Clear example for you.
Right now on Classic Era servers, Flask of Supreme Power is 700-800 gold.
Entirely unavailable to a player who does not have RMT levels of gold either from their credit card, or from GDKPs of other people’s credit cards.
Flask of Supreme Power by itself is a massive advantage over those who do not have it. (Whether it be competing in damage for PvE content, or fighting in Battlegrounds… always an advantage to have the flask.)
the wow token is not pay to win, it is merely pay to skip.
i have found a forum poster who explained why the wow token is not pay to win
this poster put together a really informative description regarding the reason why wow is not pay to win, and i agree. wow is not pay to win.
actually, this entire thread has a lot of very informative posts regarding the subject of the reasons why wow is not pay to win.
Those games are dead dude. They aren’t live. All live blizz games are p2w. Overwatch just buy heros.
Pay to skip is the same as p2w. Knock it off, this been argued over before, and you lost it.
Nah wrath is not classic. We don’t claim them.
I’ve heard that argument before. It relies on a definition of P2W that requires RMT to have exclusive access to powerful items- and at this point- using that dumb logic… there are no P2W games anymore. (Even phone gotchas aren’t P2W with that mental gymnastics definition of P2W…since while it may take you 40 years, you too can acquire the item that dude bought.)
MMORPGs are literally centered around character progression… the only way to “win” an MMO is to get to the inevitable conclusion first. (That’s why world first is literally the only thing that gains any ‘news’ in an MMOROG.)
If you’re paying to skip, in a game where the only winnable aspect is being fastest, it’s literal pay to win.
Yes that is what the essence of pay to win entails - powerful items that are only attainable by the players who spend real currency.
As I said before, the gold that a player gets from the wow token is the exact same gold that a free-to-play play has access to:
If Wotlk classic isn’t “classic” why does blizzard refer to it as “wotlk classic”?
The same goes for cata classic:
If cata and wotlk classic aren’t “classic”, then why is blizzard’s website for them called “wowclassic.blizzard.com”?
No, that’s what you would like it to strictly entail so you purchase an advantage over your fellow players in a game that is effectively a race without being called out for it.
Every metric anyone actually cares about is completion, faster.
Parsing? Higher Damage/Healing for a faster completion of a boss fight.
Warlord Ranking? Fastest Honor gain, more honor than your fellow players, for higher rank.
World/Server Firsts
Citing your ridiculous (wished for) definition of P2W, I could pay Blizzard for a token that just completes the raid at the beginning and gives me the loot…and that wouldn’t be P2W.
It’s an incredibly dumb definition, you know it, we know it, everyone knows it. It’s transparent.
there is nothing about a wow token that makes you parse higher - a wow token would give you the same gold that a free to play player would obtain.
there is nothing about a wow token that gives you better gear than would be obtainable by a free to play player
umm. how can a person use gold to get server firsts?
you can’t buy gear from content that hasn’t yet been cleared…
that’s correct and i think it would be perfectly acceptable… thank you for that, friend 
Pretty sure if I go into a raid with a bunch of BoE and BoP I got in GDKP or Carries with RMT gold and my guildies are going in their PreBis…(Because they didn’t buy gold and can’t afford to GDKP) I’m going to parse higher.
Yeah, you keep clinging to that. You get the gear first, in a progression game- and it had nothing to do with luck or skill.
Ask the world first guilds in retail why they’re literal millions of gold in debt to get world first… (betcha it has something to do with consumes, carries for Pre-Bis fillout, etc…)
Are you actually this obtuse or is this one big troll?
Ok… you’re just that obtuse. “It can’t be P2W if I just delete the definition of win.”
You can delude yourself… but it’s P2W.
We’re done here, The WoW token better never appear in SoD, or Classic in general. It’s bad enough with the illicit RMT.
Oh yeah, it’s funny to see him keep going.
what does parsing higher do for you, though? you didn’t win anything.
if you don’t win anything, then the game isn’t pay to win, because that requires that something is won.
the wow token is in retail
the wow token is in wotlk classic
the wow token is in cata classic
it will be coming to SoD sooner or later
So I see I have been cross posted here.
To pay to “win” in retail wow, is to rely on other players who played the game normally and have already the gear and cleared the content by playing the game normally so really what is this whale that buying WoW tokens to get 480+ gear from carries “winning” exactly?
Gear is already obtainable through normal play, which in pay to win games that wouldn’t be possible, it would take months to get and or just locked behind a pay wall.
Gear isn’t some sort of indication of player skill and will never be, I still dont get why people are in this mindset that ilvl = player skill when in reality its actually not, There are a couple of times I have been grouped with people that have higher ilvl gear and do below average dps then what they are suppose to be or just bad at the game.
“If I delete the definition of winning, it can’t be P2W”
It’s so damned transparent.
No I’m just asking a question, What is this whale “winning” exactly?
Here’s a Barney level example for you:
Chase DeVisa buys all his gear within the first weeks of an Xpac/Patch/Phase and is just decked out in everything including every single applicable consume no matter how ridiculous it is to get.
Then Chase DeVisa curbstomps (defeats) everyone else in
Arenas
BGs
Parses
etc.
For the next several weeks while everyone NOT buying advantage tries to catch up.
Doesn’t matter how skilled you are, if you’re in greens trying to keep up with or fight someone in purples and bottomless consumes, they’d have to be asleep for you to win. They paid to win.
Good day, we’re also done here.
Which that relies on other players to get the gear for you and which at the start of an expansion/season/phase which carry sales wont start till the people doing the carrying got the gear through playing the game.
Not a good barney level example you provided me.
Diablo Immortal is much more pay to win then this.
i agree with this.
Actually no. What it does is stop people who would otherwise quit from quitting. It doesn’t bring new players in, it just allows people who spent inordinate amounts of time playing the game but aren’t good enough to have the Mythic kills to feel like nothing is really outside of their reach.
Add a new raid tier in Retail, throw a legendary in it like they’ve been doing that isn’t available in LFR, and put a ban on any carry or boosting related activity and you’ll watch the game population vaporize with the forums being flooded of posts about gatekeeping and catering to the elitist crowd of players, etc etc.
Then you have people in the middle like me where I do m+ boosting and don’t really care for the modern raiding scene. So I’ll take gold I make from m+ and just buy Mythic kills if there’s some trinket I really need to have in there because I really don’t want to bother committing to a guild and raid team when I want a single item and not really the experience. This prevents cancerous situations where I’m not going to blindside a raid team, and also keeps me out of needing to commit to 19 people I don’t want to commit to and finding a convenient excuse to stop raiding down the line so it doesn’t look like I got what I was after then dipped. This is the bulk of your GDKP raiders as well by the way, people who want their items but don’t want to be a jerk who leaves after getting their things, but doesn’t also want to commit to a team which carries the implication it’s until everyone gets their things.
Little different in a game like FFXIV where every Savage kill gives a book that people can use to fill in the gaps of gearing. There is no running a raid wing for 15 weeks because the item I need just never dropped. After a few clears if it hasn’t dropped I can use the currency I get for killing the boss to just buy what I’m trying to get so I’m not a prisoner to both people and mathematics.
actually yes…
you have no evidence to support this theory
but i would like to thank you for your contributions, they were extremely valuable to this thread.
have a lovely day, friend!