Is WoW Pay 2 Win?

[Accendor]

Naw, but Riot does sell stat buff items for real money, so, P2W then?

Which exactly to you mean?

[panda040]

The token is set at 20 dollars because it is game time that they legally permit you to sell in-game, though. It is a win for the seller and the buyer, but Blizzard is not the one offering you the direct winning service.

That is a cop out at best. Blizzard knows what they are doing. They are getting a cut of the gold selling pie. If blizzard wanted to make it so that players could earn game time by farming gold legitimately, then the token would be sold by and vendor and be SOULBOUND. The token could be 5 dollars and offer 5 days game time, the net result is the same. Blizzard made it ok for players buy in game power, but only if they do so through blizzards online cash store.

Another thing that is important to distinguish is what we consider "winning" in wow. I think what most of the playerbase would consider winning would be getting very high end gear and clearing the current raid content on heroic or mythic difficulty. Getting a very high io score in keystones, or gladiator arena rating or higher. These are all achievable with a fat enough wallet all from blizzards cash store. With the exception of rank 1 pvp players. At least their status remains sacred for now.

[Accendor]

The token gives you the option of gold from another player, and you give them 1 month of game time. To make the token P2W would mean it creates the gold for you, but in this case, you are just legally trading game time.

And that changes exactly nothing.

[Tarba]

Maybe I'm nitpicking here but WoW token and boost are more like pay to advance. Skip playtime but you don't really "win" the game. If you had a token in store which could be used to let's say insta kill 1 raid boss per raid THAT would be pay to WIN. Just an example.

But it is really about what is winning in WoW anyways?

I don't know any game with a pay2win like that.

Most pay2win are about buying things that make you stronger. So in wow, buying stuff. Which is buying BOE or gear boost. Thing you can do with real money.

Worldfirst guilds litterally pay tens or hundreds MILLIONS of gold preparing and during the race. They have the same ilevel as people downing weeks later.

In wow it's not as important as in some other games, but it is indeed possible.

[bigbleach]

The token gives you the option of gold from another player, and you give them 1 month of game time. To make the token P2W would mean it creates the gold for you, but in this case, you are just legally trading game time.

The token gives you the option of gold from another player, and you give them 1 month of game time. To make the token P2W would mean it creates the gold for you, but in this case, you are just legally trading game time.

It isn't pay to win. The amount of gold it would take to fully mythic gear a toon would be pretty silly, i highly doubt anyone would actually use the token to do so. Goblins, players who primarily play the AH as their endgame or means/reasoning to play, amass millions every month doing their day to day, without spending any money to even play wow. I'd wager more people spend gold earned outside of the token on boosts/runs than those who buy tokens to buy runs. Blizz could very easily end this by returning the way lockouts worked previously. Allowing players to kill the same boss over and over without getting loot has made this a viable market. If say, 80%% of your raid is locked to a boss, no achievements, no loot, no nothing, for anyone. Boom. Fixed. They could have alts, but it would mostly kill the ability to spam it on heroic. I'm unsure how to tackle the mythic issue. It's always been there. So has the heroic, and the heroic will still be there, but mostly for the first clears of the week. Idk, I'm rambling.

TLDR; Wow is not pay to win. Not even close.

[Stardrift]

Look man if we re gonna grasp at straws here by going by direct textbook definitions and ignore the reality of what each purchase offers in the end then there is no point arguing this.

He's ignoring facts and definitions to stretch the truth lol. Not worth arguing with, as he'd never take into account any of what we're saying here. It's just "I'm right and you're wrong, even if I know I'm wrong". It's just how contrarians are.

[Hellobolis]

TLDR; Wow is not pay to win. Not even close.

is your argument really "its too expensive to be pay to win?"

reminds me of that drama that came out last year about that guy who paid $1000 for a mythic boost and the boosters "forgot" to loot the boss so he didn't get any gear.

[Delever]

It isn't pay to win. The amount of gold it would take to fully mythic gear a toon would be pretty silly, i highly doubt anyone would actually use the token to do so. Goblins, players who primarily play the AH as their endgame or means/reasoning to play, amass millions every month doing their day to day, without spending any money to even play wow. I'd wager more people spend gold earned outside of the token on boosts/runs than those who buy tokens to buy runs. Blizz could very easily end this by returning the way lockouts worked previously. Allowing players to kill the same boss over and over without getting loot has made this a viable market. If say, 80%% of your raid is locked to a boss, no achievements, no loot, no nothing, for anyone. Boom. Fixed. They could have alts, but it would mostly kill the ability to spam it on heroic. I'm unsure how to tackle the mythic issue. It's always been there. So has the heroic, and the heroic will still be there, but mostly for the first clears of the week. Idk, I'm rambling.

TLDR; Wow is not pay to win. Not even close.

The amount of money it takes to get a 5 star character in genshin impact to constellation 6 and also their signature weapon to refinement 5 is astronomical. And yet many people do it. So never doubt the power of a whales wallet. People were whaling in runes of magic and allods when these games were dying. And its the sole reason they still exist as they are now solely funded by these whales. But according to people here the runes in allods are not p2w because you can also farm them to lvl 10 in game. It just might take you 6years compared to a whale spending 5 mins and 5 tesla cars worth of money. But it aint p2w I guess for the avg MMO-C poster

[Rageonit]

Yes. It is 100% pay to win. Buy max level, buy gold, buy PvE/PvP boost. Win.

There are no PvE/PvP boosts in this game. There are only people who will take advantage of your inability to find friends/form your own groups. By paying them, you're not making the game any easier; they still have to make up for your bad gear or bad gameplay. You could just try finding a guild and asking people there if they can help you, and more often than not get the same treatment free of charge.

[Tzunami]

Any game is pay to win if you are willing to spend real money....

Like I could buy the new assassins creed game then pay a person to beat the game for me and then scream at the top of my lungs “pay to win!!!”

I would not say wow is a pay to win game.
Yes you can buy boes. Those also drop in raid and are plentiful for anyone that plays.

[DechCJC]

Any game is pay to win if you are willing to spend real money....

Like I could buy the new assassins creed game then pay a person to beat the game for me and then scream at the top of my lungs “pay to win!!!”

I would not say wow is a pay to win game.
Yes you can buy boes. Those also drop in raid and are plentiful for anyone that plays.

Handing someone a controller and paying them to beat a game for you is not the same as a game having built in systems that advance you with cash.

[Hellobolis]

I would not say wow is a pay to win game.
Yes you can buy boes. Those also drop in raid and are plentiful for anyone that plays.

you can buy everything in wow if you have a big enough wallet.

maybe the only thing you can't buy is something like world first/top50 kills on bosses.

[Delever]

Any game is pay to win if you are willing to spend real money....

Like I could buy the new assassins creed game then pay a person to beat the game for me and then scream at the top of my lungs “pay to win!!!”

I would not say wow is a pay to win game.
Yes you can buy boes. Those also drop in raid and are plentiful for anyone that plays.

No It wouldnt. It would be pay to win if the game itself provided you with the means of beating it directly or indirectly. Eg; you can pay to buy in game currency from the store which you then spend to buy better gear which makes the game very easy to beat even if you are horrendous.
I m pretty sure there is actually an assassins creed installment that sells weapons and gear in the cash shop funnily enough but I m not 100% sure. Unity I think?

[panda040]

Any game is pay to win if you are willing to spend real money....

Like I could buy the new assassins creed game then pay a person to beat the game for me and then scream at the top of my lungs “pay to win!!!”

I would not say wow is a pay to win game.
Yes you can buy boes. Those also drop in raid and are plentiful for anyone that plays.

Yes, believe it or not, if you are paying to empower your character in an MMO with real life money that gives you an advantage over other players who do not fork out cash.... it's pay to win by definition. Why is this so hard to understand?

[Delever]

You guys are confusing one thing also here with the direct gear buying.
Blizzard knows that direct selling of gear is the red flag that both sides of this coin universally agree on and thus will (likely) never make it a thing. The only reason they are not doing that at this point is for PR reasons.
By selling you the token which they very well know you will use to buy boosts and gear they get away with p2w elements, still making you pay a sub and keeping their reputation on this intact by masking it under the guise of "oh but now you can play without spending a dime cause someone else will pay your sub for you"

[panda040]

It isn't pay to win. The amount of gold it would take to fully mythic gear a toon would be pretty silly, i highly doubt anyone would actually use the token to do so. Goblins, players who primarily play the AH as their endgame or means/reasoning to play, amass millions every month doing their day to day, without spending any money to even play wow. I'd wager more people spend gold earned outside of the token on boosts/runs than those who buy tokens to buy runs. Blizz could very easily end this by returning the way lockouts worked previously. Allowing players to kill the same boss over and over without getting loot has made this a viable market. If say, 80%% of your raid is locked to a boss, no achievements, no loot, no nothing, for anyone. Boom. Fixed. They could have alts, but it would mostly kill the ability to spam it on heroic. I'm unsure how to tackle the mythic issue. It's always been there. So has the heroic, and the heroic will still be there, but mostly for the first clears of the week. Idk, I'm rambling.

TLDR; Wow is not pay to win. Not even close.

It is pay to win, you basically just said, yea its pay to win, but you have to pay alot. SO yes it is. Also boosts costs different amounts on different servers/regions, so it varies.

And just for clarification, if the gold is earned in game and they pay a guild to carry them, i am 100% ok with that. The issue is when i can pull out my credit card and exchange tokens for 1M gold and get achieves/gear I otherwise would be unable to obtain.

[Kumorii]

Are you talking about WoW or about Riot? For Riot I can not, because they are not offering a real P2W service (which was the point of my whole argument).
For WoW sure I can, the WoW token as it provides the gold.

Paying for heroes who are part of Meta or new heroes that are freshly released who might be OP sure is more P2W than anything WoW has.
If you are new and don't shell out money for heroes you have to be lucky on free rotations and/or chests you get. I recently started playing and I got some heroes but it's not exactly going quickly. If I shell out money though I get all heroes I need.

[DechCJC]

You guys are confusing one thing also here with the direct gear buying.
Blizzard knows that direct selling of gear is the red flag that both sides of this coin universally agree on and thus will (likely) never make it a thing. The only reason they are not doing that at this point is for PR reasons.
By selling you the token which they very well know you will use to buy boosts and gear they get away with p2w elements, still making you pay a sub and keeping their reputation on this intact by masking it under the guise of "oh but now you can play without spending a dime cause someone else will pay your sub for you"

It hurts me but I genuinely don’t believe the opposing side will think buying gear is P2W, since the gear is achievable in game. The definition that P2W only exists if you can’t otherwise obtain the reward given implies that Blizzard could sell any in-game item and it wouldn’t be P2W.

They would only think it’s P2W if the store gear had a higher ilvl.

[mbit]

Paying for heroes who are part of Meta or new heroes that are freshly released who might be OP sure is more P2W than anything WoW has.
If you are new and don't shell out money for heroes you have to be lucky on free rotations and/or chests you get. I recently started playing and I got some heroes but it's not exactly going quickly. If I shell out money though I get all heroes I need.

lvl boost to swap to meta class / race change for racial is same. It happened way less frequent though with wow.

[Azerate]

If you really want to push the logical boundaries, then almost every game can be pay to win because you can just pay someone to beat it for you. So unless you're in a curated LAN environment and you are looked at by some official moderator, there is always a way to cheat with money.

For example, 2005-2007's Runescape had absolutely no MTX, and for a while did not even have trading between players, but people still cheated by hiring people to play their accounts. I personally had a friend who was being paid by some affluent lawyer to traing his account for him.

So in that way wow is and has always been pay to win. Sure, you could argue that these days the game makes doing that easier, but does that change much? WoW still has the vast, vast majority of items and progression soulbound, so you can't just buy the gold and buy those things. You can definitely give money to another person to take you to a raid that you normally wouldn't be able to get in, but that's an outside of the game activity.

Basically, if you honestly call WoW "pay 2 win" you've probably never seen many popular mobiles games where you can just downright buy most powerful items, units (in strategy games), etc. I even saw a comment here somewhere "according to your definition the only p2w games are mobile games..."... YES! Exactyl! The vast majority of really p2w games are on mobile. There are barely any PC games, especially the ones that are popular in US/EU, that have actual direct p2w.

In 2021 games have additional in-game purchases, and it's not changing any time soon. It's high time people got over it. These purchases existing does not make the games bad instantly and does not make playing them worthless.