As someone with discretionary income high enough to allow responsible buying of a lot of tokens, I don’t think they’re a net positive. Putting myself back in the shoes of my broke teenage 2005 self I don’t like the idea of players gaining any kind of material benefit with their wallets at all… in Azeroth we should all be equals as murder hobos, no matter if you’re a billionaire or ramen budget college student.
Of course that unfairness has always existed in the form of gold selling and account buying, but at least back then it carried a stigma and risk of getting oneself banned. Now it’s open season for card swiping.
What are you even talking about? An argument/discussion is contingent on two opposing viewpoints convincing each other why they’re correct and the other is wrong. My argument is that P2W is a spectrum, and the sooner we start treating it like such, the better. You can’t point to other games and say “Hey, this game is worse so that makes this game not P2W” because there’s always going to be a worse game.
I think it is extremely telling that, were I to offer a glance at the WoW token to just about any other gaming community, they would be in agreement that the WoW token is P2W. Really speaks to how conditioned WoW players have become into accepting it.
Actually, I think not applying it to games like WoW only enables Activision-Blizzard to potentially do worse in the future. The community lets them get away with it now, who’s to say they won’t let them get away with something worse? Remember when they introduced the level boost and how that was P2W? Now it’s just a normal part of the game. The same can now be said for the WoW token.
And if you think they can’t do worse, remember what they did to Diablo Immortal. Blizzard is not above anything.
You can buy BoE’s from the AH? So can literally any other player with gold. No advantage there.
You can buy carries with gold? So can literally any other player with gold. No advantage there.
You can’t even claim speed as an advantage, because RNG is a cruel mistress, so there’s a strong chance that you get nothing from your carry while Random McSteve gets more loot than you do from a run either paid for with gold he earned without the WoW token, or through actually gearing up and being a part of the guild/pug running that content properly.
Because I could literally play the AH and get more gold than any player who buys WoW tokens, there are tools to help me do that effortlessly and it’s how people made bank before the WoW token became a thing, assuming they weren’t buying gold from third party sellers. It’s how they still make bank now, after all where do you think the money players get from WoW tokens comes from?
Buying gold is not pay to win.
Pay to win would be if I paid Blizzard directly, and Blizzard gave me powerful items because I paid them money. For example, let’s say they went the Diablo Immortal route with the Legion artifacts, and I could pay Blizzard real $$ for a currency I could only obtain with real $$, and that currency allowed me to get epic relics that you couldn’t get anywhere else, or you had to grind forever to get the one you wanted.
THAT would be pay to win, because I am opening my wallet, and getting a power advantage over everyone else, not because I have gold, but because I have access to a currency the masses don’t and that currency allows me to buy powerful items.
There is most certainly an advantage gained. If your qualifier for something being P2W is that there are other means of obtaining gold, you’ve lost the argument. 95% of P2W games operate on convenience systems, where you can most certainly level and get everything you need by playing the game as normal, or you could just spend money and bypass all the grinding required.
There is no amount of playing the AH you could possibly do to equate to someone who could just open their wallet and shell out an indescribable amount of money.
Again where do you think the gold you get from selling a WoW token comes from?
It comes from players. Blizzard doesn’t create gold out of thin air. That 200k+ that you sold the token for (or whatever price it was selling for thanks to supply and demand) comes from everyday players who earn enough gold to buy tokens to use either to get Blizzard balance on their accounts, or keep their subscription active.
There is no advantage gained by buying gold. Period.
There is no difference between Player A selling an item to player B for 200k gold, and player A selling a WoW token to player B for 200k gold.
Either way player A gets 200k gold, and player B either gets an item, or gets a WoW token.
Because the entire basis of pay to win is that I pay the company money, and I get power as a result. Every single pay to win game follows this simple formula.
I open my wallet and pay the company real $$, I get powerful items that the free players can’t get their hands on, either directly from their in-game store, or indirectly through a currency that can only be obtained with real $$.
That is pay to win.
If you had 200k gold that you got from selling an item on the AH and I had 200k that I got from selling a WoW token on the AH, there is no power advantage there. We can both use that currency to buy BoEs, we can both use that currency to buy carries. You might even get more items than me thanks to RNG, meaning despite the fact that I bought a token, you have the advantage.
Your desperation to prove that the WoW token is Pay to Win is honestly sad, and the argument falls apart like a house of cards the moment you poke it and apply any real thought to it.
See, this is the problem. You’re broaching this entire subject from your perspective and not considering the other people who simply don’t have that gold and would have to grind for it.
Yes, the person in question likely doesn’t have a power advantage over you, but unless you’re the only person playing this game, then it’s wholly irrelevant because there’s a whole pool of players that that player now has an advantage over; a whole pool of players who, unless they spend money, would have to grind to obtain the same level of power/wealth.
There’s nothing stopping them from getting that gold through selling items on the AH, which is how the vast majority of people who are buying tokens from the AH are actually earning the gold they use to buy said tokens.
Of course not. There’s nothing stopping other players in other P2W games from playing the game and obtaining what they need to succeed. That doesn’t mean those other games don’t have P2W mechanics.
I know how P2W games function. Some are worse than others, hence why I said P2W is a spectrum and WoW exists on the faaaar end where it’s not entirely invasive to the core experience.
I don’t care that WoW has the WoW token, but it’s still a P2W scheme no matter how you want to cut it. You pay money, you get better gear, you have an advantage over others who haven’t spent money nor have the gold to be at the same level.