Yep its pay2win. No turning back now though. You can also do great without spending.
If we consider WoW a P2W because of boosting, then basically every online game is P2W, which makes the term useless and irrelevant.
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You have arbitrarily selected this definition on the basis of a shi*post you saw on Urban Dictionary. There is no basis of any kind for your asinine definition. Everyone here is dumber for having listened to you espouse this absolutely indefensible nonsense.
Let me repeat one more time: By your definition, if in some gacha game a more skilled player who spent $80,000 can defeat or out-compete a player who spent $100,000, the game must not be pay to win, because in a “real” pay to win, and I quote you directly here, “only the wallet matters.” I think we can all see how stupid your definition is now. Please stop; you’re just embarrassing yourself at this point. You lost the argument, but it’s ok!
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To be clear here it’s not P2W specifically because of boosting. It’s P2W because we can buy the gold used to boost from Blizzard directly. Yes third party sites have always existed, but unless it becomes rampant and unchecked(which arguably it is now on Classic, but it wasn’t back in the day), people don’t tend to blame the game for a black market.
If not directly selling power but selling people the means to very easily buy power in the game isn’t P2W, then it becomes trivial for any game to “not be P2W” and avoid backlash.
I’m open to agree with this statement, if everyone else is in agreement that “winning the game” means “buying runs”.
I’m using YOUR definition here btw.
So I’m glad you’re calling yourself BS I guess?
Let’s try this,
Do you agree that if you had two players of equal skill level and one paid real money for extra gear in order to win in a duel, that’s bad for the game?
Because thats all people are trying to tell you. This has been 100% consistent. Call it whatever you want, it’s bad for the game. It shouldn’t happen in a fair game, especially a subcription based one.
yeah wow tokens was a can of worms why is this thread back up tho? feb is strangely long ago.
wheres the necromancer ?!??!
You can exchange real money into gold and use that gold to buy any item or service. Anyone denying it is literally delusional…
That said, if folks are doing content where having 304-311 gear actually matters… having that gear won’t mean anything if it isn’t backed up with A LOT of skill. You can join a +20 Mythic or a Mythic Raid with your boosted 300 ilvl and 2000 carried rating/CE that you probably spent the better half of $1k getting… and you’re going to be absolutely worthless and called a useless boosted loser if you don’t have the mechanics and your role down pat.
So, yes, the game is pay to win… but in any content where the reward you’ve paid for is needed, you’re still going to have paid to be a complete loser instead.
We can buy gold, but the game doesn’t offer a direct way to convert that into an advantage, apart from a few BoEs, which are limited to only a few slots.
You still need to have the skill to complete high difficulty content, regardless of whether you buy a couple of BoEs or not.
The moment we include “buying” player behavior in this discussion, then the term loses all meaning and it’s irrelevant to even argue whether it’s P2W or not.
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It’s not simply that boosts are sold in WoW. It’s that 1) In-game currency is sold legally within game rules to players for dollars; 2) Boosts are sold legally within game rules for in-game currency purchasable for that real world currency; 3) Mythic level BoE gear is (to a more limited extent) also sold legally within game rules for in-game currency at the auction house without even needing to buy a boost.
I don’t consider the term useless at all, as it is simply not true that the rules of every online game allow you to purchase competitive advantages over others without cheating. I would grant you that if WoW prohibited boosting it would not be fair to count this against it in assessing whether it is P2W, as you can’t say a game is P2W because people pay to cheat.
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This is already enough to make the argument that WoW is p2W, and the first and foremost reason there is not really any honest debate here. It’s just a question of how much, not whether.
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You want a direct answer to your feebleminded question…. Here it is.
BoE gear on the AH is NOT the best gear in the game. Infact, a lot of it is arguably junk gear. People pay for it to meet iLVL requirements for endgame content so that they can start getting real gear quicker. Additionally buying off the AH can only get you so far, you’re not going to fill every slot with “high end” gear. You will have a lot of low iLvl filler gear and no guarantee that your combined iLvl will meet the requirements. Someone who actually does the content and gets the gear through actually playing the game will not only have a higher combined iLvl due to BoP gear, but on average they will have better stat distributions on said gear, AND their skill in playing their class as well as doing dungeon and raid mechanics will also be higher because they have plenty of first hand experience.
Advantage goes to the players who actually play the game.
“My” definition is the commonly accepted one, and the only one that makes any sense: A game is pay to win if you can exchange real world currency for in game advantages (legitimately, within the game’s rules).
You seem curiously unable to grasp that the fact that I can purchase advantages in a P2W game need not imply that the player who spends more automatically “wins” or outcompetes the player who spends less in a direct matchup or competition. I’m not really sure what more I can do to explain something so simple and obvious. Even a 5 year old should be able to understand this.
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I agree that the game has some elements of P2W, and that a black and white debate is impossible.
However, I think what you can buy using game systems is a small advantage that you can get without spending gold.
While quicker access to some small amount of gear is an advantage, it’s far to make you “win” in any type of content. Player skill is far more important. The difference between people completing a +25 or higher keystone, or getting Cutting Edge is skill.
Even if we apply it strictly only to the AH, you can get quite far with this alone.
Regardless of if it’s technically P2W or not, carrying has always existed in this game.
Somebody needs the skill. You specifically do not.
The moment we allow them these technicalities to make a game that is P2W in everything but name, the term also becomes meaningless.
At that point “It’s not P2W” becomes little more than a shield for people wanting to defend it.
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I agree with you that the extent is limited and not nearly on the level of most other P2W games
The people arguing with you are the same people that fall for mobile game scam tactics.
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That’s ultimately what it always comes down to and I don’t get it. What causes people to defend bad behavior from a company they aren’t even a part of? Like this stuff objectively makes the game worse, shouldn’t we all want the game to be a little better?
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Uh what? Gold selling was rampant back in the day. You have no clue what you are talking about.