But you still COULD do it before you bought tokens, and just because you can, that is not what they are intended for, and is not even advertised by blizz.
tokens are gold and nothing else. They were created for one purpose and one purpose only - to stop all the outside gold sites. Paying for your subscription with them was just the mechanism for people to earn gold with them. Has zero to do with “winning” or buying gear.
Not for cash.
If you’re going to respond to this post respond to
If tokens are gold and nothing else why are they listed on the shop not for gold but for 20 USD? They were created to monopolize the market that gold websites were cashing in on for years without blizzard including but not limited to selling carries for cash. (inb4 ITS NOT BLIZZARD SELLING THE CARRY SO SOMEHOW THAT MAKES IT OKAY!)
P.S Alliandrin he’s using circular reasoning so next he’s probably going to say you aren’t buying the carry with cash you’re buying the carry with gold. then he’ll say he’s not retarded.
By his logic if they made everyone pay in pesos, and sold full tier sets on the shop… that still wouldn’t be pay-to-win because slavery with extra steps isn’t still slavery.
I hate to use a nasty example that has real-world ramifications but this is what happens when you lawyer every definition until meaningless: The horrible becomes justifiable.
Oh that doesn’t count as slavery/murder/rape because the definition of that thing actually includes this criterion I just made up.
So based on some reasoning in this thread, it seems that the real winners of WoW are auction barons.
If buying gold through tokens = P2W, that means having a ton of gold means you’ve won.
A friend of mine will be glad to hear he’s won WoW while Method has not.
You are getting caught up on the term winning so that you can avoid the overall implication of what it’s designated to describe. Using out of game cash for an in game advantage over other players.
Normally people don’t mind when these advantages are strictly cosmetic or at the very least do not include the highest quality of gear. When you start making the highest content available for sale in cash the reward loses some of it’s prestige and it’s meaning.
Being able to buy the top content in the game for cash is undeniably giving an advantage over majority of players even if the minority (the ones who are selling the runs) are profiting immensely from it.
The literal definition of win isn’t part of the definition (from Wikipedia) of pay-to-win.
If I said my family you’d go off about how I was claiming I owned them.
If I said a tennis player committed a foot fault, you would go off about how his foot wasn’t at fault, he was.
If I claimed naming a player on the forums was a call-out, you’d go off about how he wasn’t called anything, and how I didn’t contact him by phone.
If I’m just interested in cheesing the definition, I could do so by doing this:
If you pay for a run with cash, and you want an item, the carriers will all pass on it and the game will say you won it, so you literally paid to win.
But that’s not pay-to-win if the item is a mount because it gives you no in-game advantage over other players.
did they though? if anyone reports them they’ll likely be banned, what you described is not legal, and therefore has no “precedence” in the legal game. one cannot “legally” have someone else level for you or offer gear and other stuff for real money, you can legally “run” the stuff repeatedly just not legally pay real money to have someone get you the gear.
Idk if this has been mentioned but even if this is pay to win (which I don’t believe it is) this isn’t blizzards doing. Ya sure blizz added the token but what’s the alternative? Sketchy Chinese websites that are more likely to steal ur info than give you gold or you get banned by blizzard. Regardless it’s not blizzard selling mythic boosts it’s players creating an ingame service that really doesn’t get you anything in the long run because the gear is worthless in a patch or 2.
Oh and basically every online game has gold sellers so by the logic you guys are using everything is pay to win.
i guess its pay to win if that includes a new design direction intended to force players into enduring massive boredom periods before they have fun
like saying you can have fun after running a mile on these hot lava rocks first. Sadly even the end fun has been reduced lately making the old chest of gold become a quality paperclip and then making those paperclips the currency to buy access to something that ‘might’ have a chest of gold at the end.
You absolutely can because you can just use real money to buy tokens and then use the gold.
It doesn’t even that runs for cash are illegal, however, because there is no enforcement. If that really made a difference, Blizz could easily put tier gear on the cash shop, make it against the TOS to buy it, and just not enforce.
Also, I hate how the new forums remove quotes if you’re the next post. I edit to put them back in. I had kind of a long post and I had to use context to get what you were responding to though I’m sure you quoted.
Blizzard made the token to shut down the external gold sites. True, but they well knew that once they gave it a value for gold ingame, what would happen. If you believe that simply because its not stated that you can sell your token for gold, and buy gear with it, that it isnt a pay to win mechanic, then you are a fool.
that’s the thing, they’re not buying with real money, instead opting to use virtual currency. the definition of pay to win requires that the person use real money, not virtual currency, additionally they must use this advantage bought with real world currency to “win” against free players who do not have this option. in WoW while we have “free” players operating in-game from the lvl 20 demo, these cannot really be said to be playing the same MMO, as the two versions of the game (paid DLC and demo version) allow access to different contents and content types, for example there are no real “Raids” or “dungeons” before lvl 20. the two are not comparable so to say we the “paying” customers gain an advantage would be a bit of a stretch since free-to-play players are not directly competing with us in the same content type or area.
pay to win is defined as “using real money to purchase an advantage against free players.”. we do not really have “free” players in game, not ones we compete against anyways, since paid players and non-payers are in different leveling zones and content type.
So first of all, none of that is in Wikipedia’s definition.
And again, your side isn’t even consistent. Some of you admit that if Blizz sold full tier sets on the shop, that would be pay-to-win. They don’t specify that this would only be pay-to-win if the players buying used the gear in a specific way.
Secondly, people do use cash to purchase these advantages.
Since you’re just going to randomly add bits to the definition to cheese it, I can easily cheese your cheesing of it.
They’re purchasing advantage over free accounts with level 20 characters.
See how you’re diverting the argument to a place where what we’re discussing has no bearing on the game environment at all and you’ve just got people trying to kick the soccer ball into the meaningless goal you’ve erected?
It’s meaningless because whether the ball goes in or not fails to describe anything but how much lawyer cheese went into the kick.
When people pay for advantage in-game with cash (Wikipedia’s definition) that has real effects on the game which is what people are describing when they say pay-to-win.
what have i added? i quoted wikipedia’s (which is the only site with any real substantial definition for the word phrase pay-to-to win) definition word for word.
" In some games, players who are willing to pay for special items or may be able to gain an advantage over those playing for free who might otherwise need to spend time progressing in order to unlock said items. In general a game is considered pay-to-win when a player can gain any gameplay advantage over his non-paying peers, which is shown in games such as FIFA. Such games are called “pay-to-win” by critics."
also if you check my post history on this thread, you’ll note that i have CONSISTENTLY used the same definition of Pay-To-Win in all of my posts. try to avoid verbatim personal assaults and over-generalizations, they do not help one’s debated point.
This is the definition I’m using. By a super-literal interpretation it fits because I can get 100 extra levels over a free player. That’s an advantage.
By a rational person’s interpretation it means buying gameplay advantage (such as gear) for cash, which you can do via tokens.
Pay to win is the ability to spend mor emoney to gain any type of an advantage over anyone. Doesnt matter whether the game has free players or not.
but those players (free demo players) don’t really play the same game, they’re: not in the same content, don’t compete (because they’re not comparable), and cannot communicate, group up, etc. they don’t even get proper IDS in game, for all intents and purposes they don’t really “exist” in game, as indifferent and excluding as that sounds.
that is your personal opinion of the definition, what i have posted is the actual definition as defined in MMO and general gaming terms and practices.