World of Warcraft: Current Year

A finite number of possible transactions doesn't disqualify what is going on as being pay to win.

You can pay to win if you want. And you always have been able to, like xzi said. That doesn't make these communities "pay to win" communities.

Shit a lot of items in Everquest were tradeable and could be sold on eBay. Guess EQ was pay to win too.

I don't get the hang up. Do you just not like the term?

When I think of p2w I think of cash shops selling stuff that increase power or are mandatory to success for real money, or even worse, boosts and other things that affect gameplay that you can only get from said cash shop. That's the kind of thing that ruins game economies and sucks all of the distinction in effort and skill out of a game.

Dom said:

Blizzard introducing the token:$ conversion was the "button to buy power" in a different form. And shit not dropping for you when you pay them to run you through doesn't mean you can't just try try again.

It's this sort of weak reasoning that makes the mobile gaming industry so profitable.

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People are going to do this whether there is a WoW token or not.

The inclusion of the WoW token is something I think that has been very positively received by most players, myself included. So while it adds the possibility that players can use real money to buy a token, sell the token on the AH, and then use the proceeds to buy in game services it also allows players to use in game currency to buy real world merchandise.

So really, in any sense of it, I don't qualify it as a pay to win mechanism because while that CAN be a side effect, it isn't its sole purpose or intent. Whereas a cash shop would be. And even using it to try to pay to win really only ends up in you gambling to win.

Khane said:

use the proceeds to buy in game services

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Like paying to be part of a winning kill you could otherwise never achieve.

Yea, you can do that no matter what. You can do that with in game gold you earned playing the game without ever buying a WoW token. You can do that by being friends with and buying beer for people in a raiding guild.

And titles and achievements... is that really pay to "win"? It may cheapen the title a bit but WoW has long since lost that kind of illustrious conqueror aspect of itself. I guess that's really why none of this bothers me in the least. That title doesn't really mean anything and all the gear you could buy if you felt like spending hundreds of dollars (these Mythic boost, achievement and especially mount runs are not cheap) is just going to get reset in 4 months anyway. And your fellow players are benefitting from it as well, in the form of in game currency, so it's not like the money just goes to Big Blizz and they give you your new shiny instantly.

EDIT: Christ I just looked at the prices for these boosts.

1.8M for a full HEROIC Nyalotha clear with personal loot
2.2M if you want to be able to /roll on tradeable gear

Gotta pay an extra 400k if you want them to trade you any gear

For Heroic! You can get the same ilvl in M+! Actually can't you get like 5 ilvls higher in M+ now?

WoW tokens are like 147k on the AH atm. Goddamn. I don't think most people would bother spending that much money on WoW tokens for that. I think that is distinctly more for people who just have a glut of gold from the WoD and Legion gold faucets or who play the AH.

The only rewards that hold any value at all are the cosmetic ones.

wish I could p2w my way through dailies fuck

Once they introduce a new Medallion of the Legion you can!

The only reason any "pay to win" holds any water right now is because of the way corruption gear works. Normal BoE's weren't such ridiculous boosts in power to actual BiS (at least until whatever corruption effect gets/got nerfed) prior to this patch. They were helpful, obviously, but nothing like getting that Infinite Stars or whatever other OP corruption effects were at the time that Limit and Method were buying them up.

Eh, that's a pretty good change. Azshara doesn't drop a mount?

Nope, no mount from Azshara. I guess there wasn't a mount from Tomb either

that is a really good change though honestly, 20-25 weeks to get your raiders their mounts for something they're all participating is a serious pain in the ass

Especially since they removed the skips that made it much less painful in WoD/Legion. Another shitty change that doesn't make any sense.