I simply don't see it as fun to pay money to eschew portions of the game; in other words, paying to not play the game. That's essentially what the PW2 concept is: being able to pay money to avoid paying the game. Personally I only play a game that I know will keep me entertained, or in simpler terms, a game which is just fun. If I ever reach a point at which my view becomes, "ugh, this game is so boring that I'll just pay $20 to skip half of it," then my instinct is to just quit playing it (if even for a temporary time, e.g. a few months), rather than pay money to not play it. That $20 would be better spent elsewhere.

Another thing is that, at least for me, I used to occasionally spend some money on DDO because many years back, there were many less P2W options in the game. As a result of that, my impression was that Turbine cared more about delivering a fun experience and kept their players foremost in mind. Contrast this to my current impression of them, which, after introducing many blatantly P2W items in the store (otto's boxes, raid timer bypasses, making tomes basically only available in the store, monster manual, astral shards, yellow dopant, and so many more), is that they're just in it now to make a quick buck. I'm not going to spend money on a product which is drastically deteriorating in quality as a result of mismanagement and greed.

Quote:


That may certainly be true, but we are still left with the inexorable question: how does eschewing a portion of the game qualify as "winning"?

Bear in mind "it doesn't" qualifies as an answer.

Frank wrote on Jul 19^th, 2016 at 1:22pm:


Being overly pedantic and splitting hairs is the second biggest pasttime here.  After name calling and rage flaming.  Unfortunately, it is in front of posting pics of boobs and donuts. 

Asheras wrote on Jul 15^th, 2016 at 12:03pm:


http://www.ddovault.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1466455972

Steel wrote on Jul 20^th, 2016 at 2:42pm:


lol, looks like someone still can't sit down..... ouch!

You cast Raise Dead on your weak drama's soul stone.
You rolled a 1.

noamineo wrote on Jul 19^th, 2016 at 12:30pm:


There is no real definition of "winning" in an MMO like DDO, so the whole term is something of a misnomer--it's more applicable to mobile games a la Clash of Clans in which you can very definitely conquer over others and "win" against other players as a result of money spent. And since DDO =/= Clash of Clans, any discussion about "winning" the game is just a semantics game.

Either way, I view P2W things (or whatever you want to call them) in the game as detrimental to the game for reasons I've stated above. I don't think that having a discussion about the semantics of the word "winning" will edge anyone to any actually fruitful discussion on the issue, because that discussion is just that: a semantics game. Bottom line is that I think having tomes more-or-less solely obtainable from the store is a bad idea, as do I think it's a bad idea to have instant-level-skip Otto Boxes in the store, among other things as well. Call it what you want, but IMO these things present a problem.