Well, one thing AoC did that even Blizzard hasn’t managed: they’ve monitized their alpha & beta testing. That’s chutzpah.
So please tell me: what caused you to pay $350 (or more?) to alpha test their software for them?
Edit: I messed up the reply… sorry, Nock, I didn’t actually mean to reply to you.
FF14 was a dead on arrival complete bust.
They reworked the whole thing and relaunched it. It hasn’t had much more time than most other MMOs against WoW than you think. It’s been very fortunate with it’s relaunch and timing of the decline of WoW to keep itself floating.
I don’t know how much longer the weeb/anime girl gimmick is going to carry them. The base gameplay of FF14 is so slow/brainless, and the fact they ban people who track performance, makes it very noob/casual/baddie friendly. No top end community and only catering to the lowest non committals will keep them a float but never be “successful”.
Honestly I don’t see any MMO beating WoW. And WoW will just keep being milked for more and more and more. Wow’s, got another 3 expansions at least. After that who knows if the Hummer of game genres, MMOs, will even be viable to market.
/thread
It isn’t, nor are WoW Tokens or store-bought mounts, transmogs, pets, etc.
Funny, this was RIFT during its first year or so. I had my forum posting privileges stripped entirely because I posted up the Armor Formula, which was basically the same equation as WoW but with slightly different scalars, but the exact same shell. The game didn’t originally allow add-ons and was harsh on anyone posting up 3rd party methods of tracking output, performance, etc.
Here, I’ll make it easy for you.
We started here,
We went here,
Got a little piece of this,
IKR, it’s unreal!
Then we progressed to justification here,
And suddenly we veered off course here,
To end up here,
And here,
So yea, I do get to ignore 60’s cause we were talking about the difference between starting boosted or non boosted.
YOU decided to move the goalposts.
Rift had a lot of problems but was definitely fun to play around in because of all the builds. Their gimmick was “all builds are viable!”. Which is obviously not true and why they were probably against performance tracking. But it was entertaining to theorycraft.
Yeah that was the big lie the RIFT Devs tried keeping under wraps, because with all the “OMG INSANE CHOICES!!!” it really came down to “Go X, then Y, and then Z” for ideal builds. Then they had to cave heavily to make everything require specific souls to cleanse or dispel or w/e and then Rogue tanks got left behind and it was just a mess. 
What’s the difference between a boosted 58 and a regular leveled 58.
P2W implies I am buying something not obtainable in game. What is it?
You’re paying for power not just convenience. A level 58 is obviously more powerful than a lvl 1 character. Have them both go to a pvp zone shortly after creation to see who wins. This whole arguing semantics over p2w is idiotic. Just because you don’t think it’s p2w doesn’t mean a majority of the gaming community agrees. There’s one basic question to qualify. Does it give you an in game advantage over other players?
Also because purchased power isn’t occurring end game has never discredited something as being P2W.
I mean you can ignore them but then youd just be wrong
Enjoy your boost
No. Other players are at lvl60 with vastly improved gear and experience, and that’s not even counting raid gear. Any alt I raise up manually to lvl58 will be in a better position to advance than a boosted lvl58 as well.
To compare a lvl58 boost to a lvl1 character is asinine when we already have people in full BiS setups for both main and several off spec roles, across multiple characters, with tens of thousands of gold accrued, all of which took the lion’s share of time played to achieve. The leveling process was the shortest part by far.
These discussions are silly.
Boosts, faction changes can both be argued as p2w, though some might not think it.
However, with economy being a big part of any mmo, there’s zero denying that all aspects of the game are p2w due to tokens. If you have real money you can buy gold, which then can buy benefits for pet battles, collecting, consumables for m+/raids.
The top raid guilds spent an estimated $200K during the Nyalotha world first race on extremely expensive corrupted BoEs- that’s literally pay to win.
Then of course there’s using real money to buy arena rating, M+ and raid clears/gear.
The moment they put tokens into the game, it became an extremely pay to win game- I can right now pay real money to get gear that’s 20-30 ilvl higher than what I’d ever be able to earn on my own. It’s not as simple as a tier set just being on the store like it is in some MMOs, but just because there’s a few more transactions involved in WoW being p2w, doesn’t mean it’s not p2w.
Nonsense. You’re paying to skip leveling.
Of course, if you boost that’s all you have. You now need to go work on your professions and whatnot. The “leveled” 58 can roll right on to TBC.
So typical of the anti-boosters to resort to hyperbole.
Comparing a level 58 to a level 1 by taking each to a PVP zone to see who wins? That’s a really stupid argument.
It’s not the tokens that make it a p2w… it’s the bots and the people who buy from them.
Blizzard didn’t start this variety of moral corruption. Y’all did.
If these came from a Blizzard store, you’d be correct. But if they came from other players who happened to be lucky enough to score the drops… then no. Not at all. That’s just the in-game economy being the gain-only, lossless system that it is.
It isn’t pay-to-win to hand a raid leader 100k gold for a spot on a raid roster anymore than it is application-to-win to fill out a form and submit it to that same raid leader for that same spot on a raid roster.
If players set the rules for currency exchange for benefits as found by other players, that’s just how the game goes and isn’t pay-to-win in the slightest.
Finally, as a point of contention:
World-first races aren’t relevant to this discussion because they are also player-driven objectives. How many guilds killed this same boss on Mythic without spending a dime of US currency beyond their subscription? I’m sure it wasn’t zero, and I’m sure it wasn’t a minority of guilds either.
They always say “classic community is against RMT and botting” all the while boosting in dungeons, actively buying gold, actively GDKPing, etc. Seems like the classic community did want it, if they didn’t. No one woulda bought it
More to the point: if people didn’t buy the gold, there wouldn’t be any bots.
Very true- and when they put tier sets and mythic raid gear on the store, it won’t be Blizz making it p2w, it’ll be the people buying the store bis gear that make it p2w.
Which store?
If it’s in-game vendor AND there are no sources of illegal gold then the equipment is available to anyone who works hard enough to earn the gold. Not p2w.
If they put the equipment in a cash shop then, yes, it’s pay to win.
But, of course, there will be bots so this is merely random musing.
The definition of p2w is being altered person to person, I’ve given up trying to debate that point.