Is the level 90 boost pay to win?

[Arvandor]

generally in an rpg, every xp gaining with money is a p2w..

in reality these half brainers with buyable chars win nothing! they lose all the experience from leveling..

these ogog anti hereos will never understand this.. and blizzard cry for every buyable char idiot: STRIKE!

[Mukki]

It's pay to win in its truest form during 5.4.7. I'd be softer on this if the level cap was 100, but since we have potentially upt o another 9 months of Pandaria, yes it is pay to win. You're literally being taken to the level cap. Anyone who says otherwise is in denial.

[Deleted]

This is why I created another thread with a more to the point subject which was locked by the mods. This one is poorly named as everyone is just blathering about the semantics of what pay to win means instead of focusing the issue.

Gief link. could we perhaps ask mod to close this and re-open the other one? Its kinda pointless to discuss the meaning of term instead of the real issue.

[Tiev]

People who reach max level are not winning anything. Therefore, it's not pay to Win.

[Hayro1]

Buying cosmetic items is pay to win. Plain and simple.

In an MMO everyone is playing together. Players earn things by putting in the effort in-game. Just because something doesn't effect combat doesn't mean it's not pay to win.

Please never respond again, your logic is incredibly flawed beyond belief if you think cosmetic items is pay to win. The boost isn't P2W, but the selling of it via the store is, if you can't see why then that says A LOT.

[silvercentric]

Gief link. could we perhaps ask mod to close this and re-open the other one? Its kinda pointless to discuss the meaning of term instead of the real issue.

I don't know if you can view it, I believe the moderator hid it.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...bout-your-game

Anyway, the focus of my arguement was not on whether or not WoW was pay to win, but rather what does it speak about your game when you're offering a service, for cash, that allows you to skip content.

For those too lazy to read that, at least let me pose this question to you: Why pay for 90? Why not some other way to get a 90? Why not an in-game solution?

If you're content with players skipping content (which I understand given it can be tedious, especially for veterans) why not have an in-game solution? There could be a small quest chain that is account wide, has a 1 month cooldown that applies the effect. That's not a end-all solution, just an idea.

Why not something like that?

[Hayro1]

Uh don't know about you, but I make more than $60 an hour. So not spending 4-5 days is not my idea of being ripped off.

Not sure if trolling but 99% of the people on these forums make nowhere near that much, and I highly doubt you do.

[Noonanz]

I wish people would have to post a picture of there self when making a post. If you think 480 greens is pay to win, then you're crazy. What did they win? A shot at going into LFR? Give me a break... Some peoples kids I tell ya.

[Hayro1]

I hardly think anyone makes close to that amount of money on these forums

As for the boost, it is not meant for MoP content, they are just giving it to us early. It is no different then if you RAF yourself (or a friend) , get to 80 and grant levels to another character, only this time instead of 40 levels, it is 90, there is no difference.

When WoD launches will people still think it is P2W when it doesn't grant you the level cap any longer ?

I hate leveling, no matter how fast or long it takes. I only really have time to play one class anyways, so I will most likely never buy a 90.

Going from 1-90 in a second (not the boost, I consider that a perk of buying the expansion, albeit they charge you 10 bucks for it, whatever) via the store is 100% P2W, you're bypassing most (all of it right now) of the leveling in a second. In a level/power-driven game.

[DechCJC]

I hate it, but it's definitely not pay to win. It gives you the advantage in saving time, but it doesn't give you any combat prowess above any other players. So no, it's not pay to win.

[Hayro1]

I wish people would have to post a picture of there self when making a post. If you think 480 greens is pay to win, then you're crazy. What did they win? A shot at going into LFR? Give me a break... Some peoples kids I tell ya.

Why do people believe the ONLY P2W way is via gear in a level/power-driven MMO? do you even play WoW? lol.

I hate it, but it's definitely not pay to win. It gives you the advantage in saving time, but it doesn't give you any combat prowess above any other players. So no, it's not pay to win.

Buying gear is saving time. Logic denied.

[Deleted]

If you think this is pay to win then you don't know what pay to win is. Go play Champions and then come back here with half an ideal of what pay to win is.

Excellent example actually. Its like buying FOTM champions in LoL. Your class aint op? Buy now the FOTM class for only 60€!
*We might patch it in 2 Months and a new Class will be fotm.

It doesnt include the gear but it covers a major part of the time needed to change chars.

[xindralol]

no. now if it was ie if they offered like the title for killing heroic deathwing (or w/e the curreent boss is), whatever that title was for money that would be cheating imo.
level 90 is no real achievement, especially since all you have to do is accept that first quest and you can ride along just follow the arrow until level 90. hehe
well okay even back in the day, you might have died a lot, but since wow doesn't take away exp for dieing there's no way you can not hit 90 eventually (or 60 back then)

[Deleted]

If you're content with players skipping content (which I understand given it can be tedious, especially for veterans) why not have an in-game solution? There could be a small quest chain that is account wide, has a 1 month cooldown that applies the effect. That's not a end-all solution, just an idea.

Its greed. Pure greed. Everything could be done in game and it is done in other games.

For example Eve online implemented an attribute reset on 1 year cooldown. In Lineage2 you could do huge-ass long quest chain to add second class to your current character. But why would they do it in situation when theres bunch of brainwashed fanboys happily paying for ANYTHING they do? Other companies doesnt have this luxury.

[Deleted]

With the massive amount of beating I get in BGs it almost feels like pay to lose.

[Redpanda]

90 is when the game has just begun


p2w is like maple story

[oldgreg]

Let's be honest now, a major argument people had against it being pay to win was that it did not boost you to max level. Now it does. Since level 90 is maximum level now until WoD comes quite a few months from now, level 90 is end level. The gear you get is enough to get you into LFR, and that is, in my opinion, pay to win. But what is your opinion? Note that I don't care why you think my opinion is wrong, since it's my opinion, it's right for me and that's what matters, I do however care about your opinion on the matter.

No, they might be 90 but they're still bad.

[NathSB]

You have an ilevel of 483, no profs (if you get a new toon from level 1 to 90), about 100g, and some cack bags, then get dumped on the TI with all the damage output of a wet noodle.

I used mine, and I must say, I hardly felt like a "winner".

Hah, this. Luckily I had some mail tokens for my hunter, but TI is still painful.

[blackblade]

Yet as we have seen, there is much more to boosting a 90 than simply experience. Boosted 90s receive a full set of 483 iLevel gear, 150 gold, 4 ember silk bags and nearly 6000 gold worth of flight training. Additionaly, characters higher than 60 have their professions boosted to 90.

A) Generally speaking, players who level to 60 will have some form of riding skill, and the time it takes to go from 0-to-60 on a vanilla account is usually comparable to the time it'd take a level 90 to farm out 600 on two (or three if they use a gathering tradeskill to farm out the mats for two 0-600 skills themselves, and then drop it) tradeskills. (subjective, this is my experience and the actual time might be more or less.)
B) The people who get a massive advantage out of this are the guys who abuse Recruit a friend (which, you could argue that this functionality basically replaces) because they generally don't need to purchase flying training at all if they've got a second account with a two-seat-mount, and just boost dungeons.
C) The amount of gold you'd obtain leveling normally 1-90 is likely close to or more than the sum of what you get using the boost; the exception being maybe the tradeskills. (But I'm not sure what, if any, recipies they're going to give you, so people boosting are still going to have to do work to get any worthwhile recipes (BS needs klaxxi for belt buckle, Enchanting need shado-pan for weapon enchants; celestials for bracers, engineers need a lot for jeeves, etc.))

I'm sure there's no changing your opinion on the matter, but let's go a little deeper into defining P2W, for argument's sake.

P2W is generally cases where in order to play a game competitively, you need to get over a paywall of some sort. Generally speaking, "Buying time" type mechanics (where you speed up what you can achieve or pay to skip content ala the 90 boost) are only P2W if the "normal" way of doing things is unrealistic. Basically, 'True' P2W only really occurs in F2P games, and are looked upon with disdain because they're essentially a bait-and-switch. "Play for Free!" when the reality is the "Free" option basically lets you load up the game, and you need to pay to even have a chance at staying competitive or being able to really use core features of the game.

Overall. It's good in the long term because it'll help give an influx of new players. Conceptually, selling them in the cash shop is there to stop people from trying a funky workaround and having to contact and burden support if they mess it up trying to get additional 90's.

[Eroginous]

Let's be honest now, a major argument people had against it being pay to win was that it did not boost you to max level. Now it does. Since level 90 is maximum level now until WoD comes quite a few months from now, level 90 is end level. The gear you get is enough to get you into LFR, and that is, in my opinion, pay to win. But what is your opinion? Note that I don't care why you think my opinion is wrong, since it's my opinion, it's right for me and that's what matters, I do however care about your opinion on the matter.

How far it boosts you doesn't matter. The fact is that you are paying money to skip a major chunk of character progression. I leveled a monk using BoAs and the monk XP perk a few weeks ago, and it took me nearly 5 days of played time to get from 1-90. It was faster to gear out in full honor gear by doing dungeons (nearly 2 days) than it was to get from 1-90 with leveling perks.

Compared to people who are already max level? Character boost isn't really a factor. But to anyone new to the game or without max level characters, the boost is a significant time saver, allowing you to progress your character through the content everyone else had to do without actually having to do it.

That's why it's pay to win.