The keyword is anyone. If I spent 331 million gold just on myself, that doesn’t mean I’ll become a world first raider. Lol. Honestly there is no amount of tokens I could buy that would suddenly make me a world first raider, and that goes for a large, large portion of the playerbase.
That’s what people seem to miss. There is no win (besides the world first race…which 99% of players aren’t in). Someone spent $100 to get BoEs? Which MIGHT let them do a higher key/raid sooner than me. So what? What exactly do I lose in that situation?
I also want to acknowledge the gold/real money spent in world first races is a cost of the sport. Any hobby/sport/whatever at a high level will have a cost associated with it. It could be training, tools, gear, whatever. And having those things will give them an advantage over those who don’t. This isn’t something unique to WoW world first races.
4 Likes
Also - buying more BoE doesn’t even guarantee that you’ll be able to do higher keys.
I think there is a case where P2W “can” happen in WoW… but it only occurs for 1% of the population and only when blizzard has too many mythic BoE drops that messes up the world first race.
You lost rank. Someone just got ahead of you in the game. (the progression game)
2 Likes
I’ll agree about that 1% thing.
WoW is a pay to win game in which a lot of people pay to lose.
I’d add if there ever came a day where you could just buy a +15 run through the blizzard store, complete with a guaranteed ilvl 236 item drop, that would be P2W.
Until then, players selling carries for gold, which has been bought with real money, is something that has existed in the game since forever.
People seem to forget that before tokens, buying gold was still a thriving enterprise, just one that was much more fraught with fraud and account theft.
3 Likes
not necessarily.
BoE need someone to farm it…
My argument on why isn’t blizzard directly selling the gear?
They make more token money when the boost economy is player managed.
1 Like
My point still stands, this has existed since literally the beginning of the game. Websites had real money transactions for gold back in Vanilla. You can make the argument that blizzard did the token cause they wanted that revenue instead of outside sites, but it also made the process significantly safer.
We also have to define what “winning” is in this game. You buying a rating in PVP or CE doesn’t preclude others from doing it, they are more than capable of getting it without spending any money on a carry. I’ve gotten CE multiple tiers, sometimes thanks to the gold proceeds of selling AOTC runs to finance the consumables cost of mythic progression. Did someone who pays for AOTC pay to win anything? What did they win? A title? A mount? Getting Gladiator, CE, or AOTC confers no in-game advantage outside of possibly some gear that is obsolete in the next patch. If you consider that a “win” I guess we just differ on the definition.
1 Like
What rank though? What tangible and valuable ranking means they will always be ahead of me? The date they got AOTC/M+ Season? Because literally no one cares about when you got it, just IF you did. Raider io? You can easily catch up in rank. Logs maybe? Still not meaningful as most of the time the tops ones are fudged to allow someone to get to that rank. Also…long as you parse half decent, which can be done without paying anything, that ranking means nothing to the large majority of players.
There is no finish line.
If you bought your gear and you just wiped me all over Orggrimmar because your “IRL money” bought you better gear than me… Yeah, you’re winning.
2 Likes
No one forgot it. It earned people a ban when they got caught. Which means Blizzard knew dollars for gold was bad.
2 Likes
They banned the accounts because outside sites were causing a strain on blizzard’s customer service department who had to keep restoring accounts once they were hacked, and they wanted the behavior to stop.
Blizzard ultimately stopped caring about gold inflation long ago, after the garrison for sure, and they finally came to the realization that they can’t stop the behavior, so you might as well make the process safer by having it be in-house.
No but… If you bought your gear and you just wiped me all over Orggrimmar because your “IRL money” bought you better gear than me… Yeah, you’re winning.
1 Like
They also recognized that it was bad for the game to allow the depth of someone’s bank account to have an influence on gameplay.
1 Like
Oh gosh, you’re right, the game should definitely be structured around 1v1 duels in Orgrimmar.
Pay to win is using real money to buy items NOT AVAILABLE IN GAME AND ONLY AVAILABLE ON A REAL MOMEY SHOP to gain a decisive and permanent advantage over others within the game.
WoW is “pay to skip into higher gear that’s relevant for only one patch.”
Another of these ignorant threads to mute. 
9 Likes
Again, how much “influence” are we talking about here? Someone who buys gear doesn’t magically gain the skill to utilize it to be any significant degree, so how much advantage did they gain exactly?
A guy who grey parses in heroic gear is going to keep grey parsing in mythic gear, that’s just a fact.
1 Like
Way to put words in my mouth. That was just an example.
It’s the same for World pvp and BG’s.
1 Like
And that tons of people already got, without having to pay a dime.
1 Like
