Is WoW Pay 2 Win?

[Echocho]

I think that the P2W in WoW is great. I can buy a few tokens, buy boosts with it and get great gear without having to nolife the game and then I can spend my free time kicking ass in PvP, easily winning against those that can't afford to buy gear via the token.

[Relapses]

I think that the P2W in WoW is great. I can buy a few tokens, buy boosts with it and get great gear without having to nolife the game and then I can spend my free time kicking ass in PvP, easily winning against those that can't afford to buy gear via the token.

Yes Alex, I'll take "Hyperbolic things that definitely didn't happen," for $1,000 please.

[epigramx]

I think that the P2W in WoW is great. I can buy a few tokens, buy boosts with it and get great gear without having to nolife the game and then I can spend my free time kicking ass in PvP, easily winning against those that can't afford to buy gear via the token.

I like it for not paying Blizzard anything, since I enjoy playing the AH anyway. But I would never buy a gameplay service from other players; for my way of thinking it would be considerably worse that even receiving it for free; it would prove to me that I'm incapable to do something and if I'm really incapable to do something then I feel it is dirty to have that reward.

[Indigenously Abled]

No. Many people with a mountain of gold have a hobby to play the auction house; they have multiple accounts; they know how to control or half-control entire realms' economies.

And MoP is nothing; I could control a medium size realm's economy in Cata and I knew others that did it for years before that; though I never bought any player service in my life.

The prices paid were beyond the scope of any conceivable one-person operation. We had dozens of AH bots that basically ran medium and low-pop server economies into the ground for years, and they never got CLOSE to the filthy stacks these people were paying. Hundreds of millions of gold, into the billion+ range, when people on reddit were dick-measuring over dozens of millions being top-tier.

[epigramx]

The prices paid were beyond the scope of any conceivable one-person operation. We had dozens of AH bots that basically ran medium and low-pop server economies into the ground for years, and they never got CLOSE to the filthy stacks these people were paying. Hundreds of millions of gold, into the billion+ range, when people on reddit were dick-measuring over dozens of millions being top-tier.

I question the validity of it, since I've been around gold making communities on and off since Cata and hundreds of millions were unheard of even from cheaters years ago (barring a tiny minority of course but I wouldn't consider 10 or 40 people (or sweatshops of bots) in this game any sample that matters).

The most impressive thing I know it's confirmed is that a few world-first guilds now have around a billion or more gold but there has been inflation since back then anyway.

[rhorle]

Hell if the misdirectors wanted to push that position further they could claim everything in life is "pay to win" since you could pay anyone to play for you but that extreme but very doable example proves how moot their argument is; nobody should care what can be stretched to be technically "pay to win"; the point is that since it's with the Blizzard's blessing now and the shop has a mountain of products: it's rampant.

So if no one should stretch what it means to be pay to win then the token is not pay to win. Because just having gold doesn't do anything. You have to stretch it to the BoE's, the carries, and whatever else that you can get with gold in order to make it pay to win.

It also amusing that you say no one cared to get gold "back then" because there was no Activision Blizzard shop to buy games. Why is it then that gold sellers used to glitch/hack so they could spell messages with corpses? Because people were buying gold and people wanted gold even before it had a way to convert it to Blizzard gift cards.

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Nobody told you that it was not pay to win in part; the entire point of my post was it was pay to win in part.

In order for it to be pay to win in part the other part has to not be pay to win. Otherwise it would fully be pay to win. Lol.

[Soon-TM]

Out of curiosity, for those advocating that WoW is not P2W, what is winning in WoW?

It is possible to drop a huge amount of money into tokens and trade it to clear M Raids or being at the top bracket in PvP. Isn't that considered winning? You are utilizing other players, yes, but you are doing it by spending real money.

And if that that does not qualify as winning in WoW, what is? What would be considered winning.

There is no 'winning' in WoW as in e.g. an old school arcade game. From this premise, we should conclude that WoW cannot possibly be P2W, ever - Blizz could hence sell full Mythic sets at the store, since technically you aren't winning anything by buying a full Mythic set, are you? What about selling power potions, or items that boost your chances of getting drops from raid bosses? Again, you wouldn't be winning anything with such "purchases".

Am I doing it right?

[Skylarking]

It isn't Korean mmo levels of p2w, since that is how they design their games primarily. However I would call wow half p2w. You can't buy yourself through the game directly from blizzard but you can from players which of course isn't traditional p2w but it is p2w nonetheless.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Exactly, all people paying cash can do is try to be on par with people playing normally or paying for carries purely with gold. There's no special gear or buffs you can pay cash for to elevate you above the best non-paying players like p2w games have.

You can pay real money for gold, and you can pay gold for carries that get you that gear. It seems your definition of "pay to win" is that players can pay to get items that are more powerful than what free players can get, and aside from a couple of fringe games from 5 years ago that nobody plays, that's not true any more.

In gacha games, free players can work their way up to the level of whales over several months by putting in the work and saving up their currency. Whales can buy it right away.

So let me ask you this, if gacha games allow you to either work for your achievements and gear, or pay to skip right to them, how is WoW any different? You can either put in the work yourself with your guild, or you can just swipe your card and get carried to the same gear and achievements that the top raiders have.

When I presented this argument to others, their answer was always that it wasn't pay to win because the people paying "Skipped the experience of playing the game" and that earning your own achievements was the true "winning".

So tell me, why is one game where you can pay for all the gear and achievements right away or work for them over several months considered pay to win, but another game, where you can pay for gear and achievements or work for them, is not considered pay to win?

WoW is on the level of a gacha game at the moment for how easy it is to just open your wallet and buy everything that top raiders and PVPers have. The only argument people have left is that they didn't "earn" those things, so it's not "winning".

It's basically the last bastion of pretending that the only thing that matters in a game is whether or not you put in the work yourself.

You can argue all day, all night, all week and all year about the definition of "winning". But that discussion is pointless.

Blizzard directly sanctioning the buying of gold for real money has compromised the integrity of the game. Achievements and gear mean far less than they used to because someone can buy them and even claim they put in the work themselves, and you'll never know the difference.

If you enjoy WoW in its current state, that's fine. If you and your guild are having fun clearing content, that's fine. But don't delude yourself into believing that WoW token and boosting have not utterly demolished the integrity of the game and effectively made it

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It isn't Korean mmo levels of p2w, since that is how they design their games primarily. However I would call wow half p2w. You can't buy yourself through the game directly from blizzard but you can from players which of course isn't traditional p2w but it is p2w nonetheless.

I've also never understood this argument. "You're paying other players for gold".

No, the money being paid goes to Blizzard. WoW token is basically the same as the old time "Company stores" during the industrial era where companies didn't pay workers in actual money, but in credits. WoW token is only good inside of the Blizzard sphere. It's not actual money. All real money is going to Blizzard. Just because you can trade for game time or hearthstone cards doesn't change the fact that all the money is still ending up in Blizzard's hands.

[Relapses]

If you enjoy WoW in its current state, that's fine. If you and your guild are having fun clearing content, that's fine. But don't delude yourself into believing that WoW token and boosting have not utterly demolished the integrity of the game and effectively made it

Yeah, fuck those guys for ::checks notes:: enjoying the game without acknowledging that it's been ruined by the WoW token. May I ask: Why does hating WoW need to be a personality defining trait for you?

[Indigenously Abled]

Yeah, fuck those guys for ::checks notes:: enjoying the game without acknowledging that it's been ruined by the WoW token. May I ask: Why does hating WoW need to be a personality defining trait for you?

Why does hating FFXIV need to be a personality defining trait for you?

If only they'd Wholesome 100 like FFXIV and put 600 items on the cash shop instead.

Get a hobby.

[Relapses]

Why does hating FFXIV need to be a personality defining trait for you?



Get a hobby.

Where am I hating on FFXIV? Did I miss something?

edit: This might be the first time in recorded history somebody with an anime avatar has been accused of hating FFXIV.

[Indigenously Abled]

Where am I hating on FFXIV? Did I miss something?

edit: This might be the first time in recorded history somebody with an anime avatar has been accused of hating FFXIV.

A cursory glance through your post history shows more than a passive disdain for the game and its fans. Let's not pretend here.

[Relapses]

A cursory glance through your post history shows more than a passive disdain for the game and its fans. Let's not pretend here.

I have a passive disdain for FFXIV fans with nothing better to do with their free time than constantly remind everybody on a WoW forum that their preferred method of wasting time slaying internet dragons for imaginary loot is somehow superior. I don't actually hate the game itself, I realize it's not my cup of tea so I don't really talk much about it (except when it's relevant to the topic of discussion).

[Zodiark]

Yeah Just to chime in. I've read a bit in this thread about weather or not wow is P2W. I've seen protractors and detractors on both sides.
I personally think that the wow token was a bane on the game. It's produced some truly toxic players and situations where less scrupulus people have used the easy to obtain wow gold from tokens to purchase more than just items and Boosts but also used to buy people in general. What I mean is that I've literally seen people use said tokens to sway others to their side. An example would be there was a guy in our guild who was in charge of recruitment. He would often recruit select people and then chat them up and make them feel "welcome", by offering to "help" them with various "gifts". Money, items, mounts, etc. It became more and more apparent that this individual was using these tokens as a means of leverage. When some drama invariably occurred one day he left the guild and took many of those whom he had bought off with him. But we didn't even realize the taint had gone so deep in the first place. We had a decently sized guild on our server prior to this and were fairly active. Afterwards the guild almost nearly collapsed. As people see others leaving in droves they too thought that where there is smoke there is fire so some left for no good reason because of this.
See this fellow in question never really earned his wealth through skill or guile. He purchased it so to him it had no meaning other than to provide him some leverage. Perhaps he wasn't wealthy in real life who knows.

Aside from this there is a very real principle to spending money to catch-up as some have said. It's opening Pandora's box. Because everyone will have different limits to how much they can spend. Some who have spending addictions will just overly purchase even if they can't really afford it. '
Others may be wealthy enough in real life where a few hundred bucks doesn't even bother them.

So the message has become clear. To be on the perceived winning side, you have to either invest a goodly amount of time and effort. Or pay for a few boosts. I honestly feel most people these days will opt to just buy those tokens.
The disparity in WoW between casual players and hardcore players, gear-wise is rather large. Whereas in games like GW2 even the top players gear isn't miles ahead of those who play more casual. It's the fun of playing the game that motivates not the gear. Where in WoW the content is as of recent years been stale after a few weeks or so of playing. So the only real carrot for most players is gear or PvP rating or M+ achieves. All of which can be purchased these days with boosts using said tokens.

So is it pay to win? I don't know. But it doesn't feel any better regardless.

[kaminaris]

Nice strawman. Nobody told you that it was not pay to win in part; the entire point of my post was it was pay to win in part.

But it's very unhelpful to misdirect users against the fact that's it's extremely rampant now because of the shop's products.

Not part, fully (according to your measurement of success).

Its rampant because of game design decisions. It's as simple as that. Because of amount of cool stuff that is going away in next patch that is also hard to get.

[epigramx]

Not part, fully (according to your measurement of success).

Allow me to know myself better than an anonymous person on the internet knowing me only on an anonymous account.
I said: it depends a lot on the extend of it. Clearly fewer groups were spamming all the /2s for boosting years ago.

[rhorle]

Allow me to know myself better than an anonymous person on the internet knowing me only on an anonymous account.
I said: it depends a lot on the extend of it. Clearly fewer groups were spamming all the /2s for boosting years ago.

Why does extent matter? It can only be pay to win once a certain percentage of people do it? Carries being more popular now doesn't change things being pay to win. It wasn't even the token that started that upward trend. It was the timed runs of MoP that started it. WoD garrison money print and timed runs continued it. The token came out 4 months after the launch of WoD so it only helped increase the popularity of carries.

[kaminaris]

Allow me to know myself better than an anonymous person on the internet knowing me only on an anonymous account.
I said: it depends a lot on the extend of it. Clearly fewer groups were spamming all the /2s for boosting years ago.

You seems to misunderstand the core problem. Boosting is demand driven so if there is a NEED for boost, supply will increase. You are simply barking at the wrong tree.

There were less boosting groups because demand was practically only for heroic raids (which were easier than current mythic), pvp an later on challenge modes. Now you also have M+ and weekly bingo lottery for gear.

But also /2 was filled with RMT services, now there is none, it was also unusable because of that.

Want to get rid of boosting? Make gear vendor that everyone can acquire with some currency. Remove fomo mounts. Remove weekly lootboxes.

[Raelbo]

You really think the average player farms enough gold to get boosted on the regular? The average player farm so much gold himself and because of that boosting has exploded in tradechat and in LFG channel? Yeah right. Most people dont spend all day farming gold. They have the gold that covers the basis costs of proff stuff and such, but the average player dont run around farming 200k+ gold. Just as most people dont push mythic raiding.

How about we turn this around. Do you believe that the average player is unable to get boosted because of tokens?

The fact is that boosting is an activity practiced by only a small fraction of the playerbase. You have no evidence that it is only, or even mostly people buying gold with tokens that are getting boosted. I have little doubt that some players buy gold with tokens in order to get boosted. But I also know for a fact that many people who get boosted do so without tokens being involved. In fact these people spend some of their gold to buy tokens for gametime.

The fact is that the gold to buy boosts exists with or without tokens. Boosts would therefore happen with or without tokens. For the average player it makes zero difference who is buying those boosts.

As for your assertion about the explosion of boosting services, I think, firstly, that you need to get off your high horse. WoW is an MMO game. The ability to help and be helped by others is an integral part of the game. Boosting is not a crime and never was. So get over it. Yes, I can agree that advertising spam is annoying, but that is a side issue.

Secondly, I don't believe it is fair to 'blame' tokens for boosting. You're simply observing a correlation with no insights into the causation. For a start, boosting has always existed, but the content that people wanted to boosted in was far more limited. It was M+, a relatively new feature that really drove the demand for boosting. Another thing that had a noticeable effect was when Blizzard clarified that boosting for gold was totally ok, a position they were quiet on for many years.

The bronto mount in BfA would never have costed 5 millions if the token wasnt in the game.

That is, at best, speculation on your part, but more likely just plain old BS. Back in BfA while waiting for one of the rare spawns, a bunch of people mounted up on our brutosaurs. Speaking to those guys, only 1 of about 15 of us used tokens to buy it.

Furthermore, of the 8 or so in my guild, I know that all were bought by players who made their money in game. The very idea of spending around $400 for a single mount was just ludicrous to most of us.

Lastly, if you looked at the token price around the time of the brutosaur, there was little indication that it had any significant effect on the sale of tokens.

Prices for various proffesion materials(like legendary crafting materials in SL) would never have the pricetag it does if token wasnt part of the game.

You cannot just make a claim like that without providing evidence. You would have to know how the token has affected the spending habits, not only of those buying gold, but of those selling gold too. You would also need to know what percentage of the market these players constitute.

I reckon that the vast majority of trade going on between players has absolutely nothing to do with tokens. While I have little doubt that the token has been enabler for some players to participate in the market (which is a good thing), there is zero reason to believe that it has had any kind of significant effect on the market. Raiders have always spent gold on buying consumables and materials. The existence of the token is not going to change that. Maybe some would stopped bothering with making the gold themselves and reverted to tokens, but their spending habits would have been unchanged.

The kind of effects you want to believe the token has on the game are what would happen if Blizzard started selling gold directly into the game. The token does not do that. It simply facilitates the transfer of gold already in the game between players without adding any new gold to the world.

You can keep on twisting and turning on this, but the token is nothing else but a cheap p2w feature added by Blizzard.

And you can keep repeating this rhetoric as long as you want, but until you can provide a properly reasoned argument, backed up by actual facts that are relevant to the argument, you're just talking nonsense.

It also doesnt matter that the tokens that are sold are gold from other players, it affect the game badly no matter.

False. The fact that gold is transferred between players is precisely the reason why tokens don't affect the game badly at all.

The fact that MMORPG players actually defend this practice is telling of how far off the genre has become from what it was. Its sad.

What is sad is that some people choose to attack a system that is actually good for everyone because they're too ignorant to know better, and too stubborn to listen to good sense.

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Yes it was. You make more gold, you afford more BoE/crafted gear, your character becomes more powerful, your team becomes more powerful as a result. The winning conditions are more in your favour. It's as simple as that.

Can you give any examples of actual players who, by virtue of tokens, have more gold than the AH barons on any given realm? I thought not.

Source of gold is not relevant. What is relevant that you can buy gold and be ahead of someone who cant buy gold. You buy gold, you buy BoE/crafted gear and you are ahead. It's simple as that.

Your efforts to oversimplify this discussion is why you're not seeing the reality of it. The simple reality that you fail to acknowledge is that all of the richest (as in gold) players in this game acquired their gold in-game without tokens. I have never met someone in this game who got rich (in gold) from selling tokens.

Are you out of your god damn mind? 300k is NOT a trivial amount of gold to make. If it were THEN no one would buy tokens.

You see, asking me if I am out of my god damn mind for stating *reality* simply demonstrates how out of touch you are and why you lack the basic grounding to be participating in the discussion.

Let me be clear. If 300K was as difficult to make as you would have us believe, then no one would be spending that much gold to buy them. The price of tokens is probably the best indicator of how difficult gold is to make in the game because it is literally determined by the price people are prepared to both buy and sell it at.

Go ahead and prove me without a shadow of a doubt that you can make 300k on any day, any server, any faction, on any class.

Stop throwing down these retarded challenges as if they actually mean something. The fact that people are spending 300K on tokens, for a measly $13 of currency usable only on Blizzard products, is the most honest indication of how easy/hard it is to make gold in this gold. Stop acting as if tokens are the only way in which any player can ever hope to get enough gold to do anything of meaning in this game.

Get on Silvermoon-EU, join Oblivion Boosting Community discord and ask them how many Mythic CN clears they sold. It's real.

Dude, my assertion was in respect of where players who are boosted got their gold, not whether boosting happens. Again, you're not answering to what I am saying because you lack an actual argument.

Doesn't matter. You buy gold and be ahead of someone who cant buy gold. You buy gold, you buy boosts and you are ahead. It's simple as that.

And if you play the game normally you're ahead of those who buy tokens. What is your point? That tokens allow you to get ahead of the worst players in WoW, who are only in that position because they simply can't be bothered to try? Who the hell cares? They are utterly irrelevant.

p2w is when paying becomes mandatory in order to compete. And that is certainly not the case in WoW.

Doesn't matter. You buy gold and be ahead of someone who cant buy gold. You buy gold, you buy boosts and you are ahead. It's simple as that.

That is an entirely inadequate and unsatisfactory qualifier for determining if the feature is p2w.

For a feature to qualify as p2w there must exist an inextricable association between paying and winning. Now you are welcome to define "winning" however you want, but unless paying is necessary to achieve that achieve that, at least without significant effort, then the feature can not be called p2w.

And in so long as that the gold obtained via tokens remains linked to another player who is selling that gold, tokens can never become a requirement of achieving anything in this game. This is dictated by 2 factors:

1) There will always be other players who have managed to acquire at least that amount of gold (and realistically a lot more) to be able to buy the token off the AH.
2) Only a small portion of the of the playerbase will ever be able to use tokens as a means of acquiring gold - because at the other end you need players to supply the gold. And the more people try to buy gold with tokens, the less gold they will get.

It's "simple" as that.

We also have no evidence that they do not mess with token supply.

That is a non-argument. We have no evidence that they do either. Again I'll say it: Resorting to that level of argumentation says a lot about the weakness of your argument.

Look, obviously if it came out that Blizzard were selling more tokens than they were putting onto the AH, then I would agree that this is p2w. But it should be pretty clear that my argument applies to tokens operating as advertised.

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You are literally trying to redefine what p2w means

NO. That is what YOU are guilty of.

Where are you getting your definition from anyway? I got mine by looking at sites like the Urban dictionary and by reading up on the history of pay 2 win. It seems however that everyone on MMO Champion believes it is their prerogative to come up with their own definitions that have no relation or grounding in the practice as used in the gaming industry at all.

Your description of "how p2w works" isn't remotely accurate. Paying $60 for a massive level boost is purchasing player power and is therefore p2w. Just because you refuse to say anything negative about WoW doesn't mean the game isn't p2w.

Oh I could say plenty of negative things about WoW. In fact it seems that you just refuse to say anything positive about the game.

Nothing in my argument has anything to even do with my views or feelings on the game. That is your bias, not mine. My argument is clearly grounded in a strict and accurate understanding of what p2w means and then trying to assess whether the token in WoW meets that definition. Your argument on the other hand seems entirely about panel-beating the definition of p2w to fit the token.

I have said this before in the "is WoW p2w" debate that I believe a lot of people want to try and argue that WoW is p2w because of the perception that p2w is bad. And yet they will then proceed to come up with a definition for p2w that is lacking in all the attributes that makes being p2w bad in the first place. It's pretty disingenuous tbh