So WoW is now Pay-To-Win eh?

Community General Discussion
82

It’s a fair question, so I’ll wheel out my old answer again. TL;DR - it matters because it devalues elements of the game.

Written long before Token, when the issue was selling mounts and pets in the Shop.

https://eu.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/7763486854?page=19#post-361

A week ago, before this announcement, I predicted transmog sets along with pets and mounts, and said I would be fine with it.

I’ve been thinking about it, and I was wrong.

The nature of WoW is that it’s a separate world. It doesn’t matter whether you’re Bill Gates - or broke. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Nobel laureate - or late with your homework. What you are in the game, you earned for yourself in the game.

Everybody starts equal. Daddy’s credit card gets you a subscription, but no further.

When someone can buy something in-game for money, it devalues that thing in game.

Buying mounts devalues the earning of mounts.

Buying pets devalues the taming of pets.

Buying transmog devalues farming.

Buying XP boosts and Charms - and Valor, and whatever comes next - devalues the levelling and gearing process.

It doesn’t matter what the bought thing is, it devalues some part of the game. It makes the game less valuable to us.

I think what made me realise this was watching Preach on the subject. He was pretty OK with the whole thing, and thought selling LFR gear was “reasonable” (22:00). I figured out why. For him, and for players of his calibre, that’s where the game starts. Everything up to Lei Shen Normal is just the prelude to the real game, as he sees things, so I can see why he wouldn’t be vastly upset with that being devalued.

Just as I wasn’t bothered about pets and mounts and transmog being devalued, because those are not important parts of the game for me.

How many pieces need to be devalued, for how many people, before we lose what we have?

Now, I still think Blizzard have to do what they have to do to recover their ground in the Asian markets, and I still think they’d be incompetent fools not to have a plan to increase supplementary marginal revenue in the last years of WoW and leading up to the introduction of son-of-Titan. I get all that.

But Blizzard aren’t a company who push 5 titles of questionable quality out the door every month. They care about their quality, and they care about their reputation in the community, and they receive loyalty and trust as a result. They may need some very careful navigation on this one, and I hope they pull back from their more aggressive ideas, because there’s a lot to lose if the devaluation goes too fast.

It’s actually hard for me to remember back to the days when I could say “What you are in the game, you earned for yourself in the game.” That sentence feels so strange now.

1 Like
83

Well you think everyone should know that earth is round, but still people believe also that earth might be flat and some guy did not kill himself. Probability or possibility does not make it a fact.

I understand concern, but as someone, who has been here from beta (2004) I’d say there’s less gloom and doom around this.

84

It’s just that good players view others as customers, rather than people to play the game with. And if you screw up in any form of hard content, you will be considered a slacker that wants to be boosted freely. Of course you can bypass all that by joining a nice guild, but if you don’t, you’re finished.

85

I’ve sold boosts, and I have boosted friends for free, gained self boosts from friends or former guilds. It is just a game not a job where I must always be ideal or where I must compare myself to others.

But that’s me. I get compared and judged in my day job a plenty, for me game is just simple entertainment.

86

True. We don’t have access to that information.

Sure. Fine. Spend a couple of hours on Draenor or Silvermoon now. Watch the boost spam. Check the LFG for M+ boosts. I wasn’t there in Vanilla, but I know it can’t have been like that.

87

That’s the problem tho. It makes the game feel more like an important job, rather than simple fun.

1 Like
88

Just because some people buy a boost and get few items dosn’t make actual difference. It doens’t take anything away from your character or your gear. Having higher ilvl means actually nothing anymore especially when most times you don’t even want to highest ilvl stuff available because it has subpar secondaries and azerite traits.

Then to be actually useful you still need to get your Essense up and thous aren’t really boostable in any shorter time than what you can get by just playing the game.

At the end of the day no amount of gear makes the game “pay-to-win” you still need to know how to play the game.

So is the actual complaint that you need to participate in group content in a MMORPG? Because that is kind a point of the Massively MULTIPLAYER Online games.

Again I see no problems with this. Just because you want to do “hard content” doesn’t mean you can do it, you actually need to put in the effort and learn how your class works, how the fight works, and how to perform optimally. “Just buying gear” isn’t enough.

89

I would say ‘selling gold’ was quite normal, up and until Blizzard made advertising it bannable offence. And that Blizzard did mainly because buying gold then made you vulnerable to hacking. Accounts were much less secure then.

But I’d say a lot of legit players worked with gold selling companies for example. Naturally I cannot give names or details (CoC for one, and old days are old days for other), but I wouldn’t call it rare or unusual.

However problem with m+ spam and such boost spam is that is CRZ made things more accessible, so you get a lot of spam by people not from your realm. This makes it also feel as if there’s more of it while it is mainly same group advertising cross servers

Older days spam was about your realm, now you have your realm people, other realm people and generic alts of alts of 1st two groups.

90

The effort required, though, needs to be made with other players, who will probably won’t make it with you as long as someone will pay them to do it. No boosting means everything in the game is done ONLY for fun and not real money profit. However, I do agree that mmos are meant to be played in guilds and with friends.

1 Like
91

I still don’t quite see your point. Why is boosting so bad? Because they want to earn some gold from their ability to play the game? Why is that a bad thing?

Or are you saying that the good players won’t play with bad players for fun and that’s a bad thing because that means bad players can’t get good gear without paying?

92

I agree, but CRZ is only half of the picture.

The Token makes gold and money, as well as players, available across realms. What is the gold used for? Well, personal gametime ofc, and some mounts and stuff, but beyond that, gold is used for Blizzard Balance which is used to “gift” Blizzard games and services to people who pay money for it.

You need both the people, which CRZ provides, and the money, which the Token provides, to see the whole system.

93

I’m just saying that Wow can be considered pay to win, since boosting is paid with real money and that is killing people’s motivation to play with others just for fun. It basically divides the community in separate guilds, the people that boost and the people that get boosted. I’m just agreeing with the poster, nothing more.

94

I have tried to find any fun on essences and pathfinder pt 2…

95

There’s plenty of ppl that dont boost or buy boosts though :woman_shrugging:t3: U make it sound like that’s the only options out there. Alot of us still play the game for fun and personal progress.

2 Likes
96

Win? I have played with people in ilvl 445+ that couldn’t do their class rotation.
:confused:

97

I just don’t feel like you or OP has a valid point. Sure some people sell boosts and some people buy them. Nothing about that is Pay-to-Win unless your idea of winning in WoW is getting few Mythic Raid pieces.

This is not dividing the community anymore than it already is. The good players who regularly clear +20 dungeons won’t play with me since I can barely clear +12s. If I want to play with them I need to step up my game, learn the dungeon routes, get more optimal gear and put in the work. Even if I were to buy +20 boost on each dungeon pretty soon people would notice that my skills and gear just isn’t high enough to play on that level and I would again be forced to play with people of my own level.

98

Booster here, you can buy armor stack for a small extra amount and then all the gear that drops will go to you if it can (outside of tank weapons if you’re clothie and some trinkets).
As for raid you can also buy VIP, meaning dedicated players trade all the gear they get to you if they can. The chance of a 450 dropping is not that low, so i would say there is a decent chance of getting a 450 if you buy full mythic gear and 3x VIP.

99

Ilvl does matter. I tried doing a wod raid with sh*t ilvl at max lvl but failed.

100

Some people stretch the “P2W” term so much that by some people’s “logic” every game can become a “P2W”. Imaginary scenario: I know a guy who excels at game A. I pay him real life money to boost my acc/char. He can completes, competes&wins in the game’s end-game and gets me all the “best” rewards.

So in theory the game has become P2W right? I PAYED money to gain the ADVANTAGE over other players?
Some would probably that its the most stupidest thing ever. But…whats the difference then in WoW?

…Let me guess. That “random guy I know” is Blizzard.
And if Blizzard is involved then its automatically 100% without a doubt a P2W?
If we had those Chinese gold sellers running rampart then it wouldn’t be P2W anymore right?

101

Boosting or buying tokens are not required in WOW, so it is not pay to win.