Other way around, sir. Buying a BoE off the AH isn’t pay to win. Anyone can get those. They’re random drops. Anyone can get Corrupted gear. Anyone can get high ilevel gear. It’s not limited to paying for it.
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Except you can buy those using wow tokens. Those strong boes are expensive and the easiest way to afford them is through spending real money. Lots of phone games have micro transactions that speed up things like building a base, but just because I can still build that base for free but instead of 10 seconds it takes 10 days doesn’t change the fact that it’s pay to win. By spending real money you are making acquiring the advantage much faster and giving yourself the advantage over others.
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And someone can buy them without WoW tokens.
And someone can get them as a random drop.
And someone can trade one to a friend or guildie.
Still not pay to win.
Yes it does. Because that’s not pay to win.
And that’s still not pay to win.
Someone can have a friend, for free, take them through Heroic or Mythic raids or M+ and acquire gear, thus speeding up their “advantage,” as well.
Nothing in WoW is pay to win.
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That is why people do trash runs on heroic or mythic.
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Pay to win would only apply if these BOEs were being sold directly by Blizzard.
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You could always spend real money to buy raid gear, though. Even before tokens, TCG cards could be bought, redeemed and sold to get lots of gold for carries. We had several people do just that for CM carries during MoP and WoD. Even the cheaper cards were easy to sell and use for carries.
Tokens just made it easier, but really didn’t change anything that didn’t already exist.
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You can’t play this game without a sub!
Without real money going to Blizzard every month, you can’t win!
PAY TO WIN!
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I usually hate gif reactions except I spent like five minutes doing this before reading the comments
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That’s not how pay to win works. lol
I still buy TCG cards 
Actually that’s a lie, I just buy codes because I don’t care about the card.
This is basically most threads accusing WoW of being Pay2Win.
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I’m pretty sure youre a bit incorrect there.
They borrowed gold to max out profs to get the higher ilvl gear on as many slots as possible so that they could trade raid drops.
And because of the restriction to the gear, they weren’t even wearing the pieces.
I haven’t bought a single Token from the Blizz shop, and I can purchase a BoE item or two. Not sure how that’s P2W? We can earn gold playing the game. We don’t have to buy it from Blizz.
I thought your name was Sarcasm, dislexic brain ftw, but since it’s not Saraslam is pretty leet too.
IMO pay to win is slang for games that are intrinsically setup to separate money from the player and give it to the developer, where that is required to access content, end game, central to the main story or experience, AND also allows the player to skip or reduce time played.
Examples of WOW being pay to win: Specific content is limited by item level, I spend in game gold that I made by farming and reselling to purchase higher ilvl gear on AH (Wait no I spent the time farming instead of running the trash content, still played time spent. Another player spent played time to farm trash or got lucky with a random drop playing content normally. Wasn’t buying gear from the developers shop, they only sell cosmetic…)
I buy in game gold spending my real $$ and use that in game gold to purchase higher ilvl gear. (Wait no, someone else farmed the gold in game and purchased the token I listed on the AH, played time spent. Developer didn’t create that gold for me, actually charges more for gold vs play time to reduce inflation…)
So in summary, subscription model is not pay to win. Required play time to access content, free market economy with regulations incentivizes playing how you enjoy, within rules and channels laid out, to reach the level of play you want.
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That is not pay to win. There has always been BOE’s that have been sold in the AH, and even though you can purchase a couple of BOE’s from the AH, it doesn’t make WoW a Pay2Win.
Pulled this off Google:
Pay to win - a situation where the player can buy in-game content or in-game changes, with real money, that give the player a gameplay advantage or advance the player gameplaywise. … Real money -> In-game benefits. That simple. You buy things other players can’t get just by playing, or skip a grind.
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Wow token = real money, BoE’s with Bis effects bought with wowtokens or said wow tokens = pay to win
You guys arnt getting that 
there is a reason the race guilds spend 250 mil on boe’s
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So in all reality, “Time is money friend” applies. If you spend more time played you win. Someone has to spend the time so the developer is limiting access to the content. Not everyone has the same time to play, but is paying the same subscription, per account. It’s simply a business model to allow developers to keep being creative and working, as long as we enjoy and value what they provide it’s a win-win. If you are not enjoying the content unsub. If you are and also want to maximize your own time spent, maybe you will spend $$ to skip content, paying someone else to do it for you. They might be an expert and it’s worth it for them to do so. Unless there are gold slaves and serious impacts that the developer is complicit in, this is the free market. It’s not without regulations, and that is good to have accountability. Regulating loot boxes and gambling, gaming the system, all fall outside this pay to win conversation.
You are correct. Did you read what was in the parentheses? I think you are both making the same point.
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But I don’t need to buy a WoW Token to get the gold to buy the BiS BoE. I can purchase the BiS BoE with the gold I accumulated in-game. The BiS BoEs(or the currency needed to buy them) aren’t only available in the Blizz Shop. People are paying for convenience.
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Wich is not the same for other people, you can do that with the time you put in or a new player can just spend 120 bucks