WOW- Now pay to win?

[Lolites]

You do realise it was against ToS and could get you banned? Good talk, brother.

you do realise it was so common that rather than banning so many players blizz ignored it and later came with token?

and honestly, i know dozens of people who were buying/selling (i was selling myself at one point) and never heard anyone actualy getting banned over it...

[Dommie530]

wow is p2w yes, but not to the highest peek
to be the highest peek u need to play
to be just better than most players, u can use ur $$$
p2w means money give u advantage in game over other players, yes gold give u advantage in wow, heck i don't remember see gold sell boosts pre-Legion era as now, since i was in one of most hardcore raiding guilds horde side during wrath, i can talk easily with confidence there was no gold sell boosts, because gold was useless for raiders in general, u just need enough cash for repairs and done, any extra gold means nothing

pre-token era u couldn't buy it with ur real money, until WoD no matter how 'rich' u are irl, u have zero advantage over me
now u can easily spend cash, get boost, and be better than ppl who play 24/7 but have bad luck in drops or just better than average wow player since average wow player don't have time to farm as hard as gold buy u

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so what u call spend real money to buy tokens, get gold, use gold for boost ? pay to dance on a mailbox ?
pay to win is any form of paying to get an advantage over other player, even if that form isn't the absolute best

You couldnt buy it for real money? Are u living under a rock? U could litterly buy gold from farmers, hell you could even buy boe with real money, tcg items. You could pay a chinese kid to level your char in fucking days. Stop this p2w bs. In ANY game where trading is a thing their are elements of real life money involved, its as simple as that.

[Dziubla]

Care to provide examples? Any game which sells power for real money is pay to win by definition no matter the amount really. More so for the game where everybody pays the same subscription fee and should have the same conditions.

I do see this whole situation as p2w but not because of WoW tokens, just because somebody screwed up balance and allowed really good items to pop up on auction house.

Best example from games I've tried, is Runes of Magic. Where you had Item Shop filled to the brim with plenty of different power boosts, boosts which you could not get by simply playing the game, without spending real money.

Which is why personally I don't consider WoW "pay 2 win", since there's literally nothing that you can't get by simply playing the game. Item shop is purely cosmetic. Sure, there are (and always have been) BoEs, but you can get those exact same items by running the raid yourself. If someone wants to spend money to avoid/shorten the grind? Let them. If they're a bad player, OP items won't help them anyway. If they're good player, they would get those same items eventually, so getting those items somewhat faster doesn't really matter that much in the long run.

[goldentforce]

Just want to be clear, the point preach made about the top guilds is the sheer amount of wow gold was unreasonable for many raids who either don't boost or able to take loans out or just don't have 200 million gold for the race. It's very unlikely world first raids would spend equivalent of 40k of only real money on corruption boss, it would be boost gold/loans. This is a relevant and connected issue but not the route of the p2w argument. The point is someone could spend $1000 (which people called whales spend on mobile games or FIFA already, why wouldn't this be possible for wow) for gear that is 20-40% of your total damage, which is not what any other boes could be in terms of dps. The fact is the best way to get the specific corruption you want is buying it on the auction house. There's many issues with the corruption system here, one of which is you could spend real money while doing absolutely nothing but standing in the AH and walk out with the some of the most powerful items they game has ever had, and is way easier than playing the game for rng drop/proc loot. Even with a cutting edge boost at least you have to actually be in the raid the whole time, which is way more than buying from ah. Nothing of this power and absurdity has existed. Even while previous illegal ways existed and less marginal gains could be bought with real money since the token, no system is this absurd and should probably never exist again.

[Askyl]

1. you could buy gold in vanila
2. you DONT HAVE TO buy gold in retail, i have some 3m gold without ever buying token, if i wanted to waste it i could buy corrupted item... gold is incredibly easy to get by on retail, you can farm milions easier than thousands in vanila... (not to mention since you can pay sub with gold you can actualy play without ever spending a dime on wow)
3. most importantly, your argument i reacted to wasnt if you could get gold, but that you could buy item in auction that WAS incredibly powerful...

1. Yes and get banned. So no, the game wasn't build as a P2W. Just as Dota 2 isn't P2W because you can buy some booster to get you higher rank.
2. No you don't, but the point here IS THAT YOU CAN BUY GOLD with real money and buy really powerful items. In a legit way.
3. Then you're discussing the wrong topic, in a discussion about that topic.

[Lolites]

1. Yes and get banned. So no, the game wasn't build as a P2W. Just as Dota 2 isn't P2W because you can buy some booster to get you higher rank.
2. No you don't, but the point here IS THAT YOU CAN BUY GOLD with real money and buy really powerful items. In a legit way.
3. Then you're discussing the wrong topic, in a discussion about that topic.

1. i was selling at some point so i know dozens of people who were selling/buying, never heard about anyone actualy geting ban... blizz ignored it (and later came with token) bcs it was so common they would have to ban incredible amount of people...
2. and you COULD buy it before, it was against ToS but you COULD, plus those items in vanila were WAY more common
3. YOU said the items in vanila wasnt so powerfull, i corrected your mistake, and somehow I discused wrong topic? yeah sure, totaly my fault

[Daymanmb]

you are right, i should believe simulations over ingame reality... how could i be so blind... to not ignore you sooner

Anecdotal experience vs statistics. Do you aspire to be this brain dead, or does it come naturally for you?

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and honestly, i know dozens of people who were buying/selling (i was selling myself at one point) and never heard anyone actualy getting banned over it...

How many times in this thread are you going to appease your feelings? Just because you dont see it, doesnt mean it wasnt happening, jesus fucking christ..

[Raelbo]

Only 3% of the WoWhead profiles have the brutosaur mount, so I'd argue that using 10 million is not a fair example, as the average player will not obtain quite that much gold to begin with and the lower your income from in-game activities, the more lucrative buying gold becomes.

True. But bear in mind that the context of the discussion is about feeling the need to resort to tokens in order to compete. Those 3% serve to illustrate what is possible if someone were to choose to compete.

I can't really comment on this as I have no idea how much gold the average player has. I can tell you that it's a lot quicker for me to spend €100 on tokens than it would be to farm 1 million gold, though.

This is likely not true for a competitive player though.

Because they can make the gold back quite quickly as they are the best guilds in the world and can sell boosts very reliably. Boosts which are paid for by gold, which may or may not come from people who buy gold with real money. Not everyone makes these millions as quickly as the top guilds do, which is where my friend Mr. Card (first name Master) can come in and help. This doesn't only illustrate the importance of gear, as you mentioned, it highlights the significance that gold has, when it comes to acquiring gear.

Gold is one way to acquire to gear - yes. That doesn't mean that it is the de-facto method nor that mr M Card is the de-facto method of obtaining gold. It's an option sure. But is it a problem? I have been arguing no, on the basis that this only becomes a problem when players start feeling that they have little choice but to resort to buying tokens in order to pay gold for gear to keep up with everyone else.

1)I don't know about this one, chief. I thought I laid it out relatively clearly that I was talking about it from the perspective of the person spending real money for gold. The money isn't obtained from me farming or whatnot in the game, it's obtained by spending money, which I get from working. I literally buy it in-game, if that's what you're alluding to. In which case I can only assume you're making a bad faith argument or your response is a misunderstanding on your part which stemmed from a lack of clarity on mine.

It was more about creating a distinction between spending money to create gold, and spending money to trade gold that someone else got in game - which carries with it significant implications for the effect of the transaction on the game. That "power" that you're buying isn't something you're creating, it's something you're being given by another player.

2)It's not necessary to spend money in any game and I never claimed it was, I claimed it gives you an advantage.

I guess my point was maybe a bit too subtle. I don't disagree with you that gold is translatable into a power gain. What I am saying is that money is entirely unnecessary to obtain that gold. Therefore money can't really give you an advantage. It can, at best, serve as a substitute for obtaining that gold and putting you on an even footing of where everyone else is.

Throwing a jab at someone is a lazy way to undermine an argument. Either way, if I'm horrible, I can now spend my money to get an advantage over other horrible players.

I apologise that it came across that way. It wasn't intended as a jab or to cast any judgement on anyone choosing to buy gold. My intent was to illustrate that if you start with the premise of a competitive player, they're going to already have enough gold to be competitive without resorting to their credit card. In other words, where the competition is actually at, tokens aren't even a factor.

Honestly, just look at this situation: you have average Joe guild#1 and average Joe guild#2, both have cleared normal and killed an equal amount of bosses on HC, over an similar amount of time. You now give #1 a €100 per raider to buy tokens for gold, which will be spent on BoE's. Does that guild now have an edge over the other, knowing that you yourself said gear is important? Please do refrain from coming at me saying "They can't even clear HC?", my original post starts with pointing out that the most important thing is comparing 2 players at equal skill level.

I realise I am dodging the question, but honestly, I believe it's a poor question to be asking in the first place. It's contrived to lead to a specific outcome but doesn't represent any kind of real world scenario.

Even assuming that the market could supply all those BoE's, so what if a random hc guild spends €2000 to get a slight edge over another random hc guild? What difference does it make to anyone? I say this as a heroic raider myself, so it's not a jab at anyone. What is important to us as a guild is that we clear the instance in a reasonable time, which is perfectly feasible using the gear we obtain during progression. As a guild we'd see zero need to go and spend a million gold on even a single upgrade, let alone 20.

If you're talking about guilds who do might actually care about the difference that getting 20 BoEs will make, odds are that they're going to have the gold already. Because competitive guilds spend their time working towards building up a competitive advantage. There is ample opportunity for such a guild to make a huge pile of cash between tiers when there is literally nothing better to do, selling boosts, selling BoEs that drop during farm, using professions etc etc. The only reason such a guild would ever "need" to resort to tokens to keep up with another guild is if they literally couldn't be bothered to put in the effort. That's not gaining an advantage. It's compensating for slacking.



Yes, gold is important if one wishes to be competitive in this game. But the crux of my argument is that if one is actually committed to being competitive, then there is no need to resort to tokens to obtain that gold because the same attributes that lead to players/guilds being competitive also make them very effective at making gold in game, to the extent that tokens simply aren't an attractive proposition.

If someone wants to be competitive in this game, they don't go about it by whipping out their credit cards. They go about it by playing the game hard, and the gold comes easily.

[kamuimac]

I see 475ilvl items with socket and good corruption for like 2-3 million on the AH. So now ppl buy wow tokens for real life money and then buy this items...

Is this good gameplay or not? Pay to win?

Blizzard probly happy about it as they earn more $$$




EDIT: What i mean by p2w is win the damage meter. More dps make dungeon/raid/pvp easyer. One with buyed BIS for real life money VS one with no corrupt or a bad one. Who would you put your money on? Who would you like to have in your raid/dungeon/arena. Also my english are pretty bad so sorry for not explaining so all understand. I did my best, sorry.


VERY funny thing is that i asked both if its good gameplay and if its P2W. None/few answer if its good gameplay. All get stuck if its P2W instead. Ppl are funny

Apparently Preach Gaming have a video about it.

people who spend that much on gear are insane.

but then back in WoD when i was still playing AH i was selling mythic raiding boes for 300-500k too so guess people were always insane.

i personaly odnt care because thx to them i bought out all mounts/pets from game store and like 5 years of gametime

[nocturnus]

I haven't played wow in a very long time, but when I see threads like this I always wonder why people are so preoccupied with how others choose to play the game.

Who cares if Timmy buys a full set of super gear from the AH? Is that even possible? Because buying one item doesn't exactly teleport you to the top of the DPS meter. Heck, when I played people bought whole characters from Ebay.

Don't get me wrong, I find the whole mental process involved in buying loot ludicrous; pay to buy a game you want to play. Afterwards pay more to get an item you could've got by playing to game. So essentially, you're paying to not play.

It's stupid, but in the end, who cares what others do.

[Eurhetemec]

That being said, it seems to be the case that with companies like Acti-Blizz, allowing for even small amounts of shady monetization options (like p2w) is a slippery slope and they only react to it if the outrage is big enough (like with the Diablo 3 real money AH).

Seems to be or seems to me?

The former is a claim of fact requiring supporting evidence, and you have given only contradictory evidence (an example of P2W being fixed). The latter is an opinion which is fine, but just an opinion.

Also slippery slope is a logical fallacy, not an actual argument. You need evidence of the slide and there is none. Your claim that it's been getting worse is unsupported by your post and I can't think of any supporting evidence. I'd suggest that, unless SL repeats the issue, this is a blip not a trend. If you have real evidence please detail it.

[Nerovar]

Seems to be or seems to me?

The former is a claim of fact requiring supporting evidence, and you have given only contradictory evidence (an example of P2W being fixed). The latter is an opinion which is fine, but just an opinion.

Also slippery slope is a logical fallacy, not an actual argument. You need evidence of the slide and there is none. Your claim that it's been getting worse is unsupported by your post and I can't think of any supporting evidence. I'd suggest that, unless SL repeats the issue, this is a blip not a trend. If you have real evidence please detail it.

In regards to the slippery slope I was referring to the games industry in general (I'm not really inclined to point out trends in regards to microtransactions etc.). I concede the point about it being unsupported in regards to WoW because it's obviously based on conjecture but that still doesn't make what we have now less bad. The point that I was trying to make was about the fact that there is very little awareness in regards to the WoW "real money AH" compared to the Diablo 3 "real money AH".

[SirCowdog]

you do realise it was so common that rather than banning so many players blizz ignored it and later came with token?

and honestly, i know dozens of people who were buying/selling (i was selling myself at one point) and never heard anyone actualy getting banned over it...

And you've made it incredibly clear that you will disregard a larger or more accurate source of information in favor of your own narrow and limited point of view. The fact that you personally didn't see anyone get banned doesn't mean that bans didn't happen widely on the larger scale of the entire game.

Blizzard did not "ignore" grey-market RMT. They tried for a long time to come up with a way to eliminate it, and eventually were forced to fall back on the token as the only viable way to reign it in. A quick google search of "How did Blizzard fight gold selling" turns up multiple articles from as far back as 2011 in the 5 minutes I spent actually looking. That article outlines how Blizzard took steps to work with PayPal to shut down gold transactions using that popular service.

[SirCowdog]

Isn't a WoW token only like 200k gold.

Wouldn't that mean that to buy a piece of gear for 2 million gold, you'd need to pay 200 USD?

That doesn't seem like something people do.

People regularly spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on mobile games. Those kinds of spenders are known as "whales", and are exactly the kind of consumer that P2W practices target.

[sylenna]

Not like this...corrupt effect does like 30-50% of your damge sometimes. Have never been like that before that BOE are so powerfull. Or maybe it have but that is bad gameplay.

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yes but never this powerboost? 30%+ of your damage from one BOE? Really?

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I agree. Feels bad man!

so we blame the top wfr guilds and other rich kids who buy boe with extreme corruption procs for p2w'ing but neglect the fact that the corruption system isn't exactly balanced in any way whatsoever and shouldn't roll on boe items? alright then.

[SirCowdog]

I haven't played wow in a very long time, but when I see threads like this I always wonder why people are so preoccupied with how others choose to play the game.

Because how the community behaves as a whole often effects the way in which the game is designed in the future. If a great enough number of people become willing to accept lower quality products, but pay a higher price, guess what the corporation is going to sell?

The reason why people get so bent about Timmy buying a full set of gear is because Timmy then goes into the M+ scene and starts demanding that everyone else do the same. Do you see the cause and effect here? The more Timmy's there are, the more the game begins to shift to buying gear instead of playing the game for gear. Until we eventually end up with what amounts to little more than a mobile gacha game filled with more P2W elements than anything else.

[Eurhetemec]

In regards to the slippery slope I was referring to the games industry in general (I'm not really inclined to point out trends in regards to microtransactions etc.). I concede the point about it being unsupported in regards to WoW because it's obviously based on conjecture but that still doesn't make what we have now less bad. The point that I was trying to make was about the fact that there is very little awareness in regards to the WoW "real money AH" compared to the Diablo 3 "real money AH".

No, it does make it less bad, it totally does. There's a huge difference between one outlier period and a steady trend. This is an important and meaningful distinction.

The WoW "real money AH" isn't really "a thing". You say there's a lack of awareness but the token trends show this isn't some sort of huge or growing issue, so...?

I'm not saying ignore this stuff or be complacent, but talk of slippery slopes and the equation of a blip (currently) with the full on RMAH of D3 seems alarmist at best and unhelpful. YMMV.

[bigbleach]

I see 475ilvl items with socket and good corruption for like 2-3 million on the AH. So now ppl buy wow tokens for real life money and then buy this items...

Is this good gameplay or not? Pay to win?

Blizzard probly happy about it as they earn more $$$




EDIT: What i mean by p2w is win the damage meter. More dps make dungeon/raid/pvp easyer. One with buyed BIS for real life money VS one with no corrupt or a bad one. Who would you put your money on? Who would you like to have in your raid/dungeon/arena. Also my english are pretty bad so sorry for not explaining so all understand. I did my best, sorry.


VERY funny thing is that i asked both if its good gameplay and if its P2W. None/few answer if its good gameplay. All get stuck if its P2W instead. Ppl are funny

Apparently Preach Gaming have a video about it.

/sigh. wow is not pay to win. You can buy gold but lets be real... Would it still be pay to win if I used the gold that I have played the AH to obtain? I have high, high doubts that people run out and buy 5-10 tokens at a time for solely gold to buy a run. I've dumped 1 million into tokens to have battle balanced banked, sure. You can buy the runs with the literal currency you earn through almost everything. If you learn how to use the AH, you can profit millions in a single week. Not total revenue, that would be around 5-6 , million in and out, but easily pull 1-2 million on a single server and account in 1 week.

edit I noticed a bit late you were referring more to BoE gear, and on 1 point I do not like high ilvl BoEs due to their ease of obtaining them... but on the same note what does it matter because a single bought run can net you more than a single piece anyways. The only way blizz can stop this is to take away the instant resets to raids. We shouldnt be allowed to kill the same boss each week. All of this hit the fan in MoP when flex was released. It has been rampant since then. Buuuuuuuuuuuuut. Gear doesn't mean you win. Throughout my years of playing this game, I have out DPS'd many many many people with much higher ilvls than me in a raid environment. You still have to be capable of playing the character. Someone who buys run will not ever achieve a mythic clear legitimately. The reason to raid mythic isn't the gear. If you do it for gear, just play a better game, because there are too many problems with loot in wow for loot to be the driving force. It is for a challenge.

[Tident]

Because how the community behaves as a whole often effects the way in which the game is designed in the future. If a great enough number of people become willing to accept lower quality products, but pay a higher price, guess what the corporation is going to sell?

The reason why people get so bent about Timmy buying a full set of gear is because Timmy then goes into the M+ scene and starts demanding that everyone else do the same. Do you see the cause and effect here? The more Timmy's there are, the more the game begins to shift to buying gear instead of playing the game for gear. Until we eventually end up with what amounts to little more than a mobile gacha game filled with more P2W elements than anything else.

I think the community adapts by become more harsh to some comers . Raider io gained popularity due to the lack of trust you could have in a player via ilv.

Corruption feels like a experiment I don't think we will see it return as mythic items on the bmah were squashed and they were not as powerful as this.

It reeks of poor planing but when it comes to whale hunting I think blizzard still does it via cosmetics.

[Kralljin]

The problem I have with that is that Shadowlands is the eighth expansion. Were 15+ years in. This isn't even remotely near the first shady, money-grubbing, profit-at-the-expense-of-all-else thing they've done.

I don't think honlon's razor applies in this scenario.

Blizzards recent history however on the addition of alternate power system doesn't speak in their favor as far as "carefully planned" is concerned.

Artifacts: Nobody thought about the "post" Legion aspect.
Legendaries: Let's just disable the bad luck protection after ~4 Legendaries, what could go wrong; Also let's make some entirely utility based and others pure throughput!
Azerite: That doesn't seem to work; well, we're too deep in development already, so we can't change it
Essences: What about Alts? (To be fair, it's the most functional one of any list here)
Benthic: We checked that those tokens can't Titanforge but can proc tertiary stats, i'm sure we didn't forget anything...
Corruption: Well yeah...

Like really, any system related to player power introduced since Legion had some sort of huge blunder in there.

Is it coincidental on corruption, maybe it is, maybe not, but as said, if Shadowlands is not different on that front, that's your confirmation.