nonsense. I don't care to defend Blizzard. I just think your argument is nonsense and have called you out on it since this is a debating forum.



Pray do tell, to whom exactly are Blizzard selling these things if not the "sub numbers" you think they don't need hmm?



The fact that you seem to think wow tokens are a troublesome feature is very worrying, as is your inability to put together a proper argument to substantiate your position - and hence your preference for resorting to ad hominem.



All of what you are saying here has been thoroughly rebutted by not just me, but several others as well.

All a token buys is a bit of gold, a currency that is readily made in-game without any need of the token. And because all the gold that a token gets you was obtained by other players, it is impossible that tokens could ever become the de facto means of gaining gold in game. Yes, it is possible for an individual to click a few buttons and get easy gold for cash. But it is not possible for the playerbase to do this en masse as you suggest.

And if you think that clicking a few buttons to turn some of your money into your gold somehow invalidates your game experience, then the problem isn't the token, it's that you aren't enjoying the game.



Been there, done that. Again you're making the wildly inaccurate assumption that every boost is paid for by tokens. And honestly, if some players out there are paying by token, do I really care? No I don't, because they end up making the token cheaper for me to buy and get my game time for free.



And who exactly are those tokens being sold on the auction house to hmm? That is the wonderfully elegant thing about tokens that you just don't seem to get. They don't create gold. They transfer it between players. The whole system remains in exactly the same balance as always, but with a number of advantages in terms of a more equitable distribution of gold across the playerbase.

No offense, but it's pretty clear that your obvious disdain for tokens (as irrational as it is) has completed clouded your ability to think clearly about this.

Answer this:
Can you legally spend your own real money to obtain gear, mounts, titles & achivments in wow? I dont give two tosses about "someone made that gold in the first place".

I also dont care that "everyone has always done so" cause thats not true and if it were, Blizzard should have gotten theyre asses up from the seat and actually done something about it. You know, instead of just giving 100% up and just corner the market themself.

[Laqweeta]

Judging by how every black dragon camp in Burning Steppes and every Twilight Hammer camp in Silithus was infested with gold-farming hunter-bots, I'd say quite a lot.

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Play well, clear content normally, get boots.

Play with friends, get carried for free, get boots.

Use the AH, get 400,000 gold, use that to get carried, bet boots.

That's cute and all but because the game added in a WAY TO SKIP THIS CONTENT to buy gear, well, that's Pay to Win.

[dizzzave]

You made it about boosts, which has nothing to do with p2w..

You buy gold for cash. Trade gold for boost/mount/carry (win). Seller buys cash (gametime, blizzard store) for gold.

[Invicta]

you can buy gear with real money at this point

[Dzonathan]

I can't, at least not since the end of WoD, but why is that relevant? I've already said that buying gold pays for you to skip time.

Because if you can get more gold/h by going to work then by grinding it the game then you're effectively buying power you would normally not achieve through regular gameplay.

[shadowmatrix]

Based on the arguments presented in this thread WOW, ESO, GW 2, and FFXIV are P2W, what MMO are left to play?

[Daymanmb]

You buy gold for cash. Trade gold for boost/mount/carry (win). Seller buys cash (gametime, blizzard store) for gold.

But buying boosts with earned gold have never ever been considered p2w. Buying boosts is not the variable, but the gold with real money is the variable.

[Ivanstone]

That's cute and all but because the game added in a WAY TO SKIP THIS CONTENT to buy gear, well, that's Pay to Win.

Skipping content isn’t Pay to Win. Paying money to skip content is just renting pixels to make you feel better about yourself. That’s not “winning”.

Using real money to gain a decisive advantage while doing current content is Pay to Win. For example, if I spent money to get an idealized gear set it still wouldn’t allow me to challenge harder content. It would make less challenging content easier but it’s not the same thing. Currently in WOW you can get a full set of 252 gear. In an actual P2W scenario you would be able to buy a full set of 269 gear even though such a gear set wouldn’t be available till patch 9.2.

People don’t notice the difference in WOW because WOW doesn’t have a PVP system that can be gamed by money. Like if a new PvP season started and a full PVP set was available for purchase with real money on day one.

[Daymanmb]

Judging by how every black dragon camp in Burning Steppes and every Twilight Hammer camp in Silithus was infested with gold-farming hunter-bots, I'd say quite a lot.

So whats the number? How many of those accounts are owned by actual players vs 3rd party websites?

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Skipping content isn’t Pay to Win. Paying money to skip content is just renting pixels to make you feel better about yourself. That’s not “winning”.

If "winning" is the benchmark for p2w, then youre essentially saying no game is p2w(FUT says hi). Its not a literal term and never has been, except when convenient to try to make a fallacious point.

[Ivanstone]

If "winning" is the benchmark for p2w, then youre essentially saying no game is p2w(FUT says hi). Its not a literal term and never has been, except when convenient to try to make a fallacious point.

P2W implies winning. Lots of games are P2W. Maybe you should play some of them. I currently play Lords Mobile, Star Trek Timelines and Marvel Puzzle Quest. All 3 of which are games where you can pay real money to gain a decisive game play advantage over other players.

WoW isn’t P2W. You can spend real money on WOW but at the end of the day all you’ve really done is rented some server space to pass the time and store an aesthetically pleasing collection of pixels. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

[Daymanmb]

P2W implies winning. Lots of games are P2W. Maybe you should play some of them. I currently play Lords Mobile, Star Trek Timelines and Marvel Puzzle Quest. All 3 of which are games where you can pay real money to gain a decisive game play advantage over other players.

WoW isn’t P2W. You can spend real money on WOW but at the end of the day all you’ve really done is rented some server space to pass the time and store an aesthetically pleasing collection of pixels. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

But an advantage isnt winning, if we use your argument. Otherwise, saving a substantial amount of time for real money, would also be considered winning, because its an advantage. You see what I mean?

[Cthulhu 2020]

This is not a binary discussion.

"Is WoW Pay to win?" "Yes/no"

It's completely retarded to argue over the nuance of what "winning" means in "pay to win". Here's the FACTS.

It's a much more nuanced subject that I could write an entire essay on, but the short version is that the WoW token has facilitated it so that many many many more people can legitimately buy gold with cash, and this surge in people able to have gold makes it so that they buy carries. The integrity of WoW, the one thing that it does good - raiding - has been completely compromised. Achievements, kills, and gear means nothing since half the people you see running around this dead game have bought their gear and clears.

WoW token has ruined the integrity of WoW. And now there's no going back. The game is in decline. Achievements, gear and kills mean absolutely nothing any more. The sense of community is gone.

Stop arguing over what "winning" means and realize that WoW is just a mere shadow of its former self. A poor imitation of what it once was. The people designing WoW are a bunch of imposters parading around in the skin they ripped off the dead corpse after all the original devs left.

[Femininity]

Day 125 of this thread, and still the same semantic arguments repeat every few pages.

If "winning" is the benchmark for p2w, then youre essentially saying no game is p2w(FUT says hi). Its not a literal term and never has been, except when convenient to try to make a fallacious point.

Yeah pretty much. Players rebuke the label because of the negative connotations it holds, and twist themselves into knots arguing to the contrary. Call it something else if you'd like, but a rose by any other name and whatnot.

[Laqweeta]

Skipping content isn’t Pay to Win. Paying money to skip content is just renting pixels to make you feel better about yourself. That’s not “winning”.

Using real money to gain a decisive advantage while doing current content is Pay to Win. For example, if I spent money to get an idealized gear set it still wouldn’t allow me to challenge harder content. It would make less challenging content easier but it’s not the same thing. Currently in WOW you can get a full set of 252 gear. In an actual P2W scenario you would be able to buy a full set of 269 gear even though such a gear set wouldn’t be available till patch 9.2.

People don’t notice the difference in WOW because WOW doesn’t have a PVP system that can be gamed by money. Like if a new PvP season started and a full PVP set was available for purchase with real money on day one.

Using money to buy gear to make your character better is pay to win.

[saintminya]

Folks opting to spend either their real money or gold on carries and whatever else to passively snag achievements and gear, assuming anything worthwhile drops, still doesn't grant them an advantage over the folks putting the hours in themselves. Whether you spend your money or your time, the potential results are still equal. The only real difference is that the player who put the time in gets to say that the accomplishments are actually theirs, while the other can only claim to be a tourist whose accomplishments rest on the shoulders of others. People can play, or not play, however they like, but none of this qualifies as paying-to-win as spending the extra cash/gold doesn't grant the tourist any advantage over the player.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Folks opting to spend either their real money or gold on carries and whatever else to passively snag achievements and gear, assuming anything worthwhile drops, still doesn't grant them an advantage over the folks putting the hours in themselves. Whether you spend your money or your time, the potential results are still equal. The only real difference is that the player who put the time in gets to say that the accomplishments are actually theirs, while the other can only claim to be a tourist whose accomplishments rest on the shoulders of others. People can play, or not play, however they like, but none of this qualifies as paying-to-win as spending the extra cash/gold doesn't grant the tourist any advantage over the player.

The people who pay get the advantage of having pro players carry them. Sure, they don't get the "real" experience, but when was the last time you met someone who actually admitted to buying carries? The vast majority just pretend they got it all on their own and you'll never know the difference.

Basically the above argument is "Well they didn't get the experience of putting in the work themselves, so they got no advantage". They got all the same gear, achievements, etc. that you did and they can even brag they did it on their own. They got an advantage.

Just because you value the experience more doesn't mean that buying clears hasn't ruined the integrity of the game.

[NineSpine]

It doesn't matter because only a few people care.

Most MMO's that I'm aware of—even the ones that charge subscriptions or has a higher tier of membership that needs to be paid for to get nice monthly rewards—has a method for exchanging real money for game currency. People are treating WoW as if this is some unique thing. It's not. The argument is tedious and stupid at this point because the practice is ubiquitous. People raging at Blizzard for providing a safe way to purchase gold are implicitly in favor of doing it the old way: getting it from outside vendors who take over accounts and run them dry.

There is very little to win in PVE content and whatever it is that you think you won is worthless a few months later. If you think that buying gold is such a travesty don't do it. Otherwise mind your own damn business. If you don't care for people telling you what to do with their time and money then return the favor. If Blizzard is such a horror for doing this then please, visit the forums for every other game that does this and let them know.

You want to fix this? Do something about boosts.

Make raid drops only go to guild members that have been members of their guild for a full reset. Have a fourteen-day cooldown after leaving a guild before you can trade loot above a certain ilevel with other players or receive personal loot in an M+ or raid instance. Kill the pugging scene except for those who just want to run the raid. Hell, it might even revive guilds a little.

If someone is paying hundreds of dollars buying gold so they can get a piece of shiny loot through a boost JFC let them. It keeps the subscription rate down.

Summary: "You can't criticize wow unless you fix the rest of the world first"

[Clozer]

Except that they didn't spend a cent of real money for this. By definition it cannot be pay to win since they didn't pay.

I believe your error here stems from the often quoted fact that they spent around $57 000 worth of gold on their Castle Nathria race. They did not, however, spend money to acquire that gold. That is simply what it would have cost had they elected to use tokens. They acquired all their gold ingame. The fact that they were able to do so and did not have to resort to using tokens at all, is a pretty strong demonstration of why tokens are not p2w.

Having the option to pay for it - makes it p2w.