WOW- Now pay to win?

[Onikaroshi]

"if you don't like something, fuck off, real fans like anything"

No, I just love the system and would rather people not ruin it. People can have different opinions.

Thing is, some people get salty over the state of the game and want it changed to the way THEY want it to be, instead of just sucking it up and realizing the game isn't being made for them.

[Potatowizard]

Currently an NA toke is worth 150k so about 14 tokens or 350 bucks.

1000 gold in vanilla for something like a mount would run you OVER 500. It's gotten cheaper if anything.

mmmm, nope.

I know this because I did it.

At the peak, something around $20-50 (for my server) was 1,000 gold. Was a no brainer

[Onikaroshi]

mmmm, nope.

I know this because I did it.

At the peak, something around $20-50 (for my server) was 1,000 gold. Was a no brainer

Manno it was over 500, I remember it clearly as I was usually buying about 100-200 for around 50 depending on sales.

[Kathranis]

What does "winning" even mean in the context of WoW? The World First Race is an unofficial event engaged in by an exceptionally small crowd of players, and the officially supported esports events (AWC, MDI) are hosted on tournament servers.

Like, yeah, you can spend WoW Tokens on gear to progress a bit faster, but who cares? I just don't see where the competition comes into it. For the vast majority of content in WoW, you're only competing against yourself, and clearing content isn't the end of the road anyway, since you're gonna keep farming that content.

[themaster24]

Those are some incredible mental gymnastics dude.

You can buy the most powerful items in the game through the use of real money. That's pay to win.

To be technical, the most powerful items in the game come from Carapace and N'zoth. No BoE has the ilvl of those items.

Anyway, the point of that whole post is to showcase the differences in situations like this, and what you get in a game like Clash of Clans (or some similar mobile game). P2W, MTX, etc, these phrases get tossed around with the same weight to things that are drastically different. Most games have some element of P2W in them, it's unavoidable in any game where 1 player can assist another. However, there's a difference when a game developer literally sells power directly to you, and when you have to go through, and rely on, intermediaries to gain power increases.

In a previous thread, I used Rift as an example. They're cash shop sells you top end gear directly on the store. A full set of raid gear, for like $100 worth of gems. You can buy a variety of other types of gear, you can buy items that let you skip grinds for gear upgrade items, or even the gear upgrade item itself. Mind you, these were also done at a point where this gear is pretty much never going to be replaced for the remainder of the game. So, if you want these essentially permanent BiS items, you spend the gems, and these things are put directly in your bags at the point of purchase. There's no variable, no depending on someone else, no player economy involved, no other steps. Just you and the game dev.

Compare that to something like WoW, and you have potential situations like the one I posted before. You could also have your tokens sell and there's a glorious piece waiting for you in the AH. You could also find that the one you wanted, socketed with leech, isn't there, and just a base version is there, or maybe you wanted IS but instead it's EV. This is nowhere near the same as something like Rift, or one of the various Whale-based mobile games.

Is it P2W by the definition that you spent some form of real money and that transaction ultimately lead you get a power increase? Sure, but just like you will say it's facetious for someone to outright say there's no P2W in the scenario, it's equally disingenuous to try and act like it's as detrimental as the other systems out there, or that it is some nefarious action by blizz.

Side Note: I see a fair amount of people claiming it's only an issue now because blizz decided to sell WoW tokens. I don't think people remember just how much of a headache the gold farming industry was for blizz. They had to spend untold amounts of man hours on scammed/hacked/banned accounts during those days. Prior to the launch of the WoW token, they acknowledged that their actions up to that weren't making an impact, because there will always be players who want to just buy gold. Thus a major part of the WoW token was to alleviate that issue. Since then, I've seen considerably less instances of players getting hacked by gold sellers (the typical, hack your account and sell everything on it), or other gold seller situations that I was used to. Players were going to buy gold, whether it was from Blizz or not, and the easiest way to cut down on the amount of issues presented was to directly step in. They didn't implement the token to "allow P2W", they did to help give the players who were going to do it anyway a safer environment to do it in. Less headaches for Blizz, less headaches for those players.

[Eosia]

No. It's not P2W. Good gear doesn't make a good player. It just makes bad ones a tiny bit harder to spot is all.

[conceptKitty]

No, WoW isn't p2w. Maybe if they started selling mythic keys in the cash shop or some other similar nonsense.

[Kralljin]

No, I just love the system and would rather people not ruin it. People can have different opinions.

Thing is, some people get salty over the state of the game and want it changed to the way THEY want it to be, instead of just sucking it up and realizing the game isn't being made for them.

This discussion wouldn't even exist if corruption was just disabled on BoE's.
Would corruption be a dysfunctional system without BoE's? I doubt it.

[themaster24]

mmmm, nope.

I know this because I did it.

At the peak, something around $20-50 (for my server) was 1,000 gold. Was a no brainer

Manno it was over 500, I remember it clearly as I was usually buying about 100-200 for around 50 depending on sales.

The issue here, is during the early days, prices varied wildly from server to server. With how difficult it was to get set up for farming, and potentially limited economies, they couldn't have consistent pricing. For example, 1k back for me in Vanilla was around $100. For some of my friends on other servers, it was closer to $150.

[Onikaroshi]

The issue here, is during the early days, prices varied wildly from server to server. With how difficult it was to get set up for farming, and potentially limited economies, they couldn't have consistent pricing. For example, 1k back for me in Vanilla was around $100. For some of my friends on other servers, it was closer to $150.

True, it was like that all the way up until I stopped buying from the Chinese when blizzard released a safer method.

[SirCowdog]

This is nowhere near the same as something like Rift, or one of the various Whale-based mobile games.

It's equally disingenuous to try and act like it's.... some nefarious action by blizz.

They didn't implement the token to "allow P2W", they did to help give the players who were going to do it anyway a safer environment to do it in. Less headaches for Blizz, less headaches for those players.

I think it's just as disingenuous to act as though Blizzard is not aware of the side effects the combination of the gold token and extremely powerful BoE drops create. They can calculate down to the individual MAU. They have copyrights on technology that can manipulate individual players to group them together with other players in order to encourage MtX sales. We have had both players and Blizzard employees constantly smash us over the head with the fact that Blizzard has access to more powerful and more detailed metrics and data than any player could ever hope to use.

I'm sorry, but AAA companies like Acti-Blizz have long ago completely exhausted any benefit of the doubt they might have been entitled to. They've shown time after time after time that they do not have the best intentions in mind. For every beneficial effect a decision they make might have, there is ALWAYS a larger, more impactful, selfish, profit-driven reason behind it.

Blizzard knows EXACTLY what they're doing when they implement BOEs into the WoW market. To claim otherwise is ignorant or willfully apologetic. No, it's not as blatant as RIFT or a mobile game. But that only means Blizzard is better at selling it.

[AwkwardSquirtle]

You could always buy BOEs for money, so either wow has always been p2w or never.

BoEs have never been as impactful as they are right now, not even close.

[scelero]

of course it would be a preach video. fml. do people not understand this guy's angle on youtube yet?

[Muajin76]

I guess the OP has never played since vanilla. Pretty much if someone considers buying boes, then yea the game has been p2w from the start. There were also many guilds that sold raid drop boes/boss drops for either real $ or gold in game.

[themaster24]

I think it's just as disingenuous to act as though Blizzard is not aware of the side effects the combination of the gold token and extremely powerful BoE drops create. They can calculate down to the individual MAU. They have copyrights on technology that can manipulate individual players to group them together with other players in order to encourage MtX sales. We have had both players and Blizzard employees constantly smash us over the head with the fact that Blizzard has access to more powerful and more detailed metrics and data than any player could ever hope to use.

I'm sorry, but AAA companies like Acti-Blizz have long ago completely exhausted any benefit of the doubt they might have been entitled to. They've shown time after time after time that they do not have the best intentions in mind. For every beneficial effect a decision they make might have, there is ALWAYS a larger, more impactful, selfish, profit-driven reason behind it.

Blizzard knows EXACTLY what they're doing when they implement BOEs into the WoW market. To claim otherwise is ignorant or willfully apologetic. No, it's not as blatant as RIFT or a mobile game. But that only means Blizzard is better at selling it.

1.) I would like to see some documentation for whatever the heck you're talking about in that first bolded section. Because I don't recall Blizz copyrighting some sort mental manipulation tech.

2.) What a surprise, a business does things that will ultimately make them more money in the long run. Every single thing a business does is to make money, plain and simple. For WoW, every "good" decision they make is something that they are hoping leads to more subs. Making a better game should bring more players, making better dungeons and raids, better pvp system, etc. Everything they do has the underlying goal of having more players play the game, for a longer period of time, thus making more money. However, that doesn't mean that every action is some sort of nefarious, villainous plot.

As far as BoE's go, blizz knows that people are going to sell BoE's, it's been done for this entire expansion. Did Blizz realize players were going to sell some for over 1Mil? Seeing as they didn't seem to realize how strong certain traits were from the start (despite feedback), I'd wager they probably A.) Didn't think the BoE's were going to as big of a deal as they now are and B.) Didn't think they'd be selling for 1-3mill a pop, seeing as BoE's for the rest of the xpac were never even sold for 1mil (at least I never saw one all xpac over 800k)

[Relapses]

This is an infuriatingly stupid question. In the most literal sense, no of course the fuck it isn't. There isn't a cash shop and there never will be.

Now, there are arguments to be made about the potency of Corrupted BoEs in particular but the amount of tokens it would take to "buy" one of these items is prohibitively high and the number of people doing this is such an impossibly small fraction of the playerbase that it's barely worth mentioning. So then the argument becomes whether the ability to have stupid amounts of gold is enabled by being able to purchase tokens. And once again, the conversion ratio from WoW tokens to gold is so low that this question isn't worth answering. There are far better ways to make gold in the game; the token exists purely for lazy fucks like myself who can't be arsed to get off our asses and farm shit like the good little robots we should be. This conflation between the ability to buy WoW tokens with real money and the ability to buy gear off the AH with gold needs to end.

[SinR]

I still think blizzard missed an opportunity to make bank by putting Vulpera on the Store as a neutral allied race

[Redroniksre]

I think it's just as disingenuous to act as though Blizzard is not aware of the side effects the combination of the gold token and extremely powerful BoE drops create. They can calculate down to the individual MAU. They have copyrights on technology that can manipulate individual players to group them together with other players in order to encourage MtX sales. We have had both players and Blizzard employees constantly smash us over the head with the fact that Blizzard has access to more powerful and more detailed metrics and data than any player could ever hope to use.

I'm sorry, but AAA companies like Acti-Blizz have long ago completely exhausted any benefit of the doubt they might have been entitled to. They've shown time after time after time that they do not have the best intentions in mind. For every beneficial effect a decision they make might have, there is ALWAYS a larger, more impactful, selfish, profit-driven reason behind it.

Blizzard knows EXACTLY what they're doing when they implement BOEs into the WoW market. To claim otherwise is ignorant or willfully apologetic. No, it's not as blatant as RIFT or a mobile game. But that only means Blizzard is better at selling it.

That was Activision and it was made specifically for Destiny 2. No, WoW does not matchmake you based on whether you have bought tokens (i assuming you don't mean that) because it would be stupid to believe so. Did they do the corruption system only to make money from people buying BoEs? No, they didn't, not nearly enough people do it, or would think of doing it. Not to mention simply having them does not make you suddenly good, as if you are a bad player you wont be in those groups and would be dying to effects anyways.

The only difference between back then and now, is that instead of becoming powerful by paying a random, chinese company, the money goes straight to Blizzard. Now if you really want to argue, they could just remove the auction house entirely, and trading, so that way gold can't be used for it. Satisfied?

[Nevcairiel]

I can't remember BoEs being objectively better than anything you could get inside the raid though

You do know that a 475 BoE as cited here has to actually come from the raid, right? Items that can corrupt cannot titanforge, afterall.

And you can get these exact items from your own raid run, with some luck, or other pieces with the same corruption. Buying them is just a shortcut. Which IMHO destroys the argument of "P2W" for me. If I can simply play the game and eventually reach the same strength as someone that paid a hundred bucks on a single item, then I feel like I win at making better choices!

[Belloc]

Except that gear gotten through raids couldn't increase your dps by 30% for a single piece.

Two points:

a) We're talking about P2W. If you're getting carried through max-level content, you're killing the end bosses and getting the titles and achievements... in addition to whatever gear is dropped and funneled to you. The win condition is beating the hardest content in the game. It's P2W because... you win.

b) Yes, that gear could increase your DPS by whatever amount. You have the same chances as everyone else to get a BiS corruption. Where do you think OP's BOE item came from in the first place?