Your own logic if you assume people in here are stating that grey items would be used as an example of what players would be spending the gold on to obtain a power advantage over others. Alright, enough feeding the trolls for today, lmao. 
It would be a temporary advantage for that player I’m understanding this idiocy correctly. Have a good one!
I mean by that rationale then I would also own a mobile auction house mount.
No.
I have a pretty unbiased/objective take on what P2W is and how that definition applies to WoW, not the other way around. If you asked me if WoW was P2W a year or so ago I would have said no, you don’t understand what P2W means if you think WoW is P2W. I’ve done a lot of research, reading, and listening on different opinions and takes on what makes a game P2W and how certain systems are intentionally designed to encourage people to spend money on their game and from all of that formed my opinion.
I agree with the OP in regards to putting WoW on a lower level of P2W than other games as it’s not a binary yes or no question, and WoW certainly has a lot going for it that moves it away from a P2W centered game such as the fact that skill can overcome the power of the credit card, which is not applicable to games that are heavily micro-transaction focused. But when you have people saying “Oh but you can choose time over money” or “Anything in the shop can be gotten without spending money” you have someone who fundamentally doesn’t get what a P2W system is attempting to achieve from a portion of their customers.
I’ve said this many times before and I’ll say it again; whatever label you want to put on the WoW token or how Retail operates as a game the indisputable fact is that you can swipe your credit card on the game and get a massive amount of progress out of it in virtually every aspect of the game and if you think that doesn’t amount to some concept of P2W then you fundamentally don’t understand the question. Attempting to polish that turd is missing the point.
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There are reasons why using real money to buy gold in MMORPG’s was a bannable offense for so many decades before companies like Blizzard helped normalize it by becoming the premier gold sellers. One of the reasons was due to the ‘advantages’ over others (e.g. time and power) another was due to gold farmers having a very negative effect on the game’s economy. What do you think WoW tokens have done to this game. These whales have been swimming in their pond for too long on these forums and should try making this post in a bigger sea like the Reddit forums where you don’t need to spend money to actually post to get a bigger response on if WoW is P2W or not so they can become more clearly headed outside of their own echo-chambers that they use to seek validation from one another for their own poor spending habits.
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Are you really progressing though? If you can’t do any of the stuff that you’re being carried in without someone carrying you, you can’t really do anything that you couldn’t already do. If you could take that heroic carry and then be a good heroic raider, I might agree with you.
Yeah…the reason is because that money wasn’t going to Blizzard.
Depends on who you ask, OP. Personally I think any monetary purchase of currency that translates to in game advantages is winning.
Imagine the time saved to the person who buys tokens instead of farms gold to get consumables. Imagine they are both equally skilled players. Both have 8 hours to play a week. One of them will get to raid 8 hours a week in a decent guild, they can afford to buy anything they need to continue to raid at a higher level. Meanwhile broke milly mcgee has to farm part of their 8 available hours and won’t be able to raid.
So while they both have 8 hours and have the potential to be equals. One has the monetary ability to raid and ignore the rest of the game, the other does not. That’s a win.
I could make a hundred different examples of why it goes beyond just buying items or achievements. You’re buying time. Time = winning to some people.
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Yes. If the person feels like they are gaining something meaningful then they are progressing. Don’t think about this from the perspective of someone looking at them and thinking “Heh, I don’t think that’s what winning is about” think about it from the perspective of “Whatever they want to get done gets done faster compared to other people because they put money into the game”
Except you could do something like, say, buy a bunch of PvP or heroic/mythic carries to get geared to the teeth and then RBG queue to stomp people who are trying to gear naturally.
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Seeing as that player couldn’t do those things without the carry, I think it’s unlikely that he just becomes some great RBG player. What’s his motivation to even do it? He won’t be able to get better gear and he won’t be able to push the RBG ladder without someone carrying him. If he could do it, why buy the carry?
If it is P2W, does it stop being that when my guild gets a new member a free heroic raid clear?
By RBG I mean random, not rated.
I realize you were answering in the vein of rated BGs, but to the latter of your question the answer is the same reason for why people spend times of money on blatant P2W games where there is no skill involved. To stomp people. The most blatant P2W games thrive off the fact that a very small portion of their playerbase dumps money into the game to crush the non-paying people, or to compete with other paying people if the game doesn’t have a PvP aspect.
If the reason he got a trial was because he put money into the game to get geared enough to be given a trial that’s grounds for an argument that he paid to win to get there, even if you didn’t know that’s what he did. The people who are hooked on feeding into a P2W system aren’t really geared towards that gameplay though, the people who enjoy investing in P2W systems hit the level of progress they want and move on to another character or another game until they can put more money into it.
However, that setup can certainly entice casual buyers into buying into the system to give them an edge. You don’t have to think of people as either ones who spend $500 a week on tokens or never ever buying them. Consider that someone may decide to buy a couple of runs a month to guarantee some good upgrades to give them an edge for pug activities. Or maybe they buy some tokens to buy the really good BoEs from the new raid. Unfortunately the guild life is a dying lifestyle in WoW and lots of people live in a pug world so giving themselves an occasional boost to get accepted into pugs is helpful.
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I’m not even sure that a decked out carry is going to turn the tide in a random bg. You either know how to pvp or you don’t. I have some pretty great gear and I’m not beating anyone in a duel lol.
I’ve been in lots of guilds, hardcore and otherwise, and I’ve never heard of someone paying for a trial. I’m sure it happens, but most casual mythic raiding guilds have optional heroic nights. The guys that aren’t on the mythic raid team are getting free clears each week. Alts and new members get those too should there be enough room in the raid.
That can’t be P2W as it was free, but the end result is the same. What changes when I carry a friend or guildie to KSM?
If someone purchased boosts to get all their gear, They should stand out very quickly on logs. Just because you have the gear in a raid doesn’t mean you know what to do with it.
Two equally skilled DPS players with one DPS raid spot left, one has a higher ilvl due to using their real money than the other so they have higher DPS logs. Who will be chosen for the raid?
I’d have to meet the skilled dps player that needs to buy a carry. Logs aren’t all there is. Generally a trial is going to take attitude and preparation into account. Tryhards don’t last long in the majority of guilds.
Again, your log is going to be full of tagged the boss and then died on purpose if you bought a carry.
That’s the big problem with this. No one can hide the fact that they got carried. The guy with all 7 parses isn’t helping push content.
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Didn’t say anything about turning the tide, sometimes you just want to stomp
I can’t speak to the current landscape of PvP, but I have gotten involved a few times over the last few years and the gear gap has been pretty bad at times. Like at the end of BFA I focused on some PvP essences and easily outclassed people with gear. I got that gear fairly, but nobody fresh was beating me regardless of how bad I could have been.
I have always heard lots of complaints about the gear gap in SL and how it is a massive wall to overcome.
Didn’t mean it like that, meant it like maybe someone bought carries to get gear to get a look from guilds. I doubt that lots of people do this.
The fact that one workflow involved paying money to get there and one didn’t. Carries aren’t inherently P2W, if you delete the token you remove the P2W aspect from it.
100%. They won’t last long in any decent guild. I was just saying theoretically someone could do that. There’s more gray areas to this though, such as someone occasionally buying carries to help round out gear as opposed to trying to gear SOLELY through tokens and carries.
If they are good enough to join a mythic raiding guild and they want to use their gold to stack the deck in keys or heroic to increase the odds that they get that 1 item or slot to drop, That’s on them. It’s their gold and they can do with it what they want.
Yes, you will get more gear in a sale with traders rather than a pug. But once you join a guild and make the cut, the guild will throw as much loot as possible at you (baring certain OP items or slots that refuse to drop for core raiders). You’re spec needs a tarrigrue neck for bis? well any guild that’s been in mythic for a while now is probably disenchanting them, so you’ll probably get the 1st one that drops.
As far as I can tell, the complaints about gear in bg’s is about legitimate high ranking pvpers. I just don’t believe that a player so bad that he needed to buy pvp gear is going to be stomping anyone. Even if I were to concede that point, I wouldn’t agree that you’re winning anything in an unraked game mode.
Removing the token wouldn’t change anything. There are lots of ways to buy gold. If carries aren’t inherently P2W, then I don’t understand the argument. If I charge 1 copper, is it P2W? My overall problem with this is that you’re only paying to skip the grind. If you ever wanted to then be able to do the things that you bought the carry for, you’d still have to grind it all out. Buying KSM doesn’t mean you can just start jumping in +15 pugs.