Is WoW P2W? The answer:

[Cäpslöck-proudmoore]

@Varlth-mankrik

So you’re saying if I make some crappy mobile RPG hack and slash game where playing the game naturally rewards gems for doing certain activities and those gems can buy the most powerful items in the game, but it’s slow and a very drip drip form of acquisition while I ALSO sell those gems in bulk in the cash shop the game is NOT P2W? And also the game has PvP and ranking systems to it so if you ever want to be competitive within it you’re SoL if you don’t spend money?

But that’s not how WoW works.

@Varlth-mankrik

If we’re going to run with the analogy that a store is the game and the products are a result of interacting with the store than the analogy is closer to this:

I went to a store and asked for paint, which they offered to me if I would work at the store for the day or if I spent $20. I’m not made of money so I choose to work, but other people come up and just buy it because they want to get on with their life and not waste their time working. Now I can stay in my own happy little world and keep working at the store because I like working at the store and I like the rewards from the store, and just ignore that other people are buying stuff and doing other fun things instead, but I can also ask myself if I really want to be at this store if I don’t feel like I’m being appreciated because I refuse to spend money.

A better analogy is that playing the game yourself is cooking, and getting a boost for gold is going to a restaurant.

[Varlth-mankrik]

@Cäpslöck-proudmoore

But that’s not how WoW works.

Well maybe you should figure out the context of the conversation first before quoting it then.

@Cäpslöck-proudmoore

A better analogy is that playing the game yourself is cooking, and getting a boost for gold is going to a restaurant.

Oh, so you’re not even going to bother attempting to come up with an analogy to factor in the WoW token into the equation?

Cool. Cool cool cool.

[Dæraj-dalaran]

@Kungmoojitsu-area-52

Use gold to obtain items for a time or power advantage buy using the gold to buy items that have a time or power advantage, how did assume that a grey would be player power. You aren’t really this dense right? You have to be trolling at this point.

No, Once again. I said Link me where I can directly buy power from the store. You can’t. What you want is people to be unable to spend gold how they want really. Gold runs have been able to be purchases since Vanilla, only difference is they were bought from Chinese farmers and then purchased. What you really mean to say is you are mad that people are free to pay people to help them out. Wow has never been P2W because you cannot buy power from blizz. You can only buy gold. There have been images of ACTUAL P2W games before, where you buy potions that increase your power X% for an hour or such. The ability to pay people with store bought gold to run you through a M+ or a raid isn’t even close. For one…you have no guarantee you get ANYTHING from that run. You could be a plate wearer and nothing drops that is plate.
It is just upsetting you that people can pay to get a quick kill for a FOMO mount, or some gear to help them do their content because you have some asinine thought that you would be impacted by what they do…when reality is you aren’t. You are just basically upset others are playing a game the way they want, and you don’t like it, and you want blizz to remove their ability to do it. That is pretty prickish of you.

[Cäpslöck-proudmoore]

@Varlth-mankrik

Oh, so you’re not even going to bother attempting to come up with an analogy to factor in the WoW token into the equation?

Why does it matter if you or your parents are paying for the dinner? the net result is the same.

[Varlth-mankrik]

@Cäpslöck-proudmoore

Why does it matter if you or your parents are paying for the dinner? the net result is the same.

The whole point of the analogy is to represent the way the game works within the confines of playing it and the success you get out of it being relative to the effort and/or time you invest into the game to get it. In your analogy having your parents pay for the meal circumvents the natural order of the way game should operate when you don’t let money influence it.

When players buy expensive things because they spent time making their gold by actually playing the game that’s ok because they spent time playing the game in a different way than you or I did by being leet sweaty gamerz. When you or I buy an expensive vendor mount because we spent time carrying people in raids to get gold that’s ok because we made gold offering services to other players while playing the game.

When you offer up a system like the WoW token you remove the need to play the game to achieve the success relative to that effort or time put into the game. You are allowing people to use their out-of-game wealth to not have to interact with the game while still being able to achieve a similar level of success as someone else who does play the game. I fundamentally think that is bad for games to have and more specifically think it is not in the favor of consumers to have the gaming market go in this direction across the board.

At this point I cannot articulate this any clearer for you. You are either capable of understanding what I am saying or not. Clearly you are completely ok with games design allowing out-of-game wealth to influence the games you play. I’m not, that’s why I advocate against it as much as possible against it. WoW is not terribly engrossed in P2W mechanics, but the token has ended up being a big step in that direction. Who the hell knows where WoW’s cash shop will be 5+ years from now, but I’m positive it won’t offer less things that it already does.

[Pisaro-malfurion]

When you need wow tokens to open up raid tiers or to learn new ranks of spells, we’ll agree with you.