Stop using Pay to Win Wrong!

WoW Classic Cataclysm Classic Discussion
1

The Paid Boost is NOT pay to win, thats not how Pay to Win works. At the most its pay to save time.

Pay to win is something usually bought at a game store in a game that gives the player some sort of power advantage that CANT be gotten through playing the game normally.

FOR INSTANCE: The best dagger in Classic for dagger rogues in off of KT, its Kingsfall which has the following stats:

Kingsfall
Binds when picked up
Unique
One-hand Dagger
105 - 158 Damage Speed 1.80
(73.1 damage per second)
+16 Agility
Durability 75 / 75
Requires Level 60
Equip: Improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%.
Equip: Improves your chance to hit by 1%.

Now thats the BEST dagger in the game.

Now Pay To Win would be if blizzard sold a dagger in the in game store that was something like this:

The Little OFC
Binds when Picked up
One-Hand Dagger
+22 Agility
+17 Stamina
118-179 Damage 1.8 speed
Improves chance to get a crit by 2%
Improves chance to hit by 2%

Do you notice that the dagger in this scenario from the store that can ONLY BE BOUGHT WITH MONEY is MUCH better than Kingsfall which is the THE BEST DAGGER in the game you can get from raiding?

Thats EXACTLY what PAY TO WIN is, its BUYING an item or advantage that cant be attained in game, so anything you can raid or pvp for is inferior to anything from the store.

The boost the are selling is NOT pay to win as you reaching level 58 can infact be done without buying it. It is NOT PAY TO WIN.

Also the direct meaning of pay to win off of google as a source"

PTW is used in gaming with the meaning “Pay to Win” to refer to games that allow players to purchase items or abilities (e.g., more powerful weapons, additional health points) that give them an advantage in the game, either over other players or NPCs (Non-Player Characters).

Rant over! Sorry i was getting triggered!

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2

What is and isn’t pay to win is up to the interpretation of each person playing the game.

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3

No, thats a big negative.

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4

I disagree.

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5

Its ok to be wrong.

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6

You are right.

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7

Wtf? That isn’t how definitions of terms work at all. It’s non debateable. Boost ain’t pay to win. You ain’t winning anything. You don’t have an edge pve raiding or pvp wise buying a boost especially on a progress server. Who cares someone gets a scrub geared 58 non draenei or non blood elf? What is that combination of any race but and any class “winning”?

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8

Lets put this into context then using what you describe. So a player that hasn’t played Classic at all decides to get ready for it ahead of time. They make a level one character and buy enough gold for the intended plan to follow. TBC releases, they boost that toon to 58 and get it leveled up. Once leveled up, they then proceed to make new accounts to boost more characters to lvl 58 that they intend to use that gold to turn them into profession alts. This could be done as far as they see fit to do so. All alts have desired professions and basically will not only just print him more gold with ease, but also get his main desired mats for gear. Compare all of that to just using the boost as intended for a single character.

In an MMO, anytime you can save time whether it be leveling, gear, or rank. That is what is pay to win. Using the context of what is valued in the game determines what can be defined as pay to win. And as said, time is the most valuable thing in World of Warcraft.

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9

This is almost as bad as the people who say hearthstone isn’t pay to win. Almost.

10

Well technically it wasn’t. If you planned things well over various expansions just by putting the time in, you wouldn’t actually be behind players that are buying the new packs. But the key word in that is “wasn’t”. It is more pay to win today due to how they changed earning gold.

11

At OP:

So by your definition if Blizz were to put the Kingsfall dagger on the cash shop it would not be pay to win because the item is available in game. Purchasing it for real money is simply saving the player the time of farming it and thus would not be pay to win.

I think most would disagree with you.

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12

“Pay to Win is a situation in gaming (usually MMOs or Massively Multiplayer Online games) where companies allow you to buy items or advantages with real money that cannot be obtained normally by playing the game.”

“In some games, players who are willing to pay for special items, downloadable content, or to skip cooldown timers may be able to gain an advantage over those playing for free who might otherwise hardly be able to access said items.”

Here’s something you can’t obtain in-game: an instant 58.

Time, in an MMO, is an advantage. The advantage that boosts provide cannot, by any means, be obtained in-game. Level 58 is not the advantage. Level 58 is not the “win” that you are paying for; it is the time.

Boosts are objectively pay to win.

13

The boosts are meant for new players who want to experience launch going through the dark portal and into hellfire with their friends. Those are blizzard’s words not mine, even though, they’re giving the boosts to people who already have level 60s which completely contradicts their own reasoning. Anyways, they’re gonna be new players in tbc who dont want to boost and who won’t use it. The people who do boost will be able to win every fight they get into them with whether it be in open world pvp, duels, bgs, or arenas. Boosted characters will also be able to level their professions faster because they’ll be able to access higher level zones from the get go, effectively winning the market place over non boosted new players. They will have an advantage in every aspect of the game, and that is pay to win over non boosted new players which actually even acts as an incentive to purchase boost which further undermines classic and its rewards. But hey they’re fine for game.

14

Got bad news for you. You are paying a monthly subscription which allows you to instantly create a level 1 non-trial character.

Can a trial player who’s playing for free do that in game? No.

It’s all pay to win. Always has been.

15

Okay you have to have some form of monetization for a game whether it’s a subscription or a one time buy or something else in a different form. Blizzard is still a for profit company, they’re selling a product, and that’s life. A trial character is effectively playing the game for free, so this isn’t a great analogy, and therefore, isn’t a good argument for supporting boosts.

16

While I would prefer that Blizzard never introduced boosts to classic, I don’t have a problem with them in a vacuum. The issue, however, is how these boosts are going to interact with the minmax mentality that has become so prominent in classic. There are going to be tons of people, who already have level 60s, using boosts to reroll to hunters, warlocks, paladins and other classes that become meta in TBC. I feel particularly bad for people on the Alliance, who endured the slog that is leveling a Paladin in classic, only for them to have to compete with what I think will be tons of FotM rerollers, who get to skip that grind.

Like Ironchain said, time is a particularly valuable commodity in MMOs. Leveling a character is a commitment, and a lesson in opportunity cost. Boosts invalidate this notion. As an additional argument, consider how many people will be able to use these characters as profession alts, which will increase their gold making potential. This will have a direct impact on many servers’ economies.

Even though I said I’m fine with boosts in a vacuum, I would still think that they were P2W in that vacuum, because blizzard is letting you buy time for money when they allow for boosts. But, if it truly was just something being used by new players, in order to join their friends, I would be willing to look past that. The problem is, I don’t think that’s going to be the reality. I would not be surprised if most of the $ Blizzard makes from boosts, comes from players who already have a level 50+ character.

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That’s not how that works. If that’s the case, buying bags from the AH is pay to win.

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Except they’re not. You’re not winning the game at level 58. You still need to invest time to reach 70 and get bis gear.

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I mean it kinda is. If you buy larger bags, that’s more space for you to hold more resources which not only allows you to farm for longer, removing other resources from other players (winning) but also allows you to make gold faster because you’re selling more resources on AH which then allows you to get an epic mount faster and buy better gear, allowing you to win more in all forms of PvP.

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20

You can’t even play Classic without a sub. There is no paid advantage, because the people who are not paying are not playing.

Nice try, but your argument is invalid.
https://i.gyazo.com/a71914b146f727c4d9a56c65107343b0.jpg