And what does that have to do with the price of tea in China?
My argument is – and remains – the following:
Any influence of real-life wealth that undermines the game’s integrity is [insert desired terminology].
The game’s integrity can be summarized as such:
Time + Effort and/or Skill = Reward
Therefore it stands to reason that any influence real-life wealth that affects the time, effort, or skill to obtain rewards in WoW, does undermine the integrity of the game, and it can therefore be deemed [insert desired terminology].
That’s my argument, my reasoning, my claim, and my opinion, all in one fancy neat little box.
What you and a lot of other people are doing is to nit-pick examples and argue semantics and sentences and try to find fault or gotcha-opportunities.
And you do that because you don’t want to yield ground.
And I understand that.
Because it’s an uncomfortable truth to acknowledge that this video game, this premium quality product that we’re all paying a lot of money for and investing a lot of ourselves into, has – to some degree – some things in common with the kind of games we often frown upon for their “pay-to-win” designs.
That’s an uncomfortable truth to acknowledge, so you all try your hardest and your dearest to weasel your way out of it.
And if you yield a little ground you fear the slippery slope, so you stubbornly deny even the most obvious of realities.
Amount of time the best players and boosters will have to spend in-game when a new season starts to achieve Heroic clear of the current tier: Some tens of hours (including preparations outside the raid)
Amount of time the card-sweepers will have to spend in-game to achieve a Heroic clear of the current tier: 1 hour? 1 hour 30mins?
During the time that the first group was trying to clear the content, the second group was doing whatever, possibly not even inside the game. They paid and cleared the content when they wouldn’t have managed to do that with their own skill and time commitment.
Shall we settle on nobody should bother playing until the last week of an expansion so they can get full use out of all the catch up mechanics put in by that point? That seems to be the suggestion. Why bother playing and achieving things if you can pay someone to complete your achievements for you.
I play to see the story and to chill and relax doing menial tasks like quests and events while I watch TV on my second monitor.
It’s not me who has to do mental gymnastics about the worthwhileness of investing time and effort toward progression in a game where skill supposedly matters, when a credit card can accomplish the same.
I’ve never suggested that was an issue for me in the first place, or something I need to solve.
I’ve just argued that that’s the reality of the game, because that was the question the thread posed:
WoW is [insert desired terminology] - Do you agree?
Like I said; If you define winning by accomplishing everything; No.
Its not an accomplishment if you don’t do it with learned skill and patience.
However, I don’t fault anyone for playing the way they enjoy.
It’s a game. Who cares.
i mean it is true, but u have to see it as an ego thing, people who buy stuff like this have the biggest ego, and like to call other people trash (not everyone but most of them)
so at the end it´s all about a big ego
yep, and i hope it will never be the case, that wow comes to this point haha
I am taking a bare minimum approach here because its a simpler way to approach this higly opinionated topic for me.
For PvE raiders, yes. I understand some people would not consider it enough and wouldn’t see themselves as having completed the game until they atleast get normal/heroic/mythic but there the cracks begin to show in taking another route, even the people who say LFR isn’t completion would still have no consensus on which difficulty level actually is then.
If I was going to change my criteria, I would say that whatever allows you to complete the campaign raid quest, or whatever allows you to finish the story.
That doesn’t change that the person buying the token still had to swipe his credit card
I don’t care that the gold is generated ingame by players, admittedly while I do believe it is good that people are capable of paying their playtime with gold, but that doesn’t change the fact that people are swiping their credit cards. So to me, its still pay2win, you are still giving blizzard 20 euro’s and the person buying it from you can at best redeem it for 15 blizzard monopoly points or a month of gametime valued at 14,99 euro’s according to the 1 month recurring payment plan of the subscription. You are paying blizzard for this one way or another.
Sure its a better alternatives then companies that turn it into a business to bot goldfarms and sell gold, but I wouldn’t be suprised if it also created players who bot for their own gains. I’ve known people who did that over the years to get gold before the token was a thing (they don’t play anymore) now that you can buy gametime with it? oh boy.
pay2win in my book in spite of you ‘buying’ the gold from other players. The token you still buy from blizzard and there is no way around that.
I will say that the pay2win in wow is optional, its not needed to complete any level of difficulty from normal or mythic, but I still consider the gold selling aspect of the token an issue.
Either way we can argue about this from dusk till dawn, they likely won’t remove it anyway
You just beat the game. You got the gear and achievement. There is no distinction on whether You did by yourself with your guild or boosted. The end result is the same.
The only difference is self realisation. But, that is optional and no one will know.
Also, you clearly have a different definition of p2w from mine. For me it’s gaining an advantage and buying a clear definitely earns you an advantage versus those that have to progress the normal way.
I was careful to say it was in my opinion. If you want a different definition, you can have it. It’s your opinion. I didn’t claim authority.
What advantage?
Nobody who bought a boost can beat someone who didn’t buy a boost at anything in game, apart from peacocking around with some title or mount maybe.
Your rather loose definition of p2w applies to every video game that was ever made.
I can hire an E-Sports pro Gamer to beat any game if I wanted to.
So a definition of p2w that can apply to every single game in the world has very little use.
The True definition of P2W that has some meaning when discussing the topic is:
The only realistic way to win at the game is to pay real money. There is no way to beat some challenge without buying in-game items or abilities.
WoW does not fit the True Definition of P2W. The definition that is useful.
Also so what? why does anyone care that someone else was boosted or carried? It has no impact on your experience.
Back in the day when only guilds could clear raids then perhaps to a degree there could be some impact of Prestige items (titles or tier sets). Getting recruited into a guild might have provide some advantage in game and having such a title could assist with applying to such a guild.
But those days are long gone. And even then that advantage was little enough.
Nobody is /bow to someone with the “I’m Excellent at WoW” title.
PUGs probably clear more raids than Guilds.
Raids are fairly accessible anyhow with LFR.
I am sorry but what social hierarchy? Its guilds or pugs and in pugs nobody gives 2 peanuts on what are you or what you do - “i dont care who are you, just dont boink my key”.
The times when people worshiped guys with those Illidan glaives in capital cities like living Deities are thankfully over…
Correction “I care if you are boosted”, which again you can easily spot and those people don’t really get invited or get swiftly removed (I have literally seen people prefer to tank their own keys than to finish it with some who got boosted). So again where is the advantage other than achievements and maybe some loot if you got lucky.
