Anything that could be bought with a token (via paying someone else’s sub) can be done WITHOUT buying a token. The only difference is time.
Buying a high end BoE item does not make you a good player. It only means you last another five seconds longer in that Mythic raid/M15 key/RBG.
Good take.
I feel it has to do with the binary nature of win/lose.
The expression being “Pay to win” it push us to categorized a game as either “it is” or “it isn’t” when in reality their might be some steps or threshold/spectrum.
Could look like something like that.
0- No micro transaction at all
1- Pay for cosmetic
2- Pay for convenience
3- Pay for skip
4- Pay for advantages
5- Pay to win
On this made up scale I came up with in 2min (not exactly scientific or exhaustive I must admit).
I would place WoW at 3.
That’s a complete false equivalence. WoW has capped levels and seasons, BD has a theoretical uncapped level system. In BD the more you play at level cap you’re still gaining “level” beyond those uncapped or just starting. For BD if player A is just starting and plays the same amount of time per day as player B who started a year ago and is still playing every day then player A will never catch player B. WoW is completely different. You can level cap a toon in a week or less, even without a token. You can be competitive in PvP in roughly the same amount of time if you have the skill. Then, on the next patch/expansion everyone is reset to the same level.
Paying for convenience is pay to win but that’s my own opinion.
We could shuffle it around to be closer to the “pay to win” level.
If it help, the thing I had in mind with “convenience” was the transmog mount and the AH mount.
Edit: some words
How do you “win” at wow? Using boosts for an achievement or getting carries for some gear doesn’t “win” anything. Still don’t understand what anti-token people are so upset about. At no time in my entire history of playing wow (since Vanilla) has another player’s gear or achievements prevented me from enjoying the game in any way.
Convenience to me can be a small or a game breaking thing.
I made an example earlier like if blizzard put an extra 5$ price on your account a month for flying. Yea you can play the game without flying but that would be awful and inconvenient. Or it can be something small like the AH mount
Yeah I see what you mean.
Would definitely define it with the smaller scale, call it “small convenience”.
lol
The example you’re using I would categorize as “4- Pay for advantages”.
You’re not winning anything with it but the devs are really edging it.
Only if Blizzard is the one who gets the cash.
then why did blizzard previously ban people it knew bought or were selling gold
I guess it depends on whether or not you find the grind you’re doing to be fun or not, and if we assume you don’t this means every time you log on you get to choose between doing something you enjoy doing, or spending time farming gold because the thing you want costs gold that you don’t have. And you know you could solve this dilemma with a crisp $20 bill and then you could go about your day doing something you did find fun. To me that doesn’t sound like you’re being valued as a customer. That’s fine if you’re playing a F2P game with a cash shop in it, but you’re buying their expansion and then giving them money every month to play the game.
Or it would be an issue if you weren’t guilded and the main way you do content is by trying to pug it. Think about a new/returning player trying to get into the most recent raid/dungeon content and how much time he has to invest over
For a raider with 1 toon who just raid logs? Not much. I was slowly amassing gold when I was still playing, and have been for many expansions.
But for someone just getting into the game for the first time they’re likely to broke for a while if they aren’t buying a token, and some of this does lie on the SL legendaries. Then there are BoEs that tend to stay pretty expensive and are going to be out of reach from new players. Add on top of that a nominal fee for enchants, consumables, etc and the startup cost isn’t exactly cheap. I think there are multiple barriers for new/returning players to get through and a lot of those problems can be solved with the WoW token if they’re not able to be in an established guild that will help them out.
And right now the SL legendaries are an outlier, but in other conversations I’ve pointed out that if the game continues to throw out systems which are made that are impacted by gold then you also have that lingering doubt about “Why did Blizzard design it like this? Ah right, WoW token”
I used to think you cannot win in a MMORPG since everyone have different goals… but Boosting communities got covered almost every aspect in the game.
My vote is for: Wow is pay to win.
45% Blizzard offering Gold via money.
45% Boosting comunities services x gold.
10% Consumer that validates the above.
The WoW audience is also aging. A lot of people who play, it’s more worth their time pay for gold with money than it is to grind it in game.
That, and they aren’t good enough to actually do the content they’re paying other people to do for them.
WoW is pay to win but not to a degree that would make me refuse to ever play it again. If someone wants to spend $500 on tokens to pay a guild to boost them in mythic raid why do i really care? Gear helps but being able to play your class well matters more and if you’re paying for carries you’re probably not a very good player.
PVP is the same deal, its really not hard to get to 2100 to get the highest item level, if someone pays a booster to get them their faster so be it. I would of course prefer it to not be allowed but its not nearly as egregious a system as LA for example. Imagine having to invest tons of gold into RNG to upgrade your gear to maximum lmao. At least in WoW once you get your loot to drop its done, the only exception really is the legendary that can be upgraded which does cost gold and I hope they stop that in the future. Even then the legendary effect is what matters, the item level provides an insignificant boost to dps.
Because. You. Didn’t. Win. ANYTHING.
Bingo.
I think some people genuinely think that getting gear that will be obsolete the next patch is somehow “winning”, even though the players with skill will look at their logs and know instantly how trash they are.
It’s like some trust fund kid thinking they “won” because they could buy an F1 race car, even though they won’t ever place because they’ll likely crash befor finishing a race.
/10chars
WoW is a game about cosmetics, though. There are achievements and prestige tied to obtaining these cosmetic items. It’s a big deal for example, if someone manages to obtain every transmog appearance for a given class. It’s the real, true end-game content that goes beyond stats and itemization.
…so is that your particular definition of “winning” then?
If so, almost any part of the game could be re-defined according to an individual’s opinion.
That’s why this thread is kind of silly; there’s almost as many definitions of “winning” as there are of “casual”.