So having an exchange between real world currency and in game currency will always make a game “pay to win” since there will almost always be a way for your gold to buy you things in game that allow you to “win”.
It’s a natural extension that once you tie that to real world currency, the issue becomes: who can spend the most real world money to get the biggest in game advantage.
I made myself sad thinking about this. 
Because a Magic Rooster Mount isn’t going to queue for your bg and smash you with a 475 gushing wounds bracer
There should never be an exchange between real currency and virtual since it gives an obvious advantage to people willing to spend real world money to effect the game world.
That is the essence of “pay to win”. Spending real money to get an advantage in a video game.
People have been able to buy gear for gold since vanilla, the only thing that has changed is the source of the gold. All tokens did was take the old gold farmers out of the equation and offer a safer and allowed method of buying it. People were buying BoEs and carries in vanilla for gold but back then the gold was pretty often from some seedy gold farming company in China.
It’s not the mount I’m talking about, it’s the gold you can get for selling a Loot Card on the Auction House and then buying runs with that gold. That’s existed for over a decade. How is it different than the WoW Token and why is one pay to win and one isn’t? It’s nonsensical.
Pay to win? yes… yes it is… not… not pay to win… not.
It really depends on a person’s definition of winning the game. To me it’s not but to others it is.
edit: or just winning in general I guess. 
Because corruption hasn’t existed until now
It’s nonsensical
P2W is more about the advantage then the winning
Technically it is. If you buy a boost with money, you skip the leveling process, are given 500 gold and a level 50 necklace which of course bypasses questing. You’re also handed starter gear which is higher quality than heroic dungeons… which again bypasses content, giving you an advantage.
That’s completely irrelevant.
Lmao people really coping on this one
“M-more like pay to advantage…h-haha right guys?”
Two reasons, first any trading for real world money that doesn’t pass through blizzard’s hands can lead to action taken on your account (i.e. being banned). One of method’s rogues sold their account for 10,000 euros in BC and it got perma’d almost immediately.
Second, blizzard selling gold adds significantly more legitimacy to real money as a path to character progression than any 3rd party could ever hope to.
No it’s not, it’s the basis of the point
You can buy the best corruptions from the auction house, so it’s the most p2w then it’s ever been
I think it’s fine. Players buying tokens to get gear brings the price down so we all get nice and cheap tokens. More players getting gear means more geared people to run content with. Both the source of the gold and the items are being generated from the players ingame and it’s not like Blizzard is spawning these into the economy. If it becomes a big problem the tokens will be so cheap people will avoid buying them with real money which is a good thing for the majority of players who buy tokens with gold.
Yep.
If you can effect an advantage in game with real currency then it’s pay to win.
Not talking about hacks or cheats or things that aren’t official in the game’s design.
Blizzard has never, to my knowledge, banned an account for selling a Loot Card mount or pet on the AH. In fact, how could they? The items are BoE by design. If there wasn’t an intention for them to be traded or sold, they would have made the redeemed items BoP as with all the Blizzcon ingame stuff.
And Blizzard doesn’t sell gold. They sell a WoW token. New gold is not being generated by the existence of the token. That gold is being completely generated in-game by players independently of the existence of the Token.
Sorta a double edge sword I would rather have a under gearded player that knows mechanics then an overgread that has no clue lol
If the point of an RPG is to get gear with a character through killing bosses, quest rewards, and crafting, then buying gear from an Auction House with real life money defeats the purpose of depending on the systems in place for gearing.
If you introduce a power-level on gear in such a way that corruption does, where you literally do 5% to 20% of YOUR character’s damage then the system is flawed and having any of these items sellable is a pay a win to model.
If a brand new character with thousands of dollars wanted to, they could buy all the gear on multiple servers to out perform more than a player that’s progressed through the intended paths that the developer wants.
True enough. The game can be pay to win. This has long been established.