Is there any debate that WoW is P2W?

Community General Discussion
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A lot of people are arguing about how P2W Lost Ark is and a lot people bring up WoW as a game that isn’t P2W and that really confuses me

You can boost to get Mythic rewards. You can boost to get PvP rewards
You can buy boosts with gold
You can buy gold with money
There is no limit to how much money you can spend on WoW tokens

WoW is Pay2Win

edit:

Do people fundamentally not understand what Pay2Win is?

A - Grind in WoW to get gold. You can skip that entirely by spending real $$$. In other words you are using real $$$ to get an advantage (time advantage) over the person that grinded the gold. Pay2Win

B - Person with gold is now able to buy gear directly on AH. You can get this currency by spending real $$$ thus giving you two advantages, 1 - unlimited gold to spend on gear, 2 - time advantage. Pay2Win

C - Person is able to skip all hassles and pays someone gold to clear an entire raid/m+ dungeon. You can get this currency by spending real $$$ thus giving you two advantages, 1 - unlimited gold to spend on dungeons/m+ (with alts), 2 - time advantage. Pay2Win

D - Person wants to PvP, you can grinded out the ladder to get access to the gear or you can pay someone gold to do that for you. You can buy that gold with $$$. Pay2Win

I honestly don’t understand how anyone can argue against this

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As long as it’s not pay4premium.

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Technically it’s “not” b/c it’s being paid for gold, and it does not help that people buy WOW Tokens in order to buy their legendaries. I think that’s Pay to Win as well.

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You can literally buy gold with money…Do you not understand what P2W is?

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5

Being so bad at the game that you have to pay others to play it for you hardly seems like “pay to win”.

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I don’t consider WoW pay 2 win because you’re not buying anything from the developer except currency. The “win” such as it is still depends on the playerbase to fulfill it.

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I think most people thinks pay to win is where you can access certain items with only money and no way in game of accessing those item.

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The only place I can see it being an issue is in pvp, you get John gear and go into bgs and rofl stomp people

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Or get them faster.

For example, if the Creation Catalyst recharged faster than normal if you bought something from the game shop.

That is, after all, how so many phone games work. “Do X things per day, or as many as you want if you buy supergems!”

WoW has nothing like that.

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I think you don’t.

Your description is not what “pay 2 win” is.

Also, what are you actually “winning”?

There is a limit on how many tokens you can purchase within a certain timeframe so this is not true, btw.

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All you are describing is the different ways a game can be Pay2Win, not arguing WoW isn’t Pay2Win since you can literally buy WoW tokens and get PvP rank / m+ and Mythic clears (literally all end game)

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See above:

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14

WoW doesn’t have services you can buy in the store.

Those services are all provided in game by third parties. No game can overcome those.

Lost Ark’s services are available in their game store.

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I don’t think you understand what P2W is. If WoW was P2W, people could buy their way to rank 1 PVP, rank 1 Mythic+, World First Raids, etc. Sure, you can buy carries in PVP, M+ and raids, but the people paying for those carries will never be the best players in the game.

A P2W game means the best players in the game are the ones who spend the most money on it.

WoW is not P2W. WoW is like… pay for convenience.

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Pay for others scraps

:smiley:

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17

I can see what you are saying but not it isnt. If you could just buy what the boosts provide…if you could for cash directly buy the gear then sure.

Its interesting though as it almost does suggest that the argument “you buy the gold, what you do with it is up to you” is kind of a smoke screen. I dont think that either though at the same time.

I do think though that before WoW tokens the issue was gold sites selling gold. I dont do that stuff so I assume that the WoW token cut down on this significantly. It put gold selling in Blizzards hands while cutting in to those groups and account theft issues. People buy in game and they stop getting hacked by third party sites/keyloggers. Then Blizzard spends less time restoring accounts etc. All personal speculation though.

The impact either way though is that there is a lot more gold than ppl used to have and that affects prices on stuff like legendaries among any other thing on the AH. The price people want for one run does suggest that ppl just buy tokens and give it to those players though.

TECHNICALLY Blizzard isnt selling those things…but they are making it a lot easier to buy those things. Grey areaish?

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My definition of P2W is very straight forward: Can I give Blizzard money and get something that allows my character to gain power.

The answer is: absolutely. You sell the token, buy boosts, gain some of the best gear in the game.

Furthermore: If I hand Blizzard $1000 rather than, say $100, do I get more power?

The answer: absolutely. You sell more tokens, buy more boosts, gain the best gear in the game.

WoW is Pay-2-Win.

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Agreed. This would be more like “here’s this rep grind, which you can only do a little each day… or if you give us money you can just grind until you’re finished!”.

That’s what “pay 2 win” looks like everywhere else.

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Then that isnt very clear.

You buy in game currency. You could spend it all on the AH or on vendor mounts etc.

When Blizzard sells those things exclusively…then that is totally P2W.

Blizzard doesnt sell those things though. They sell gold.

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The only people complaining that WoW is P2W are people that don’t understand what constitutes ‘P2W’.

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