Does extra "Buy gold and pay it to boosters" step make any difference at the end? Again, it's just illusion, that it's not Blizzard themselves, who sell them directly. Result is exactly the same. Blizzard get all money anyway, because players can't withdraw them (unless it's RMT), and players get gear.
I don't care about Wow 11.0, if it's not solo-MMO. No half-measures - just perfect xpack.
Who fucking cares about mogs. You want high end gear do the work. You want to buy appearances fine pay the money.
We're all newbs, some are just more newbier than others.
Just a burned out hardcore raider turned casual.
I'm tired. So very tired. Can I just lay my head on your lap and fall asleep?
#TeamFuckEverything
If I buy a car and drive it away it is one step away from me stealing it but that step stops me from going to prison. Yes that extra step matters a lot.
If players buying things from other players is pay to win then MMOs were always pay to win so this entire debate is pointless.
Again another error very common - it does NOT mean gaining an advantage over every single other player in the game, it means gaining an advantage over some people unwilling or unable to pay the fee.
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You say the steps matter, and then immediately remove a step from your "all mmos are p2w" - the step where you instantly exchange money for gold. MANY "p2w" games allow you to buy gems, stones, tokens, or other variations of currencies, which are then used to purchase items/power. This lines up with wow.
Personally I think this is why the token system really isn't that bad. Sure Blizz are skimming odd the top but it makes it a largely player-driven economy where some of us can grind up the gold needed to get shop items without needing to pay any extra cash, and others can "profit" by having their subs, expansions and even other Blizz games paid for.
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I'd much rather play with someone who spends a few quid on a fancy video game hat than a petulant bully who want to destroy other people's enjoyment.
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The easy gold making probably worked better for Blizz as it made the gold-cost of things higher and drove down the price of tokens, so whales would have to buy more tokens to buy things in-game with Blizz taking more cuts on transactions.
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That's the most clear and obvious definition of pay-2-win but with an open game like Wow there's a bit of grey area.
So taking mounts as an example, I personally would never count a cash-only mount as "winning" but to a collector I can certainly see it as being an annoyance having some of your aims locked behind a paywall. Mounts are a poor example (along with the rest of WoW's shop) because it isn't that hard to get them through gold>tokens, but I hope you see my point.
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Personally I look at it as the opposite of casual being formal, so a casual player is one who plays how they want, when they want whereas a non-casual player will have agreed upon times to play certain activities with other players. This definition leaves room for hardcore-casuals who play 15 hours of pet battles a day or only want to unlock Explorer achievements on 50+ characters.
My definition of pay-to-win used to be the all-encompassing, "If I can purchase a level of player power that's totally unobtainable in-game without spending real money, and is necessary to be competitive in said game." Thinking about it has made me tighten that definition a bit. Making it as black-and-white as that is giving it a little too much lenience. Because while I don't think that gold-selling is nearly as bad Blizzard could potentially make the concept of selling player power, it is selling a form of player power. Just having gold is player power; it's like potential energy.
So my general definition for pay-to-win now, as far as it concerns games like WoW, is more along the lines of "If I can purchase player power that I would've had to earn as an objective reward elsewhere." Because that's what "winning" boils down to in the gameplay loop of an MMO, putting forth an in-game effort, receiving a reward in either stats or currency, and using that reward on either more stats and/or currency, to keep the treadmill going, or other fun miscellanea outside of that basic treadmill.
That "other fun miscellanea" can be a reward without being player power. Stuff like transmog and mounts. Emotes, if they go that far. Even so far as to put unique character creation attributes on the store if Blizzard wants to go even further beyond, like if the Night Warrior traits or these incoming new allied race customizations were on the shop. That's not player power, and selling it on the shop isn't pay-to-win.
Gold and gear with stats on it. That's about where the pay-to-win starts and ends. Again, having gold is a form of player power. Gaining more gold is an increase in player power just getting a piece of gear with better stats is. I don't think selling gold would be on the same level as selling gear would be, but to say that selling gold is simply not pay-to-win is giving it a pass that it really doesn't deserve, regardless of whether or not you have a personal problem with it. Selling gear with stats on it is clearer cut, I think. And the stats don't even have to be absolutely better than everything else. They just have to be significant enough to the level of current content to be worth paying money for. So probably about the level of a full set of normal raid gear for the newest tier, I'd probably say. Again, probably not as bad as selling stuff like bottomless flasks, or flasks that are better than the shit you can make in-game, or taking it all the way to its illogical conclusion of selling gear that's straight up better than or equal to Mythic raid gear. But it would be selling player power. And in a game that's all about walking on an endless treadmill of growing in player power, not calling that pay-to-win (or some other magical term that sits somewhere in the limbo between pay-to-win and not pay-to-win that you can use when you want to nicely turn your head and obfuscate the fact that it's some degree of pay-to-win; the term I remember using back when I was one of the people who would do that is 'scam'.) just seems... disingenuous.
Last edited by CalamityHeart; 2021-09-08 at 10:44 AM.
Can anyone link me what we're talking about?
Seems I've been out of the loop for too long
Originally Posted by Mithrilina
Don't get why people bother to work up a heart attack over cosmetic stuff in the store. There's no player power in them, so it doesn't make any difference what so ever on the game play or progression. And anyone can get them, with a huge amount of people running around with it, which makes them common and boring. There's a case to be made about the token, but even removing that would likely do little but make a lot of gold farmers/sellers extremely happy. I mean you see the bot hell that is TBC. Sure, there are bots and spam on retail too, but the amount would explode if the token was removed.
I don’t mind the cash shop if the in game rewards were on the same level of detail. But when a in game item is giving a recolor and cash shop item is giving unique looks. That’s when it feels bad. Looking at you 100 reputations achievement.