Hmm, elaborate please.
By that definition a game like Diablo Immortal is not P2W.
A game like Warcraft Rumble is not P2W.
But I think the common sentiment is that games like those do qualify as PW2.
Therefore your definition isn’t true, and it’s not useful either.
It’s useless.
It doesn’t pass the simplest of reality checks.
It used to.
It arguably doesn’t anymore.
People are anonymous today. And that anonymity is arguably fertile ground for these different monetization schemes, because other players don’t care about you, and you don’t care about other players, so no one cares what you can buy or how you play. Cheating? Who cares? Hacking? Who cares? P2W? Who cares?
There’s a deterioration in the player-driven part of the MMORPG experience, which provides an opportunity for the business part and the product experience to grow.
Which is what we’ve seen over the years.
The social glue isn’t as strong anymore, friendships are fewer and harder to make, but you can buy happiness on the Online Store for €20!
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I’ve never played those games so I don’t know their mechanics or why they are P2W.
But my definition did say the only realistic way to win was by buying an advantage. That caveat is important.
If it is possible to win without spending real money but you have to grind for a year to get a sharpened stick which might mean you can progress past level 1 then that is not realistic way to progress, even if technically you are progressing.
Now I recognise that there is a degree of subjectivity here but I think we can almost all agree that it is realistic to be able to achieve anything in wow without buying a boost, skill allowing. I’ll never get any PVP or M+ rating but that has nothing to do with my unwillingness to pay for a boost.
Apply it to different games you have played and show how your definition applies properly to those games.
I have my definition and it can be applied to any game and it will fit properly with my terminology:
Your definition seems to have some flaws because it makes games like Diablo Immortal and Warcraft rumble check out as not P2W. My definition makes them P2W.
But as said, give some examples of other games that are commonly perceived as P2W and not P2W that your definition covers accurately.
My gut feeling tells me that not many games are P2W according to your definition. In fact, almost no games are. But give some examples.
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I would say that the game itself is only P2W if you consider someone else getting a kill on a raid boss sooner than you as a definition to winning.
for me if someone gets a kill on a raid boss before me or clears it first doesn’t really mean they’ve won anything as the raiding scene is pretty much not competitive for the 99% of players who do it the people who typically do find it competitive are in view are a bit misguided.
I understand why people would say but if you clear a raid on mythic difficulty you get a free mount I get that mindset but it also goes against it with the fact I can run it in later expansions and one day get said mount with a lower % drop chance.
I don’t think you win anything in a MMORPG unless you’re being sponsored and on the big livestreams for world firsts, I think for everyone else its just an adventure and a story you create with those guilds you participate with to finish that said chapter in the game.
It really does come down to if the sole person you’re asking is a competitive mindset in general, I used to be one of those people back during Wrath going for a server first litch king kill.
So sadly it is a personal achievement just because you don’t want people to say it is doesn’t mean or make it not, I think if you want to have a open dialect and debate on this matter you need to start being less closed off to views that appose your own because if you can’t look at two sides of a coin you’ll never know its worth to begin with.
I also think boosting in general on Warcraft shouldn’t be allowed and should be bannable as its well known the people who do boost typically sell said gold and most people who do buy boosts from what I’ve seen from old friends buy the gold on third party sites and not through wow tokens.
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Explain why these can be considered P2W.
I’ve never played them so don’t know why you use them as an example.
I haven’t played many games so I can’t give specific examples. But I’ve heard that there are games where you can buy magic swords or high powered rifles or armour that makes you almost immune to certain attacks.
This is P2W. So when we are discussing games and someone says it’s a P2W game we know what they are talking about.
And you’re right this is a not a lot of games but any definition that applies to a vast amount of games becomes not very useful. If someone says game X is Y but Y applies to 85% of games then it’s not much of a descripter.
Your definition of P2W can apply to pretty much every game. I can hire someone to play a game for me to achieve something. Whether they come to my house and use my PC or we can group up online.
Which definition? You completely disagreed with the definition I posted.
I didn’t read every 647 comment, but… Is there by the definition you gave, any multiplayer game that is not pay-to-win?
If something is easily categorized as being p2w because there is an in-game economy, that you can use to buy boosts, this would translate to all multiplayer games I could think of…
I may be wrong, so could you help me clarify here?
Sure.
In Diablo Immortal some of your character power comes from gems. These gems have ranks. The more ranks the more power.
In order to acquire these gems you need a currency. You can gain this currency incrementally by simply playing the game, or you buy it in unlimited quantities on the Online Store.
This is considered P2W because there is a huge advantage to paying versus playing. You get your character power much quicker by using your credit card than by farming the game for hours or days on end.
In Warcraft Rumble your minions grow in levels and in quality (up to legendary) and can acquire talents that all make them more powerful.
You can earn experience for levels and gold for new talents by playing the game and completing battles, quests, dungeons, and raids. Or you can buy experience tomes or gold directly from the Online Store.
Again the perception is that it’s P2W because the advantage of getting your power in an instant and being able to more easily do the hardest challenges in the game, is vastly superior to regularly playing the game and earning your power slowly over time.
And those descriptions for why they are P2W are also why WoW would be considered P2W, as the same description can apply to WoW, because gold gives you access to immense character power in an instant that would otherwise take take more time to acquire through regular play.
My definition of P2W (or whatever you want to call it) says all 3 games are P2W.
Your definition says none of them are. And that seems bogus.
Almost no modern games do this anymore. And I only say almost, because I can’t think of any, but perhaps there are some.
The reason why modern games don’t sell that magic armor that gives you immunity, is because they would then be labeled P2W. And they don’t want to be labeled P2W.
So all modern games have shifted their business model from that which you’re describing and moved onto a business model that players are more agreeable with and that they don’t perceive as blatant P2W.
So no modern games sells a magic armor that gives you immunity on their Online Store. Instead they sell you the in-game currency, and then you can buy the magic armor that gives you immunity in the game. And in the game that armor costs so much currency that it would take you forever to acquire through normal play, which of course means that the only realistic approach of getting it for most players is to buy lots of currency on the Online Store.
And that’s a modern P2W business model.
You don’t sell the magic armor that gives you immunity.
You sell the currency to buy it in the game.
Players don’t perceive that as P2W because they can still earn the currency in the game.
So the genius business trick is of course to then make the price so high that it’s unrealistic to farm the currency in the game, so that people resort to buying it on the online Store.
And that’s what they do.
That’s what they do in Diablo Immortal.
It’s what they do in Warcraft Rumble.
And it’s what players do in WoW.
That’s modern P2W. And almost all Live Service games have it. Because it works and it makes the companies a fortune, and players don’t object to it too much.
No.
My definition makes every NES title not P2W.
It makes Elden Ring not P2W.
It makes Pong not P2W.
Super Mario Bros. is not P2W under my definition.
Because they’re all basic games where you just buy the box, install and play. You can’t use your wallet in any way.
But games like WoW, Destiny 2, CoD, EA Sports FC, Candy Crush Saga, and so on, they’re all P2W, because you can keep using your wallet in those games to get stuff that would otherwise take time, effort, or skill to acquire.
His definition that I quoted. This:
I call bogus on that definition. Like others here it seeks to do some weird mental gymnastics whereby it can prove that WoW is not P2W. But in doing so it also establishes that other games that are blatantly P2W are somehow not P2W. Ergo the definition sucks and it illustrates the obvious: That the reality is more that WoW is P2W and not that Candy Crush and Diablo Immortal are not.
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I have absolutely no problem playing a P2W game. I’ve done that for years. It all depends on having fun while playing the game.
We can just agree to disagree on the subject.
Neither do I! I spent lots of hours on Diablo Immortal, Warcraft Rumble, and WoW.
I merely have a problem with pretending that WoW is not P2W.
Because it is.
Yeah it is good there’s a forum where people with different oppinions can discuss things and respect others oppinion. I am OK with disagreeing with you.
And this is why having a well understood definition matters.
Thsi is where my realistic caveat comes into play.
Those game do sound like they could qualify as P2W.
But any definition loose enough to include WoW would simply dilute the meaning of P2W so much that it is no longer useful.
What advantage does a player that swipes their card have vs me?
It takes less time and effort to get a level 25 legendary minion in Warcraft Rumble than it did to get get 1 million gold for the Brontosaur mount in WoW.
Both fit the the same definition. Both use the same business tactics of selling currency on their Online Store for things in-game that are ridiculously expensive or incredibly time-consuming to get through normal means, be it mounts or gear or whatever, directly or indirectly.
So there is no caveat.
It’s the same business model by the same company responsible for both games, and they deploy the same P2W to both.
There is no difference.
They are the same.
The same advantage anyone has when they swipe their credit card in Diablo Immortal or Warcraft Rumble.
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List the advantages someone have vs me if they swipe their card.
Immediate power, time saved, effort not needed. Instant skip to endgame.
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?
Last guy that I encountered that had paid for boosts, I joined a +8 to get vault keys done - I was outdamaging that guy as a healer, with him having a legendary weapon. The tank left because of his low dps.
Looking him up now, he’s not timed anything on his own even beyond that key where we were 4 others that joined that all had done keys far higher than he’s ever done.
But that is a fallacy to use anecdotal evidence to discredit something…
That would be like me saying there is no benefit of training for a marathon, because I ran it faster than someone who did without having done any training…
You can find outliers in almost any scenario, but the truth is, that guy probably wouldn’t be where he is, without his boost, so comparing him to the pool he is in, he did p2w.
Your example would mean, for anyone to have an advantage in a P2W game, they would beat everyone, no exceptions.
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How is he winning when people leave his keys because of his low DPS with his gear? Lmao. He can only seemingly do keys if he pays for them.
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