Eventually someone realized that these gamers would pay more money to play less time if it meant they could catch up to the no-lifers who played more often. So they dropped the subscriptions but offered advantages for cash and “pay to win” was born. Because these games had no sub fee, they attracted the no-lifers who could now play for even less money than the sub-based games, and once committed to the game they realized that those who were willing to pay to play would have an advantage.
This is why there are so many complaints about “pay to win,” and why these complaints don’t stop companies from doing it. They have learned that the sub-based model can only support so many players (most of whom are already committed to WoW), and most sub-based games don’t make enough money to stay afloat. But no matter how much the no-lifers complain about pay-to-win, there are enough people who will open their wallets to compete with those who can play all day, every day to make free to play games profitable.
And in the end, the game company exists to make a profit.
I don’t see anything wrong with that. It is a well-known fact of life that a game company has to make a profit to survive. Who is going to continue to pay the salaries of all the game devs, designers, artists, marketing, etc. employees over time if it keeps losing money? And they have their own families to feed and pay their own bills.
In some ways a sub-based game is more straight-forward. They only need to continue to attract subscribers and not to worry about a cash shop. For a fee-to-play game like GW2, they would need a cash shop. The game is maturing fast and soon it would disappear from the shelves, having been displaced by the hoard of newer games gushing in.
Therefore, they need a way to get a continued flow of income. And what is the best way? Get those players with the money to help them to catch up with the rest for the players with the time. Because the players with the money would want to look as cool and be as strong as everybody else.
On the matter of sprockets, so what if they can get a pick that gives them a random chance of some sprockets. Sprockets only equate to gold and gold equates to gems and gems can always be gotten through money. If any of you think that you deserve to be ahead, in terms of gold, because you have farmed for a long time, then think again because even if the money-rich players do not buy this pick, they have always had the chance to convert their money to gems then to gold at any time. So I really don’t see what is the big deal about this pick, considering that the money-gem-gold route has always existed since the beginning.
The only reason, I can think of, as to why threads like these ones existed for so long is because of the jealousy of players who have bought previous unlimited picks who now try to rile up the crowd in order to pressure ArenaNet into adding new features into their previous purchases. They do this obviously for selfish reasons even though they try to justify it by calling this a “slippery slope” of “pay-2-win” in the game.
Therefore it depends on what you define as “win” in this game. If simply having the most gold in the game is “win”, according to your definition, then it is already “pay-to-win” ever since beta. But simply having the most gold would not guarantee you victories in sPvP tournaments. So every time when someone mentions “pay-to-win” think about what “win” means in his context.
