I’m genuinely curious because for the people who bought the 90$ bundle and got a 3 day early release benefit. Are you also willing to dish out $$ if paying irl money was a reliable and efficient way to get end-game gear? That is if WoW ends up becoming that extreme of a pay 2 win game.
3 day early release isn’t a big deal for me but if end-game gear ever becomes available for $$ or if there are loot boxes for high ilvl gear. I’ll be the first one to head out the door and I’ll gladly give all my gold to someone here.
Title: No. Also, why if they stooped that low, why just limit to M+. M+, Raid, and PvP gear would all be on sale.
The day WoW truly goes P2W with power in the cash shop is the day it dies for me (and probably many others).
You say it’s not a big deal, but you mentioned it twice. Do you have a concern that $90 is only of value for the 3-day early release (it’s not) and the other benefits are of zero value? Why the emphasis on just that one perk? What “power” advantage do you think 3 days gives when the season likely doesn’t start for a week or two after launch (given your mention of P2W)?
GDKP is real, Carrying folks for gold/money is real and people still buy accounts on sites that sell them…
Sure it’s all against the TOS… but that’s why we have tokens now right?
So why should we let some punks make all of that money and not let Blizzard get a cut? When/IF the game becomes Play to Win the world will not end and people will still log in and complain… after all getting purples won’t make you THAT much better and they won’t be able to really utilize their power the same as a good player…
Depends when it was made available. Technically you can do it right now with WoW tokens and buying carries, but it’s unofficial. If it came mid/late season, I wouldn’t really care at all. Just a way for people to gear alts faster. If it was at the start of the xpac/season, probably would have a significantly negative impact on whether I play or not.
That being said, it’s a bit of an extreme descent from just having 3 days early access with no meaningful gearing options available in those 3 days.
Player Power is the reason to play PvE MMOs for more than the opening week or two of a new xpack / patch.
Slap that on the shop and at best I’m playing for those opening weeks and then unsubbing.
At worst I just quit entirely.
Tangent, since the topic has come up:
As things are now, WoW leans slightly toward P2W, but doesn’t quite meet the mark IMO. I don’t like the Token. It empowers paid carries (along with the Trade - Services channel) and turns BoEs on the Auction House into border-line microtransactions.
However, both of those are mostly player-centric topics rather than Blizzard directly selling anything, which is why I can’t call the game truly P2W. Also, the AH items are typically limited to 1 or 2 relevant (but not key) gear slots per season, so the potential harm there is heavily mitigated.
Paid Dungeon / Raid Carries are a pain that I wish they cracked down on instead of endorsing, but the typical player pricing ensures that 99% of anyone paying for them are doing it for one-time achievements and FOMO mounts rather than paying every week to get BiS gear.
The whales that will buy tokens to do that are so few and far between that I will probably never even see one.