Why? How did you think raid guilds made gold since Vanilla?
Everyone seems to believe this is a new concept when it isn’t. Most serious raid guilds would eventually sell runs, because it put gold in the guild bank for consumables. They’d sell runs, BoEs and I even knew some guilds who sold Heroic dungeon and then Mythic dungeon runs to casuals who wanted to start getting into raiding.
I see “pay to win” to not be an all or nothing thing, but rather a continuum. Some games are at one end or the other. But many games have certain pay to win aspects that puts them somewhere between those extremes.
After reading this I can’t help but see wow as having moved a little bit closer to the pay to win end of that continuum. We should expect to see an order of magnitude more paid carries in the future.
to see the playerbases opinion on it.
I should really bookmark my often used quotes 
The WOW token didn’t exist back then; thus selling a run through raid or even level-boosting via a mage was acceptable.
Unless a new player was getting traded free gold from friends, he/she couldn’t afford a mage level boost.
The WOW token is what makes boosting a cancer nowadays, not just boosting alone.
I mean, you just bought gold through other methods.
You probably should. Because you’re right. We could argue it till we’re all blue in the face and still wouldn’t agree or come to a compromise or conclusion.
it was the wording lol sorry couldn’t help it.
Don’t get me wrong many salaried people are screwed over… from software and crunch to the dollar store manager working 70hrs a week
Wow, grats on the most bad-faith post in this entire thread lol …
Back then, using third-party sites to buy gold was incredibly risky. You were risking a direct ban, having your account hacked, or giving your credit card info to sketchy people.
the inconvenience of all that made gold-buying a far less prevalent act, and thus wasn’t a huge concern. Regardless, dont derail the thread with bad-faith arguments pretending that a WOW token = buying gold from third-party sites.
The end game for WOW is defined as the three pillars:
PVP
Raiding
M+
the casuals collecting their cute little pets and mogs or mounts is a side game.
When you can pay real money to achieve TOP status in all of the 3 pillars of the end game, its now pay to win.
I can buy a CE-clear
I can buy gladiator
I can buy KSM or even keys up to 20.
Again, use your critical thinking skills pal.
I used to buy it all the time back then.
To all your points
Paypal existed and was already being widely used in 2004
Most sites mailed your gold or did it through the AH (less common), if you actively gave the site your login info that’s on you.
And blizzard has never done a lot of BUYER banning, mostly seller. Banning buyers gets messy.
I think that is pretty weak tbh. They always pushing the whole “immersion” thing on us when they want to take things away but what is more immersion breaking than literally playing the game for other people? Haven’t they banned pvpers for such things.
If that’s how you see it so be it, everyone views p2w differently. Also I’d caution against being too glib about casuals, otherwise you’re going to find yourself in a disagreement with a few other people 
The token made the boosts more advertised, more out in the open, yes. And probably more accessible. Which is one of the reasons why our economies are so inflated, as well.
But it doesn’t bother me in PvE. If we see someone with crap parses, no achievs or history or whatnot, we know they bought their stuff. And I’ll just laugh, because it’s so funny to watch people waste their money on this stuff to do nothing substantial with it afterwards and then have to repeat the process again next major patch.
And it doesn’t make me lose respect for those that progress normally. In fact, I have more respect for them.
Actually, the token itself didn’t do that, even after the token became a thing boosting was still generally seen as a grey area.
What made it so prevalent was Blizzard saying it was a-ok to boost for gold.
Some people work 12s (with the holidays coming up) add in commutes, showers, food… that leaves little free time.
K, cool.
Most people didn’t.
Blizzard communicated VERY CLEARLY that one of the reasons they introduced the WOW token was to stop the endless tickets of people having their accounts compromised due to engaging with third party sites and sellers.
Probably more accessible? It literally lets people use real money to purchase the clearing of any content lol. Dude come on.
Because you admitted you dont PVP, raid or even m+. For those of us who do those things hardcore, the boosting epidemic has driven us away. This is a key factor attributed to the recent exodus.
Irrelevant when they themselves feel disincentivized to put in the hard work when people with extra cash just buy it.
Pay to win is the #1 way to kill any MMO.
You really don’t have proof of that, it was probably far more prevalent than you think.
Not to mention that before Tokens were a thing there was still the fear of being banned to stop players from buying from 3rd party websites. It was nowhere near as prevalent as it is today. Blizzard just wanted in on the action and didn’t care if it would ruin the game.
You are the king of bad-faith arguments my friend
You’re actually trying to argue that purchasing gold via third-party apps is the exact same as using a WOW token.
It’s almost too dumb to address; as a matter of fact, it entirely is.
Give your head a shake.