PTW = you buy something that you cannot earn in game. Eg, cannot level past a point unless you buy an item that lets you. Cannot earn a godlike weapon or status unless you buy a token. Cannot have more than a certain amount of resources or tropps unless you pay to buy the required stopper. Thats pay to win and there are many games that implement it, with players spending hundreds if not thousands of pounds/euros to get their account or character boosted.
Wow in game gold. I’ve never bought gold but have bought gametime with gold and I do not sit in the AH. M+ or raid boosting is available to me if I were not so tight and refuse to pay someone to do something I can achieve myself.
Yeah using gold can be a cheat in boosting your rating, gaining gear but lack of gold does not stop you getting the best gear or rating. Your skill and effort does.
The thing is, gear won’t magically make you a better player. If you suck at the game someone with 30 less ilvl will still perform better than you. Gearing is also pretty easy, it’s not like you can just buy weeks or months worth of grinding like in some other mmo’s. Yes on paper WoW is p2w, but what you’re getting isn’t really worth the price and won’t make you perform better.
But if we just remove ourselves from the conversation here as the special snowflakes we are, wouldn’t you say that players in the game generally seem pretty cool with it?
I mean, those boosting services wouldn’t be there if players weren’t paying for them.
And people couldn’t buy all their WoW Tokens for gold if lots of people weren’t also buying WoW Tokens for money.
So clearly a lot of players do have a mindset of the ends over the means.
The reward matters more than how you got it.
Maybe that doesn’t apply to you, but it clearly applies to the playerbase at large.
What’s there to understand? Isn’t it just a matter of recognizing that lots of people do actually pay for a game that they also pay others to play for them? That’s just how it is, regardless of how illogical it may appear to you.
Of course, but so is every mmo where u have a cash gold economy. There was the whole galiwix scandle that basicically proved wow was p2w at the top lvls of race to world first. Its not up for debate in my eyes.
I undestand a level boost is a shortcut. But it is also hard to call you win the game by having a max level character (or 10 levels below again when the next expansion releases). It is actually freaking expensive
It’s the equivalent of just handing over the controller to someone else when you bought a game for PS5 and watching them beat the game.
You’re not “winning”. Even in a game which has a set end-point, you wouldn’t be the one winning. It’d be those that are playing the game for you.
What’s the point of many of the rewards if you’re not gonna actually use them? Like gear is absolutely useless to have if you don’t do content where you can actually die and if you do that content, you would get the gear by just playing the game.
If you define winning by obtaining everything; Yes
If you define winning by accomplishing everything; No
You have not accomplished anything if you paid for it.
If you only care about a look of mog/mount/toy/whatever; then you can pay for it.
If you enjoy actually progressing and getting skilled; then you can’t pay for it.
Sure.
But then you can just spend more money.
Get a Cutting Edge boost.
Still hard to call it win?
Spend more money.
Get boost through all Mythic+ Dungeons on +15 keys.
Still hard to call it win?
Spend more money.
Buy all the Black Market Auction House items every day for as long as you care.
Still hard to call it win?
Spend more money.
It never ends. You can just keep throwing money at the game and extracting rewards. At some point it gets absurd not to recognize that someone is going from zero to hero without lifting a finger and that it’s perhaps a bit iffy.
Trying to hold up the entire foundation of WoW’s game design with the viewpoint that if it doesn’t feel like a “win” then it’s not an issue, is a pretty unstable construction I would say.
You will never become a good player by paying, you will never out perform a good player even if you’re ahead in gear. You will never establish genuine friendships by paying. You will never earn respect by paying.
Like it’s technically p2w, but it’s all meaningless.
They’re not a hero when they lose to the healer on damage as a DPS because they just paid for boosts in m+ and then managed to squeeze into a non-paid run. They’re just a keystone terrorist at that point.
I think most people can agree that wow has p2w elements in it due to the token. I think its the «win» part people disagree with. Cause its a gamemode u cant really win in.
You can pay your way to skip things or pay to get carried through things for sure. Like i have bought tokens in the past cause i cba taking the time to grind for gold. I paid to be able to skip the grind. Did i win though? Not imo, i just saved myself some time to have more time to do the things i enjoy in wow.
Those are all personal achievement that you do for your own fun. When it is about PVE there’s no competition since you play together. There’s nothing to win. I declined politely to join a guild curve run in the last 2 seasons. I am just not interested. I play the game for playing the game. Not for watching others play the game for me. If i would get a boost through all +15’s i am even ducking up my own progress. It is countering my own fun.
All of this doesn’t matter, like I can understand buying a trinket with gold would be p2w and it would be an advantage in the hands of a good player, but what good player is going to pay millions of gold to get 5% stronger over heroic gear. It’s nonsensical, the money isn’t worth it.
Here is what you DO NOT want to understand these 2 things EXIST togheter without gold trading you can not ahve gold SELLERS.
By having gold trading being a thing you have gold sellers this creates the opertunity for EVERYTHING that makes you think it is P2W.
FALSE you could and i STRESS this AGAIN BUY A PLAYERS ACCOUNT WHO ALREADY HADDONE THIS caps because this is the 3rd time i say this and you REFUSE to understand it.
And just to be very clear here this was NOT against the TOS at the time it was perfectly ok to do you could NOT be banned for it.
Everything you have talked about being the reason for it being P2W is BS.
And i am not defending blizzard you LITERALLY NEVER EVER need to buy gold in this game if you just play the game.
You attitude is because you say it is.
You have not bought up ONE single point about gold selling that would fix the PLAGUE that was the Gold sellers in wow in the past the massive amounts of hacked accounts that almost never happen anymore for the specific reason that you can buy the gold now.
Just because YOU need to buy gold to play the game does not make the game itself P2W.
Why don’t you ask all the people in the game on their fancy mounts and Mythic gear that they got from boosting?
I mean, I’m not a psychologist, so I don’t have the answer to that question.
I’m a player and I simply conclude that it happens. So people who buy these rewards must see a point in doing so.
It’s a phrase.
Point being that you can go from never having played WoW and not even knowing how to move the camera, and a couple of hours later you can be level 70 and have Mythic gear and a fancy mount. All it takes is money.
To suggest that’s not a game issue because it’s not a real “win” is ridiculous.
It is not easy to do that without any capital, either you are already in the gold pool or you have a huge profit source that requires any investment at all, I suspect that though.
So much this, buying gear is pointless unless you’re a good player and good players will most likely come to the conclusion that buying gear isn’t worth the exorbitant amount of money you have to pay for it.
