Is WoW Pay 2 Win?

[Rageonit]

Developer endorsement makes all the difference when making a determination. Citing methods that historically could have resulted in account suspension, or methods that completely circumvent in-game systems really aren't part of the discussion.

Those methods were historically wildly popular, so are we going to pretend there's no elephant in the room? Your motives behind putting this or that label are none of my concern. What interests me is: was it technically possible to buy a boost before the token, and did people do it?

[melodramocracy]

Those methods were historically wildly popular, so are we going to pretend there's no elephant in the room? Your motives behind putting this or that label are none of my concern. What interests me is: was it technically possible to buy a boost before the token, and did people do it?

Technical capability has nothing to do with it. This is you simply moving goalposts in an effort to assert that all games are P2W or some other such statement. Are you going to pretend that no one who has ever bought or sold gold in this game prior to the token has been banned for doing so?

[Frosteye]

boosting was ingame over DECADE before token...

Yes, but not this bad. In fact it wasn't even that bad originally with the wow token, until they changed it to convert directly to Blizzard Balance

Prior, most boosts were in $USD and were under the table. Now it's everywhere.

[Rageonit]

Technical capability has nothing to do with it. This is you simply moving goalposts in an effort to assert that all games are P2W or some other such statement. Are you going to pretend that no one who has ever bought or sold gold in this game prior to the token has been banned for doing so?

No, I don't care whether all games are P2W or not. I also don't care about putting labels and condemning developers.
If I go into arena, or compete in any other area of the game, against players who, in one way or another, bought their "power", I don't care whether they did it in an endorsed way, or not endorsed way. For me, the end result is the same.
But since you're more on a witch hunt here, I understand why for you the result might not be the same.

[Lochton]

Developer endorsement makes all the difference when making a determination. Citing methods that historically could have resulted in account suspension, or methods that completely circumvent in-game systems really aren't part of the discussion.

Well, it isn't yet it is.

The fact that there are people willing to do a trade for you to advance faster than the average person could be considered Pay2Win.

But if we do make it developer endorsed, then we're at October 2006, then.

Yes, but not this bad. In fact it wasn't even that bad originally with the wow token, until they changed it to convert directly to Blizzard Balance

Prior, most boosts were in $USD and were under the table. Now it's everywhere.

Eh, that is arguable. (the under the table part, I mean)

I recall people auctioning off boost seats for raids, selling boosts for gold or items - or other services (crafting, etc), I recall seeing links on general chats and trade chats and defense chat for boosting sites (and gold sellers) where they advertised that they could either A: Control your account for you, B: take you with them for gold, or C: take real money for it. There were multiple advertisements sporting good ratings and 24/7 support, and the ability to book a boost as if it was an appointment.

Luckily, this died out slowly, and then really fast with the token, instead we not have organized groups of people in Discord communities willing to offer a boost, or trade gold for gold, or gold for real money.

The token just made it slightly safer for people, there are still scamming twats but you are not as much at risk as you used to be.

[Soikona]

You could do this from October 2006, with TCG loot (BoE's) for gold, which just made P2W exclusive to the people with even more money. The token is inclusive for everyone to make use of, either for game-time or gold from a player. It does not create gold, nor do you buy gold from Blizzard with it. You buy tradeable game-time, a method that in the past was breaking the ToS but now with less chance of scam or hacked accounts.

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Well, it is not really advertised either. It was heavily advertised in the past by 3rd party people, and Blizzard scooted in with a safer method that has a benefit for both the seller and the buyer.

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I recall in Vanilla and TBC mostly, they had mostly moved when Wrath came, but if you were on a PvP server (in my case, an RPpvp server) then you could go to Ratchet as Horde, and start farming easy kills, there would always be 20-50 LVL 3-10 characters waiting for someone to pick up their order of gold, or to trade gold between accounts. Commonly, you would see a few max-level accounts arrive, and slowly getting stripped down and whored out as a piggy bank till they had no gold or items anymore.

Later on, for Wrath, you would find them in Tanaris, or another place with neutral availability but away from too many people. In Cataclysm you could find them back in Ratchet or right outside Stormwind and Orgrimmar, during MoP, it was Ratchet or Booty Bay that they were easily found, in WoD the same, in Legion, the numbers were going really low to the part where you knew they were now using higher leveled accounts, most likely hacked, so do trades safer and faster so they could keep up the farming because the token put pressure on them. I have not seen many gold trade accounts after Legion, I spotted a few in BFA, and some recently in Shadowlands.

People break the ToS because there is an income to break the ToS, where there is a market, there is a vendor.

Just replying to my parts about TCG and advertising, editing on phone is annoying!

Regarding TGC, you do have a point. I still think it’s different enough however, because you could buy a TCG for yourself and not just of the purpose to sell it. Tokens don’t have that which I think makes it a difference. Maybe not by much, but I think it’s enough of one. I don’t really have a problem with the token or anything, but I do agree with the P2W side more so than the other side just because you can use gold to buy looters in boosts. It’s P2W with extra steps in my eyes.

For advertising, I meant Blizzard advertising their own tokens, not gold sellers. That’s my bad.

[Pratt]

Obviously pay 2 win. You're all just arguing semantics.

[Soikona]

Advertised how? Are you trying to say this company should have watched aside while dickhead-Jack-company is selling gold and players buy it? You ban 10 bots and 100 come up. You ban their website and 10 just came up. Please tell me more efficient way to tackle this gold selling issue than the current where a game owned by company x, sells currency for that said game.
Please do, but don’t come up with ”well i dont know how but not this way”. Come up with something.

And once again pay to win how? Players selling you boosts? I’ve said it 50 times in this marvelous thread thst you pick any game and I will find you a booster. You name it, and I will pay for you for playing it for me, getting that achievement or whatever.

Read my response above.

[Lochton]

Just replying to my parts about TCG and advertising, editing on phone is annoying!

Do not fret. I hate editing MMO-C posts on the phone as well.

Regarding TGC, you do have a point. I still think it’s different enough however, because you could buy a TCG for yourself and not just of the purpose to sell it. Tokens don’t have that which I think makes it a difference. Maybe not by much, but I think it’s enough of one. I don’t really have a problem with the token or anything, but I do agree with the P2W side more so than the other side just because you can use gold to buy looters in boosts. It’s P2W with extra steps in my eyes.

Well, if all the TCG items are just BoP it wouldn't be included in P2W unless you believe in "visual advantages" but it is the part that some TCG loot is made specifically with trading in mind (BoE's).

For advertising, I meant Blizzard advertising their own tokens, not gold sellers. That’s my bad.

Well, Blizzard doesn't advertise their tokens, though. That is one of the interesting things. Considering how hostile and invasive 3rd parties were, and we're talking real players and 'companies' trying to pawn off what they can.

[VinceVega]

Is anyone actually felling anything about these so called P2W mechanics? How many people can acutally afford that? Do you know how many tokens you have to buy to evne get into a full mythic run? And we don't even speak about the HARD finite amount of people the game can carry via tokens.

How many guilds are actually able to carry someone through it? How many people can carry you in PvP to Gladiator?

Saying wow is pure P2W is just stupid. There is not just P2W and not P2W. Do you really think wow is like those games where i can pay 100€ and get a full equipped character in turn? If yes... leave i guess. Because that is not how it works.
Wow is P2W if you are frekaing rich and you have nothing else to spend your money on. Because you probably need a high 4 digit amount of "money" to get enough runs in mythic to actually get equipped.

And before anyone jumps in: Yes i know this means it is technically P2W. But the way half the poeple in this thread phrase it is like it is some kind of mobile title you don't have to play anymore.

[Nnyco]

Give it a week and people will be boosting for gold ($wowtoken) and require ___ minimum IO score.

Boosting is a problem because of the WoW token (which blizzard makes $20 vs $15 per subscription off, so they actively support systems that boost wow token sales)

Because boosting didnt exist before token.

[Rageonit]

@VinceVega
People who are eager to condemn Blizzard for turning WoW into "P2W" are not interested in practicalities - the option is there, therefore WoW is P2W. It's so very obvious many people here have a clear agenda...

[P for Pancetta]

i love how you swoop in, dont bother to read any of the previous discusion, state your OPINION as a fact and claim others delusional
you need some serious reality check my dude, bcs seems like you are the one delusional...

When you see a bunch of children arguing over something trivial you don't step in and join them. you break them up and clarify the situation to them (or you just let them be). These are not children but grown ass people. People are not having an argument of good faith here. This discussion has no value.

My opinion about p2w is as much an opinion as saying a cow is an animal. We invented words to describe things, and the words Pay 2 Win perfectly describe certain features about wow.

[Rageonit]

Design: SL is actually designed for the people with gold, I even remember back then, how expensive was that mount from Argus "Army of the Light" that used to cost 333k or something like that, and also had a reputation requirement. Is clear how Blizzard enjoy using these "Mount baits" to make people buy gold from Tokens

That's a weird take, considering most SL cosmetics are hidden behind Anima grind - and you can't really buy Anima for gold. Blizzard are dum-dums, they could've earned so much more...

[tacoloco]

I don't care if it is or isn't P2W. I log in, I do whatever stuff I feel like doing and I log out. I don't spend any time thinking about how other
people are playing the game. It's wasted energy. I used to care. But since I've stopped caring about other people's gameplay, or even what
Blizzard is doing, I'm much happier.

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My opinion about p2w is as much an opinion as saying a cow is an animal. We invented words to describe things, and the words Pay 2 Win perfectly describe certain features about wow.

This poster knows.

[SoulSoBreezy]

Here's my take as someone whose old job was to enforce (and sometimes write) rules that had to do with games that had p2w attributes:
Bonafide "p2w" means the paying user can gain an advantage over non paying players that the non paying player could not overcome in any scenario.

Here's a clear but very low impact hypothetical example:

WoW gives you 4 more bag slots if you have an authenticator. IF the authenticator wasn't digital, as in you had to purchase the physical one that costs 5 bucks or so, that's an example of p2w.
A really shitty one, but yeah.

But there're better examples:

If mythic level gear was purchasable in the in game shop BEFORE season 1 of shadowlands began, that's p2w.
If mythic level gear was purchasable in the in game shop DAY 1 of season 1, that's p2w.
If it was purchasable say, after the RWF was complete, that would NOT be p2w because by this time there're other non-paying ways to obtain said gear.

Again, the major takeaways are that it's facilitated by a game shop and it provides an impossible-to-overcome advantage at the time of availability. Most any other examples (like the wow token) wouldn't fall under p2w. So no, WoW isn't p2w, it just has a lot of revenue pipelines (sub, digital goods, virtual currency) that many aren't comfortable with because reasons.

[Drusin]

P2W means different things to different people so you're always going to have conflict in threads like these. To me there is no P2W in wow.

[Azerox]

P2W is mostly that you get an advantage not able to get by playing.
But imo Wow has gone p2w in a certain way. Letting boosters do their thing and provide tokens.
Atm if you see some1 with nice gear/title/mount whatever, its a big question if they got it by skill.
Its the same what is wrong with the world, new gen dont want to put efford in anything anymore.
Im glad i have been arround mmorpgs for 20 years and had the best time. Deez kids ruined it.

[Rageonit]

It looks like this source says it can be exploited by paying someone else gold to get carried on Mythics and Raids:
https://gamerant.com/world-warcraft-...ys-farm-anima/

Dont try to fool Blizzard there. They made everything "Money-Possible" my friend.

I encourage you to try to get all the Anima cosmetics by farming Mythics and Raids (in boost groups). Let us know later how much time did it cost you - and of course money. Personally, I think it would be super interesting to see how many people actually pay $$$ to farm Anima this way. Do you know at least one? Just curious.

[Cuppy]

When you see a bunch of children arguing over something trivial you don't step in and join them. you break them up and clarify the situation to them (or you just let them be). These are not children but grown ass people. People are not having an argument of good faith here. This discussion has no value.

My opinion about p2w is as much an opinion as saying a cow is an animal. We invented words to describe things, and the words Pay 2 Win perfectly describe certain features about wow.

Except in this discussion. I say cow is a human because it has eyes, ears, brain, an organ which pumps blood into its body. Just like a human. Its human.
You can explain me it is not human, but isnt that just semantics and arguing for the sakes of arguing?
I’ve played the game for 17 years, havent bought gold once. Havent bought a boost once.
Why am I here telling everyone it is not pay to win?
My brother has played 17 years too, he has 2 million gold. Never played AH and I think he never even uses it, doesnt buy anything. Has 30k achievement points, near 500 mounts. Never bought token or gold or a boost. Now that is some facts, and that is a fucking living proof that the game is not pay to win, but you dense mot***********rs dismiss all I said, and say it is pay to win because you CAN use your goddamn money for some irrelevant stupid shit like a cool mount, transmog or an achievement or BoE item in AH.
You havent even seen a pay to win if you say wow is one.


And just to avoid infraction: *********** = hwingedlove