I have played mobile p2w games and those ALWAYS have guaranteed get X stuff for cash, you will never see that in wow, funny how you prove my argument.
If they sold legendary gear on the site’s in-game shop, it’d be pay to win.
They don’t, so it’s not.
i can go get x stuff for a wow token right now armor stack a m+ group and run the same instance over and over till i get what i want. its actually just like the mobile games that show you what you have a chance of getting when you purchase one of their loot boxes.
You don’t consider it P2W to be paying real life money to get more chances at items that you otherwise would not have?
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i mean technically it is? since pay to win defines a pay to win game as paying players being able to have an advantage over non-paying players, since we have a demo that only goes to 20 and paying players can go well above that at 120-130 max currently (or there abouts) that is a pretty significant disadvantage to free player i’d say 
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This void elf hunter gets it! 
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And if you put people with equal skill against each other and one has the gun and the other has the pleb gun that does half as much damage the person with the gun ONLY available via opening your wallet. The person with the bought gun wins every time.
Let us move back to WoW. World First race starts 28th. Let us say Blizzard both either Limit and Method (consistently top 2 guilds and have relatively close kill times so for all intents and purposes equally skilled or within minute percentage points) an option to spend tons of money on 480 IL gear (5 above mythic IL and with no forging is literally impossible to get).
Only one takes the offer for whichever reason and blows the other guild that is hovering around 455 IL (it’s first day of raid) out of the water and it isn’t even close since there is next to no worry about enrage timers or early deaths or whatever since you already overgear the content.
Honestly, even the world 50th guild probably beats Method in this situation. THIS is what a true P2W model looks like. In fact MOST P2W models would be selling IL 500+ gear with the cap being the 475 so my situation is EXTREMELY tame.
I wouldn’t say that it was done just with the mindset that they could make money off it. Knowing Actiblizzard, you could very well be right, but, I personally like to imagine that they did it in-part because it would protect players who make the mistake of buying gold from sketchy 3rd party sources. Which, I can sympathize with, because back when I was a dumb 13 year old, I’d look up sketchy downloads where I could just give myself gold or levels. Luckily enough for me and my PC, I found nothing.
What are you winning?
Pay to win… means you can pay the game company to get an advantage in combat over other players so you can win a match/battle
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So what your saying is there are multiple different models for pay to win? hmmmm.
No, cause everyone has the same chance by playing, theres not a single item behind a cash wall, thats the most basic difference, and another difference with mobile p2w games is that they literally have gachas to CHOOSE the unit you want by paying say $50, you cant do this in wow either, unless i missed that item from cash shop that lets you buy a socketed 455 of your choice, then this would be wow gacha.
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Where is the “otherwise not have” coming from though? Nothing is stopping me right now from running 50 Waycrest Manor +10 keys fishing for a 455 Balefire Branch. I am not locked out of constantly running the dungeon over and over again until I pay a bunch of gold or USD.
To be honest, it would be great if people stopped arguing about semantics and focused on the topic. I understand P2W has a negative connotation so people who love the game want to distant it from that label.
Do you think WoW is pay2getahead? Or whatever other term you’d like to apply to it?
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I would agree with a pay for advantage tbh, since p2w nowadays is too wide of a term and it fits mostly with games that have gear/units that can only be bought with cash, literally, no matter how long you play if you dont throw $50 you arent getting that item.
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I used to think the way you did, then I played BDO which is a Korean game that touted it wasn’t P2W. You can get everything in game without spending a dime. People called it “pay4convenience”.
On a small scale, which is what WoW is nearer to, it’s not a big issue. You can pay for a leg up in some areas, but ultimately it’s still all obtainable in game if you spend the time and you can always get lucky.
But in games where there’s several instances of these “pay4convenience” avenues, it builds on itself and you realize it really is a form of paying to win.
That’s not pay 2 win. If you could pay money to get BiS gear from the store or if the store sold BiS over Mythic raiding gear then that is pay 2 win.
For one thing, no loot is ever guaranteed in raids, dungeons, M+ etc. Secondly, they are paying in gold. If they pay in cash it is bannable. So if someone pays a lot of gold for a M+ or Mythic raid run for gear and nothing drops for them, then they are sol. Buying items with cash on a store which is a guarantee is p2w.
People really need to learn what pay 2 win actually means.
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What I want to know, is how do you ‘win’ WoW? How do you know when you’ve ‘won’?
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Stop cherrypicking words since it doesn’t help you in actual arguments. ALL P2W games have shop exclusive power. They are P2W because you quite literally cannot compete without opening your wallet. No amount of “git gud” will overcome 50 IL and you also wouldn’t be able to get that 50 IL doing ANYTHING in game. THAT is a P2W model.
I used the terminology I did to account for a potential range of scumminess. Some would sell you 600 IL gear. Some 485. The main point is that ALL are over 475 where even if it was as low as 476 if you put two identical players next to each other, the person who didn’t pay NEVER wins since the wallet is the only difference.
A few things added to the store compared to a multitude in-game that STILL require effort, rep etc… you do realize OP that there are a lot of holes in your post that make no sense what-so-ever.
says you and your definition bro my definition is can you spend money to gain power which in this case yes you can