Why does community defend pay to win aspects?

Community General Discussion
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They didn’t pay a single cent in the world first race. You know that, right?

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And another group likes to demonize Blizzard and make crap up, contradict themselves, and blatantly overreact to try and make Blizzard out to be worse than they already are. Neither group is right.

Didn’t realize you needed to be decked out in gear to effectively do WQs and heroic dungeons.

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I might agree with you if any of your examples fitted the Pay to Win meaning. You cannot just say “this is my definition of Pay to Win” because that doesn’t really scan. It’s like saying “that’s my definition of the colour red”. Doesn’t matter if it isn’t red to you, it’s red to the rest of us.

“Pay to Win” means exactly that. If you have a game that has loot boxes which you pay for with real currency and which gives you an exceptional advantage over players who don’t, that’s it. You pay, you win. Nothing in WoW is even close to Pay to Win and here is why:

And yet, it does not put others ahead of you, when the items they get you can also get and which cost only ingame currency. You can make gold. You can use gold to buy things off the AH. You can even put it on your Blizzard account and use that to buy that battle pet you mentioned. There is no advantage to anyone, its a perfectly level playing field.

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64

These make it clear to me that you’re definition of pay to win is different from mine.

Sorry your frustrated by it, guess you’ll have to take your toys and go home if it bugs you that much.

As for me I think if any of these things were and unbeatable advantage that had no clear alternative or were not available without cash up front they would more closely align with my idea of pay to win.

BOE’s have been being bought by high end guilds for years upon years and far beyond the advent of the token. I might, again MIGHT, consider your argument valid if that were not true.

Low level pvp has always been affected by higher level gold. So again not something that came with the token.

The battle pets you have some argument space with. However I know of no battle pet that does not have an ingame obtainable alternative that does the job needed.

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OMG

i deleted so many…

/wrists

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To buy a high-level BoE, someone must be selling a high-level BoE, which only comes out of doing content that drops them.

BoE twinking in lower-level BGs has existed since BGs existed. I noticed the biggest spike during Cataclysm where Cata Greens were so vastly overpowered compared to Wrath epics for the same level.

As for store or Blizzcon pets? Uhh… Who really cares about that again? It’s like that kid who bought a $150 Charizard card. Good for them.

Neither 1 or 2 count as “Pay to Win” though because that is just the nature of the WoW Auction House. Isn’t quite pay to win as a concept unless people buy tokens to afford whatever they want.

It’s simpler to think like, “I could farm up a lot of mats myself to level professions… Or I can buy them on the auction house.” It isn’t inherently ‘P2W’ because that’s the auction house. If a person looks at it like, “I can buy a few tokens, and have enough gold to buy all the things I need to max out whatever I want.” That would be P2W if it wasn’t for the fact that it would be giving money to other players who, could in turn, buy things.

What advantage do you get over other players by giving them gold in a player-run economy? Little Johnny just sold a token so he had enough gold to buy those Heroic BoE bracers for 50k! Now the person he bought the bracers from bought a full set of twinking gear for his alt character, who then proceeds to murder Little Johnny’s druid in PvP! -Exaggerated example, don’t take literally pls

Tokens made the economy weird in the way that you can get gold without farming gold, but gives gold some strange, extra-value because you can also buy game time with it in addition to other things.

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I think the only real example of P2W you listed was the battle pets. The others are more Pay To Accelerate Gearing.

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Store pets are mostly pretty weak. And aside from Murkalot, who has a powerful move that can be dodged, the Blizzcon pets aren’t all that strong.

The two strongest pets right now are the Hermit Crab (wild pet) and Twilight Clutch Sister (dungeon drop, can be bought for less than 1000 gold on some servers).

Players often come to the pet battle forum crying about PTW. They are regularly shot down.

As for the gear, the number of really good BOEs is pretty small.

You are not speaking the truth. You are taking a molehill and making a mountain out of it.

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69

For both your examples, are those things available to obtain in-game also, or only from the cash shop?

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FFXIV Boosts just bypass time, so you miss out on all the story-related information. The gear you get is the generic gear you’d be able to obtain with overly-abundant currency tokens (and it isn’t even the upgraded version).

Also, you miss out on getting free artifact sets for transmog at 50 and 60 so… Technically, you actually lose out buying a boost because farming older artifact sets is annoying.

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It’s not bad at all, probably some of the cheapest entertainment you can get, sometimes - depending on if you’re playing in a content lull or not.

… But I can kind of see where the OP is coming from - it does feel over the past decade or so they’ve been trying to pull that whole boiling frog thing on us, adding things little by little. I’d be alright with that in a free game, or even a buy to play game, but in a game you’re paying to access, it can feel a bit … grimy.

As for the people saying you can outperform the gear gap with skill - you’re right. However, this is also possible in a lot of games I would, without a single shadow of a doubt, call Pay 2 Win. (No, I am not calling WoW P2W). I don’t think it’s a particularly solid argument.

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i want to post the general definition of pay to win, to curb confusion.
In general a game is considered “pay-to-win” when a player can gain any gameplay advantage over his non- “paying” peers.

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And what is the currency for that particular definition?

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Your assumption is wrong. There is nothing that is ‘pay to win’, in part because this isn’t a win game unless you are doing arenas or racing for world first.

you don’t need to spend real money though, it is easy enough to make gold to buy these ‘things’ that supposedly give you an advantage.

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75

Well, I haven’t paid real cash to get gold, and I could gain a “gameplay” advantage buying stuff on the AH. And I don’t play the AH, I just got lucky with a BoE drop and selling a couple of Mechano-Hogs.

and most of those got the jump on everyone else by being the PTR :stuck_out_tongue:

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Hrm…and how do you come to the conclusion that that is true for “in general”? What is your sample size for this?

While I’ve seen many people espouse this I have seen just as many that believe unless the items in question are unavailable/ridiculously strenuous to acquire through game play it is at worst “pay to not be arsed to deal with that grind”.

I appreciate your position, but I think your belief that you are speaking for the “fat belly” of the player opinion curve is wrong and are instead only representing a small arc of that curve.

The only reason I address this where I see it is that it tends to, perhaps only my perception admittedly, devalue or drown out truly valid feedback on P2W aspects in other games. The token as it is instituted allows people with time and effort to burn to pay for their game where they might not be able to do so with cash People with cash can get gold that their jobs/families/schedule/personal crazy life that hates them :wink: does not allow them the opportunity to farm.

No gold is created or destroyed in the process, the company makes some money (not a crime despite what some seem to think), RMT takes a knife in the back and has become less of a hassle (even the friends wihout auth’s on their account have not been hacked in quite a while), and gamers lives are made easier. All while not creating any new pathways to power that did not exist prior to it’s introduction to the game.

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77

On the one hand, Yea buying gold is pretty contradictory what blizzard didn’t want in their games and it will net you raid carries and more enchants to your raid gear. Along with buying pets on the store which… aren’t cosmetic anymore cause Pet battles exist, and soon the mounts if they happen to have more then one slot. Of coarse knowing Blizzard and their laziness, those mounts just remain the same considering the “one slot per character”

On the other, they surprisingly make it work the other way around so you can buy money (blizz balance) or game time with ingame gold. The cavet of coarse is somebody needs to actually buy the token. And plus i feel like taking out the WoW token, the issue would just come down to “all you need is a lot of gold to be better then people” and the WoW Token just exists to speed that up.

Close call, but i agree 75% of what you said. Don’t need any more Pay-to-Win crap.

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thats normally what -pay- means. paying for an advantage. but its easy to find. look up the definition yourself.

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Interesting. Other than my subscription, I haven’t put a single cent into this game to “win”. I think you’re making something out of nothing there, OP.

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80

i already replied to that though. with an example but either way.

you cant say its pay to win in other mmos, even if their model functions differently and say its not pay to win in wow.

just a few quotes from discussions. and being someone who has played it, its no different than how wow is. only its based on class and not character. i can buy a boost for my archer, if i want. or my dark knight. but apparently, its pay to win according to a vocal minority. i wont show anything about bdo because its a lot worse.