As I said, you’ll only be disappointed by me answering this question.
We’re not in EA Star wars Battlefront 2 territory where unlocking 1 hero through gameplay was literally 40hours and where the alternative to get them all was to pay what? over 700$? I can’t recall.
We’re in a game where the gear falls out of the sky. Paying for it really doesn’t mean much of anything if it’s available otherwise and relatively easily.
It pretty much is.
Some just don’t want their pride damaged to admit it’s possible or true.
Well it depends on what you mean by “win”. For most of us a new expansion comes out and we go do the quests and a few dungeons then watch the cut scenes on Youtube to see how the story ended. You can do that with not much more than your subscription cost.
Now if you are into PvP that might be different. Can you buy gear to win in PvP? If so that’s the players making it P2W, not Blizzard.
As for Mythic + and Raids, again if you do those and feel you have to be a top player than that’s your choice. It seems a clan could decide that buying gear was not a requirement.
To me pay2win is based in pvp type stuff. You can buy boosts or so on but its not really needed its just a want. You can finish a story with a regular lfr most of the time and the lfr gear is all you really need. When new expantion comes out the pre expantion gives a way to get gear to help in new expantion. Also mythic+ runs are not needed just a way to max all stats not needed to finish the story or normal content. Unlike other games called p2w if mainly because you hit a wall that prevents you from continuing the story or content that needs either money and allot of it or grinding. Since they harder content in wow is mainly for vanity its not really p2w you can honestly do all content with the gear that drops in dungeons and lfr you don’t need to buy boosts or run harder raids. If you want a legendary then wait 2 expantions or 1 expantion and go with friends for a quick raid
Tell us you have never played an actual pay to win game without telling us you have never played a real pay to win game.
Only bad players say this game is pay to win.
Of course! I most certainly agree. I’m a very reasonable man. I’ve repeatedly said WoW is pay to win to a limited extent and to a much lesser degree than most other pay to win games. My argumentative adversaries, on the other hand, insist that WoW must be considered absolutely pure of all P2W elements at all costs and are unable to keep their tempers under control or cease from engaging in ad hominem, strawman, and various other logical fallacies in increasingly desperate attempts to deny that it is even possible to buy any competitive advantages in a game that sells in game currency for cash, and sanctions the sale of boosts in trade chat and top Item level gear for game curreny at the auction house.
I’d have much more respect if people just gave out their opinion as to what it means to “win the game”. For me, it’s leveling all classes (and specs) to level cap, all reps and professions (and their respective “specs”) completed, every mount collected, all races capped and complete every achievement.
As far as I’m concerned, nobody has accomplished that, therefore I don’t view this game as “P2W”. But, hey, maybe “winning the game” means something different for you (addressing everyone and not anyone in particular).
Pretty sure we don’t all have spare gamer chairs to give away for loot in split raid runs.
A nuance, at last. Something that’s more agreeable.
As this isn’t an official dictionary term, we can’t just have one official definition, so I went to Google and picked the first 3 results for “what is pay2win”. Here are the results:
“Games that let you buy better gear or allow you to make better items then everyone else at a faster rate and then makes the game largely unbalanced even for people who have skill in the game without paying.” (Urbandictionary dot com)
"Pay-to-win, abbreviated as P2W, describes an aspect of a game where players are allowed to get an advantage with real-world currency to purchase in-game items. The pay-to-win structure is prevalent in both multiplayer online games through DLC (downloadable content) and mobile games through in-app purchases.
Pay-to-win games usually offer better weapons, armor, character abilities, or in-game currency to players as microtransactions. The pay-to-win advantages make it harder for other players to compete if they cannot afford or do not want to purchase the same items. As the definition would imply, players essentially pay to win at a game." (Computerhope dot com)
"In the simplest terms, “pay-to-win” describes a game where paying real money gives players a significant advantage over those who don’t spend any money.
Simply having microtransactions does not make a game pay-to-win. Most games these days, especially multiplayer titles, have microtransactions, loot boxes, battles passes, and similar monetization systems." (Makeuseof dot com)
As you can see in these 3 definitions, it isn’t enough for the game to offer ways to obtain something through real money. The advantages you get need to be significant enough (even unbalanced) for the game to be considered pay 2 win.
In WoW, whether or not you can complete high difficulty content depends on your skill. You can do it a little faster by spending money, if anything, but that’s it.
Why do you keep asking this? When two people fight in an arena, one person loses and what does the other person do? What do we describe the person as who came out on top?
When someone needs just A LITTLE BIT better numbers to keep their raid spot, and they buy gold to buy some BOEs. Those BOEs push them over the edge, and they have beaten the person trying to take their spot from them.
There are many ways you can “win” in WoW. And paying helps with all of them.
Hell, even if you want to beat everyone to market when the new crafting system comes out. Gold will help you level the hell out of that.
Pretending like these concepts don’t exist because blizzard doesn’t give you a million dollars at the end of the line is dishonest and doesn’t serve a real conversation at all.
Yes because using an extreme minor scenario from the race for world first has anything to do with pay to win.
My gosh you arent even entertaining anymore with how out of touch you are.
Sigh. How many times do I need to explain you are being simple-minded if you take the term “winning” in “pay-to-win” literally? It’s child-like and astonishingly naive to think a game requires a “Victory!” screen that says “You beat the game!” in order to be able to purchase advantages over other players. On your thinking, no MMORPG could ever be P2W regardless of how predatory its shop was, since completing an MMO is impossible by the very nature of the genre of game.
…so what world do you live in where that’s justified as not pay to win?
That’s why there is no more to talk about. I don’t find paying to skip any content acceptable at all, even if its just a small 2 hour grind. If we have a philosophical difference that large then we are in “Agree to disagree” territory.
The person who played better. Thats why when I was playing jungle in my feral in blues 1800 ret/war teams couldnt kill me.
Anyone that loses a raid spot because of BoEs isnt a mythic raider.
None of yours have been valid so far.
You do realize the people who win that are already gold capped and has nothing to do with tokens
You really are reaching.
Because Liquid didnt even win the world first race.
Thats not even comparable because the gaming chair wasnt even from Blizzard.
You have to be like 12
It doesn’t have to be a mythic raider. It could be any kind of raider.
Not if both players had the same skill level but the winner skipped an extra grind by buying gold. Thus giving them the edge.
This is just petty.
Because that’s the key factor to making the game “P2W”. Like, Hearthstone is having Cards which can be bought with real life money. There are no other sublets surrounding it.
If you can simply define what “winning” means to you, we’d be good. But for some reason, answering it is too complicated, for whatever reason.
No, I want to know (in people’s opinions, not that it needs to be true) what they classify as “winning”. If you can just say “having the highest ilvl is ‘winning’ the game”, then I will agree with your point, as that’s how you truly feel about it. But, for some reason, you won’t 
If someone is losing a raid spot its not going to be because of a BoE. Its going to be because of mechanics.
BoEs dont offer that large of an advantage.
No one has the same skill level unless you are playing at the top.
Sorry you dont like the truth.