The fact that this is even an option means a game is pay to win. Even if you do not engage with it personally.
If you say so. I personally don’t agree but since neither of us are confused about where the other stands further discussion won’t really be productive. I doubt either of us will change out minds. I’ve provided the rationale for why I feel the way I do and I didn’t really have a goal beyond that. I’m less interested in being right than I am in explaining why I think the way that I do.
Buy Token, get gold, buy gear in AH
Buy Token, get gold, buy mythic clear
Buy Token, get gold, buy m+ clear
This has been said over and over again
Does buying a token double the stamina or main stat on the gear you get compared to other people? Or something like that?
Furthermore, does said gear or content clear makes you WIN any in game competition?
Are you suddenly in the roster of the present raid first world kill?
Are you suddenly in the top 10 of the season M+ keys or invited to M+ invitational?
Are you in the top 50 PVP team/rating or won any esport competiton?
Edit: Quote
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And it was wrong every time it was said.
That’s you giving other players gold for doing something for you.
That’s not P2W. That’s paying another player for a service.
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I think we can just answer the original topic question with a resounding “YES”, as there is quite obviously a great and spirited debate about the topic.
Kthxbye.
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Unfortunately the debate is more about what the definition of “pay to win” is rather than whether or not it exists in the game.
The question is, which Lostark? because there are 2, the one from the east and the one from the west, the one from the west has the store adjusted and even the game itself has been adjusted in its times for the western market, if you search you can find videos about the times of the game in the east and how are you going to take months to reach certain content if you don’t spend money to speed up the pace, but that same content has already been reached on western servers (T2).
Also, remember that Lostark is a totally F2P game, not like WoW, which is Buy2Play and Pay2Play, and additionally Pay2Win.
The comparison in an attempt to defend WoW from P2W accusations is simply foolish.
Every game is pay to win these days.
I bought the new Pokémon legends Arceus for switch. My god it’s crazy pay to win.
I paid my niece 50 bucks and she fully beat the game for me. I started playing with level 50+ Pokémon. She said for 150 she’d complete the Pokédex.
Pay to win is getting crazy!
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That isn’t going to the blizz store to get that. That is choosing to spend the gold you bought on items. If you want to try using that logic WoW has ALWAYS been PTW then since BOE that affect player power have been there since Vanilla.
Show me the link in the blizz store where I can buy a mythic clear. Show me the link in the blizz store where I can buy a M+ clear. Show me the link in the store for purchasing BOE.
You chose to ignore a very important part of my response.
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The point is did you spend real money to gain player power “YES” and you can use this services to spend more money for other things. Like I said earlier the people that defend this are people that use token for game time in other country’s cause game time is $$$, the sellers, whales and morons.
No the point is that you want to stop people from getting gold from people buying tokens, and are obfuscating the definition of pay to win purely to fit your narrow minded view. I said specifically to link me where I can buy player power. If you CANNOT link where I can buy items or powers in the game, your argument is moot.
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See again, people like you really likes to keep it overly simplistic.
It’s a theme really with all of the people pushing this point and it is not a coincidence.
You’re doing that because more in-depth analysis demonstrates without the shadow of a doubt that this categorization as “it is” and “it isn’t” is intellectually dishonest at best. So you’re not willing to go in depth to defend the point. Why would you?
It doesn’t help you, it essentially cripples your positions by clearly showing that
- At it’s core the token was the least terrible outcome of 2 bad situation
- One being letting goldfarmer and scammer exploit the player base
vs - The second being to give player the ability to aquire gold via selling in-game time in the AH
So advocating for it’s removal is tantamount to asking to bring back the game to a worst place than it is right now without suggesting anything to cover for the problem it is keeping in relative check.
- When put on scale of “P2W” the game barely makes it up on the scale as nothing that can be skipped (with a 4 step process let’s not forget to mention it) isn’t achievable in a similar amount of time by someone with no money at all.
In fact the whole process in WoW would be better represented by “paying to catch up” as all the carries that occurs would be made by people who have already cleared the content a long time ago and no longer needed anything from it.
This furthers the point that they do not get ahead of anyone because for a carry to be able to happen, you need to have an already substantial amount of players with gear far surpassing the difficulty level of the content they are attempting to carry. Usually for that to happen, as I said, means that those players already cleared most of the relevant content and can now focus on carrying other players and are willing to do so.
Realistically it means that you can only really “P2W” once a major part of the player base already far surpasses you.
At which point you don’t get ahead of anyone, hence making the P2W argument null because no advantage was gained over anyone at all.
The players paying for those will also never realistically catch up or get ahead anyone either because their approach to the game is intrinsically lazy.
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Very true. Shadowlands has been the first expansion that we’ve had to use gold to obtain our legendaries, as opposed to the other legendary systems that were available in previous expansions.
If you don’t do any challenging end game content I could definitely see people thinking wow is pay to win.
If you are in a super casual guild that only does heroic but one of your guildies buys tokens and suddenly has mythic boes and you are stuck with heroic gear. That can feel bad.
I personally don’t think there should be any mythic boes.
That being said, wow is not “pay to win” for its hardest content.
“Bu bu bu but mythic boes in the world first race”. Yes, but those guilds then do carry runs for the rest of the expansion to pay back debts and build bank roll for the next tier. Though they could, they are not buying thousands of dollars worth of tokens.
Boosting services exist for every single game.
I can pay anyone to play a game for me.
You can’t pay to pass raid mechanics so it’s just not pay to win.
You can theoretically get carried in any multiplayer game I guess.
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At the higher end WoW is pay to win there’s no arguing that. You got to invest lot of money for BoE either in real money or in runs for gold and time is money so pay to win absolutely 100%.
It’s the opposite WoW is pay to win for the hardest content because of the BoE. It’s harder to be world first if you don’t buy BoEs. The BoEs and token make it pay to win. Pay to win doesn’t mean you don’t need skills it means you got to pay to win. Even if you buy the BoE doing runs the people buying your runs are buying them with token.
The problem many of you are having is that you appear unable to grasp that language is not always used literally. Of course, there is no winning in an MMORPG. Paying to win simply means can money be used to make your character stronger. Put aside the entire tangled question of boosts. In WoW, you can spend $20 and get a certain amount of gold. You can then go to the auction house and buy Mythic level Bind on Equip gear. Hence, it is utterly obvious WoW is to at least some extent pay to win, even totally leaving aside the question of whether paying gold for boosts is a sanctioned game mechanic. Likewise, the question of whether there are worse forms of pay to win as commonly found in mobile games in which competitive advantages are not available at all without paying like many of you pointlessly harped upon ad nauseam, is completely and obviously irrelevant. Pointing out that far worse forms of pay to win exist than that found in WoW does nothing to negate the indisputable fact that Blizzard sells in game currency to players for cash, and said in game currency can be used to directly (and indirectly) purchase high end gear without violating any of the game’s rules…
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