Not that I disagree with you that WoW isn’t pay to win but I gotta say there ain’t a ton of ways to die before I moonfire the boss once even on Mythic raid bosses. I don’t think you’re making an overly compelling point.
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I’d say this is debatable. P2W implies that you are paying for some form of advantage against other players/the content. The only potential advantage you get from, say, a boost, would be bypassing the time it takes to level. And even then, not only can you reach the cap relatively quickly for free, there are also many players who’ve already reached the cap. So you’re not getting an advantage. Especially because you still need to gear up, as the boost gear is not that good.
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There are guilds that can and do do that. The one that carries me in mythic pluses right now no. However, I used to be in a top 10 US guild and those guys certainly could.
except you can’t, one way or the other you WILL have to go into the raid and fight as long as you obtain the gear LEGALLY in accordance with blizzards rules, without cheating one cannot legitimately obtain the gear without running the raid/dungeon, having someone bring the gear to you or an afker at the entrance is against the ToS at by that point they’re not a player anymore, they’re a criminal/defendant in court.
The advantage is you got there quicker.
Level boosts are like, the least offensive form of p2w though.
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It’s indirectly pay to win.
Nothing about the design allows you to literally drop money for power or some other advantage (other than leveling, which is irrelevant). That’s what makes something directly pay to win. The pay to win nature you’re talking about is a player to player interaction for the most part and happened tons regardless of whether or not the WoW token existed. But it’s also true that people definitely drop money on tokens for stuff like this now.
That said, I don’t really consider dropping like 300k for a single run through Heroic EP to be “winning”’. It’s not hard to get that ilvl elsewhere. People largely will not pay that price repeatedly to fully gear. It’s a one-off deal to get AotC or to jump start an alt for the vast majority who will be buying carries.
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It’s against the terms of service to die in a fight and let your teammates finish it?
you’re not gonna win if you still stand in fire, no matter how much you pay
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Yes, but reaching that cap quicker means nothing when you still need to grind for better gear. And even if you buy a WoW Token and pay for carries, that’s not really P2W. Sure, Blizz takes a 5$ cut, but as someone mentioned earlier, they’re just hooking you up with a player who wants to exchange their gold for Bnet currency/game time. When it comes to carries, it’s a player based economy, which is not pay to win.
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The only “questionable” part of the WoW Token really is the fact it is MOST LIKELY cross realm considering all token in the US are currently 176,355 gold.
I understand it is most likely this way so smaller realms have an actual market to work with, but that is still technically gold moving from one realm to another which begs the question of why aren’t more trade options able to bypass realms.
Again, the only things we REALLY know about the WoW Token is what Blizzard has told us since they were introduced in WoD, but as I said I don’t see a reason to believe otherwise until people have verifiable proof Blizzard is actually injecting gold into the market.
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That’s why I said level boosts are not an offensive form. I was just answering someone.
In the case of tokens, they are absolutely P2W. You have bypassed the time it takes to farm the gold you need in order to buy a run that you otherwise would not run to obtain gear you would otherwise not have.
The gold isn’t the thing that’s materializing out of thin air, it’s you using an alternative currency (aka real life currency) to legally jump ahead of the line.
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so does every person who “dies” halfway through a fight not get loot? cause that would exclude a lot of players i’ve seen here and elsewhere (do not DO NOT play dcuo, i’m begging you, that game is the worst perpetrator of this, the DPS really do suck when you’re the healer 
).
What? 10chars
I agree it’s not difficult but i myself sold a run of 6/8 heroic for the price of a wow token IN GOLD. I have screen shots from the buyer to prove it but i won’t get into that the difference is now blizzard allows advertisement of carry runs in trade ect as long as it says for gold. They’ve created a culture of carries being acceptable and so of course more people are going to do it than try to fight bosses and earn gear.
About four days, if you sell carries 
Red flags to people making groups. It’s really easy to identify who has purchased runs vs got them via progression, if you know what to look for.
Which leads to the next point selling carries has become the most profitable way to make money / time invested in game. This is extremely problematic for wow’s community and economy.
A few hours if you play at the start of a patch.
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Most guilds that get CE do tend to reclear to get benched players their own CE over the next few weeks. Usually 1-2 at a time. Mythic raid rosters are usually around 25 people give or take a few so a lot of guilds try to get around to everyone since all 25 people DID contribute throughout the tier.
Especially on fights like Azshara where one of your healers IS getting benched since it is unanimously a 3 or less healer fight whereas 4 is fairly standard for other bosses. Especially on first kills.
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For the sake of an honest discussion I think if you truly did want to make an honest argument for WoW being P2W you’d have to look at actual Mythic world first guilds buying BoE gear and raid materials. There’s a reason a lot of guilds in that position sell carries for gold and it’s because raiding at that level is expensive. But with the WoW token guilds looking for world first can buy the gold they need to fund their campaign which gives them an advantage over their competitors who wouldn’t be able to afford to do so.
I’m actually surprised this thread went on so long without that ever being brought up. In my mind, for something to be pay to win I need to purchase something that gives me an advantage over people who didn’t pay. If I buy a carry what advantage did I get? Certainly not gear as a non-paying person who doesn’t suck and is doing their dungeons every week is keeping pace with me. I’m not even directly competing with them in the first place!
But world first guilds are directly competing against one another. In terms of pay to win I think that’s the more interesting discussion.
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It’s not P2W as it’s a player based economy.
Another thing of note is that, in creating Tokens, I’d argue that Blizzard is doing more good than harm. Players would still buy gold from gold farmers, which is dangerous for numerous reasons. Getting scammed, getting their bank info potentially taken, etc. In creating Tokens, Blizz created a safer alternative to trade gold between players, that is much safer than buying from a gold seller.
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