What relevance does this have for boosting? Boosting gives no advantage over anyone else.
Except it’s not.
6-15 days in a game we’re going to be playing for months if not years is nothing. If someone wants to skip a leveling experience that isn’t even relevant to the current expansion more power to them. It doesn’t hurt me at all.
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Right and the fact that it level 58 is relatively easily attained in game without paying is what makes the boost not pay to win.
Go play a game with some serious P2W mechanics and get back to us. If level 58 was something that would take years of playing 12 hours a day to get sure you might have a point, but it’s not.
Sigh…
The ease or difficulty of obtaining something in game is not part of the definition of, “pay to win”. It is strictly a matter of obtaining something in a shorter amount of time by using real world currency than what a player could hope to achieve in the same amount of time in game. I am not sure just how much more simple I can make it for you.
By working a job for just a couple of hours at minimum wage, I can afford to purchase an advantage that I could not obtain by simply spending that same amount of time in the game playing. If you take a look-see at YouTube there are a great many videos on the subject if that helps you understand. 
Thanks.
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That is not the definition at all.
Define win. For pve I suppose that would be having BIS for your character? On some private servers you can purchase said items in the shop. As far as I know Blizz has no intention of selling glaives for instance in the shop.
On the other hand you can pay gold even now to have a group take you through raids.
I’m sure others have said similar in this thread already.
The ease of attaining something is at the heart of pay to win.
Pay to win was coined from theoretically free to play games that typically included mechanics where you paid to obtain something that would otherwise be impossible or for all practical purposes impossible to obtain otherwise.
Boosts simply do not qualify.
What advantage over a level 70 who leveled from 60 with naxx gear does a 58 boost with a 60% speed mount and no gold have?
He doesn’t even get that a 58 leveled regularly has advantages over the boost. They’ll have more gold at their disposal, profession could be leveled, better gear.
What are they winning?
So, there’s a couple things here going on. Boosts promote a cash shop in game, which I can see most players seeing as a bad thing, considering it disincentives improving content and incentivizes selling what would be included with the game as ‘store items’. These people aren’t wrong.
A cash shop could mean tokens though, or just straight up buying gold from Blizzard. While this is pretty crappy from a player perspective, it takes away the incentives for third party gold sellers to exist, and gives people another way to get gold other than spending hours and hours grinding. Some of us, though, love that grind, but would totally take advantage of the gold in shop since it’s being endorsed by the shop.
If I had to guess, I’d think maybe you don’t like the idea of boosts because ‘bots will use them’. Guess what, botters are probably going to continue running rough-shot over this game, and blizzard will probably ban as many as they can before they give up or botters find a way around detecting them. This is going to keep happening forever, regardless of boosts being available. And you’re only saving a botter a couple of days maybe by offering boosts for new accounts. Have no doubt they’re still going to mess up the game unless a miracle happens and they’re all detected and banned by blizzard.
Or, are you just jealous that someone can boost and not have to level up a character to 58? I’m certainly looking forward to skipping leveling a paladin. I have a priest, rogue, mage, and druid at 60 already, and a warrior not far behind. I plan to use the boost to level my least favorite class, the paladin, to almost 60. I feel like I’m losing out a bit because there’s a level of enjoyment I derive from reaching the higher levels on my own, but It’s my choice to take the opportunity to boost.
Makes up definition, then says go watch a youtube video. Hilarious.
This problem of “paytowin” having no solid definition is, once again, preventing people from having a proper discussion about paid advantages like the lvl 58 boost.
Back in vanilla and other mmorpgs it described paying real money for ingame gold or power levelling services. The definition has changed over time and i did provide some links(buried in this thread now) illustrating how many variations of the term “paytowin” there are.
The boost merely gives a time advantage so “paytoskip” or “paytoadvance” fit better as a descriptor.
No one cares about your incessant terminology.
Yeah, it wasn’t really a “like” or “dislike” of the boost. That’s just projection from the pro-boost community. It was more explaining the fact that from the definition of “pay to win” with respect to MMORPGs that World of Warcraft had qualified since the introduction of the WoW Token. And I admit, it’s not the best term and was mostly coined from the irony that there usually is no “winning” an MMORPG.
It doesn’t detract people who enjoy and use cash shop conveniences from using the argument, “What do they win?” any more than politicians using the “What about…?” phrase to try to deflect from the fact that they do not have a cogent argument or point of fact to dispute you with. However in all cases the thing that is “won”, for lack of a better term, is simply time. Cash shop conveniences encourage people to spend less time in MMORPGs earning things that they can just simply buy. In the case of the WoW Token, people can simply buy an amount of gold with real world currency that they can usually earn in just a couple of hours of work that they could never realistically farm by simply playing the game for that same amount of time. Likewise, the level 58 boost allows someone to obtain a high level character with money from a couple of hours of work in the real world as opposed to the many more hours it would take to actually play the game and level the character. The “win” is just basically a shortcut using real world currency to obtain something in a shorter amount of real world time than what you could obtain actually playing the game for that same amount of time.
I would never use a boost, but I do understand why they are so popular. To me it makes no sense to pay for the hardware necessary to play a game, pay for the internet connection, pay for the game, and pay for the game subscription to then pay even more money to the company to then skip most of the content of the game. However, with expansions and the HUGE changes that World of Warcraft has undergone over the years, I can understand someone not wanting to play through an older expansion to try out a new one. But it was never a “right or wrong” discussion I was trying to have, just explaining that the level 58 boost is not the first or only time that World of Warcraft has been “pay to win”.
The outrage usually comes from the pro-boost community who for some reason feel threatened that discussions like this will somehow stop Blizzard from offering the cash shop conveniences that they use and enjoy. But they should easily console themselves with the fact that despite WoW meeting the requirements of a “pay to win” definition for an MMORPG, Blizzard aren’t going to get rid of those conveniences any time soon. In fact, my opinion will not mean as much to Blizzard as theirs do as I am not a cash shop “whale” and Blizzard is far more interested in the deep pockets of those who routinely use their cash shop than they are about any opinions concerning the content of their games.
You could also read a vast variety of articles from PCGamer, Kotaku, MassivelyOP or any number of other gaming sites about how “pay to win” with respect to MMORPGs is about saving or “winning” time by using real world currency. I simply suggested the YouTube videos as I know my writing can be a bit verbose and I can sometimes struggle to make things simple enough for many people to understand me.
Thanks.
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You are making a ton of assumptions about people who are either fine with the boost or would use it.
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The biggest argument for this is that boosted characters have a huge head start. Now you might say well they have bad gear at the start, well that is true until they do the first 10 quests in hellfire. So in a few hours someone who has boosted is pretty decked out considering the outland green gear is really good.
Since the focus of the expansion is tbc the boosted characters have a huge advantage considering the amount of gold they will make, experience, and “most” of the significant content is in tbc now. While the character who started at level one is still not even level 15 yet.
Another issue is the catch up mechanic where two players that play the same amount of time, one starts at level one, and the other at 58 will always be behind. This means the boosted character will reach 70 first, get Bis first, farm mats first, and raid first. Compared to starting at level one, the amount of amazing gear and leveling speed is much faster. If this isn’t Pay to win then someone needs to update the definition or explain to me why it isn’t.
This is obviously a cash grab for blizzard and I totally understand their greediness, but it’s still a low blow to what made classic and classic tbc so great. Stay true to the classic experience and not bring in stuff that was later added which in my opinion ruined the game.
Also don’t keep throwing around the argument that vanilla is irrelevant now that tbc is out because the old zones are still very much required for being able to level crafting, do some dungeons, and a raid dungeon. I would say without vanilla there can’t be a tbc because one requires the other. This isn’t like current wow where previous content is pretty much irrelevant to the newer one.
Everyone should just level now, you got plenty of time to hit 60 and probably do some dungeons. If you are one of those people who hate leveling, well you probably wont even make it to 70 anyhow even with a boost…
I wont mention bots because boost or no boost they will always be a problem, probably more with the boost but it’s something only blizzard can fix. The reason why they only do ban waves it to rack in the cash before the process repeats, again very scummy knowing that it ruins the experience for the players.
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Buying levels is skipping content. Buying raid gear is skipping content. Its the same thing. The logic and reasoning used for boosts can be applied to any content in the game.
Ergo, pay to win. OP is correct.
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looks at all the hordes of level 60s so they don’t count or you want them gone too?
It’s not in the slightest.
Buying a weapon on the AH and buying a trip on the Flight Master would be the same thing by this logic.
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