Welcome to ‘Is it Pay to Win’ – a column where we examine a game and decide if that game is has aspects of pay to win and to what extent. Check out Is it Pay to Win?: Defined to see how we break down the components of pay to win (p2w), such as pay for advantage, pay for convenience, and pay for cosmetics.
World of Warcraft is a game that needs no introduction, but, we’re going to do it anyway. World of Warcraft or WoW is one of the worlds preeminent MMORPGs. It has a purchase cost (buy to play), a monthly subscription (pay to play), a token that can be bought with cash and sold for in game currency, and cash shop with game services and cosmetics.
Scoring:
- Pay for Power: 3/5
- Pay for Advantage: 5/5
- Pay for Convenience: 3/5
- Pay for Cosmetics: 4/5
- Pay to Win: 3.4/5
Continue reading to see a game description and how we came up with those scores.
Gameplay: As one of the oldest and largest MMORPGs, WoW features a number of gameplay options. For PVE content, there are 5 player dungeons (from casual normals to timed and ranked mythic+), 10-30 player raids, story quests, world quests, and often an expansion specific story/grind for power system. PVP features casual and rated arenas and battlegrounds, as well as world PVP.
Most power gains come in the form of gear which can be obtained from quests, dungeons, raids, PVP wins, or bought on the auction house with gold. Bind on Equip (BoE, tradeable) gear is typically limited by item level to a certain point and the best item level pieces that drop from raid ore often limited to certain pieces only. Each expansion tends to feature various grinds to participate in to gain expansion specific power as well. Finally, while leveling is, of course, a huge power increase, most players consider that the game “starts” at end game, at least in terms of power considerations.
Monetization: WoW has a box cost, typically either the base game (~$40 USD) plus the current expansion (~$40 USD) or just the current expansion AND a subscription which starts at ~$15 USD per month. The game and expansions tend to have deluxe editions with additional cosmetics and perks, such as a level boost, for addition cost.
Their cash shop includes character services, such as a character boost to the max level of the previous expansion, server transfers, race changes, and more. The cosmetic portion includes gear appearances (tranmogs), mounts, pets, and toys.
Pets 
Mounts 
Character services
Scoring: Here we break down the scores.
Pay for Power: 3/5. This is complicated for WoW. WoW’s cash shop offers nothing that is pay for power. Given the nature of this game, the level boost is a convenience only item.
However, the WoW Token which can be bought with cash and exchanged for in game gold has created a semi-approved way to pay for wins. Gold can buy BoEs from the auction house for direct power gains. Gold can buy carries to the highest end of content via other players. These carries can reward the absolute best of gear. One mitigating factor is Blizzards limit on the number of tokens puchased per week. It would be difficult to buy enough gold to progress at the same rate as someone who could play at the highest levels. But, given that gold, which can be obtained via cash, can directly buy some of the best items in the game from the auction house and indirectly buy power through carries, there is some pay for power present.
Pay for Advantage: 4/5. The same points above means that it is incredibly easy, if not a bit costly, to pay for significant advantage in WoW. A PVP player can buy carries to a relatively high rating. A PVE player can buy carries to all relevant PVE achievements for each tier of content, giving both a gear advantage and the ability to link the achievements to make group invites more readily available. The only caveat here is that some of the carries can take some time until they are available (aka the carry groups have enough gear/practice), but often a lesser scope of the carry is available almost as soon as the content is out. The ability to use cash, through tokens/gold, to buy carries is a massive advantage that cannot be ignored.
A trio of carry group price examples.
Pay for Convenience: 3/5. Most of the above points apply here but to a lesser degree because while you can buy those carries, you typically still have to be present. The only real convenience offered by the cash shop is the character boost, which still requires you to level through the current expansion to play current content, saving a relative few hours of leveling. There’s generally nothing that will increase experience gains, give additional character slots, or similar conveniences.
Pay for Cosmetics: 4/5. There is a limited scope of unique cosmetics in the cash shop compared to the extensive amount of cosmetics that can be earned in game. As of the time of this writing there are 400+ mounts in the game and 18 in the cash shop, for instance. However, the cash shop items are almost exclusively limited to that medium and cannot be earned in game. Additionally, there is an extensive amount of cosmetic appearances, pets, and mounts that can be bought through the auction house, or earned via paying other players.
Summary and Verdict:
With an unexpectedly high weighted score of 3.4/5, World of Warcraft carries some strong pay to win components, almost exclusively due to the token that can be bought with money and sold for gold. And, as we discussed in our definition article, indirect pay to win, in the form of an intermediary currency (cash to token to gold, or cash to gems to item, etc), does not diminish the impact on our score. So is WoW pay to win? Well, no, but we’re calling this one clearly: Pay for Advantage.
*For determining the total pay to win score, power is weighted by 3x and advantage by 2x. In this way, a game that has a 5 pay for power, 1 advantage, 1 convenience, 1 cosmetic would have a higher P2W score than 1 for power, 1 advantage, 1 convenience, 5 cosmetic. Most of our experience and opinion is that pay for power and advantage are more important when considering “pay to win” than the convenience or cosmetic aspects, but all aspects should still count in their own way.
Review Completed on 04/10/2021