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.
Elyon (formerly Ascent: Infinite Realm) is a korean MMORPG developed by Bluehole and is being published for Western audiences by Kakao. The game has 5 classes with a large variety of skills. It features both PVP and PVE. The game must be purchased (buy to play) and has a cash shop with microtransactions.
Scoring:
- Pay for Power: 2/5
- Pay for Advantage: 3/5
- Pay for Convenience: 5/5
- Pay for Cosmetics: 5/5
- Pay to Win: 3.14/5
Here’s a video discussion of the cash shop. Continue reading for a break down of the games system, an explanation for those scores and our final verdict on the game.
Game Play: Elyon has basically all of the standard MMORPG game play options. For player versus player (PVP) there are (or will be) battlegrounds, world PVP, realm vs realm, guild wars, and arenas. For player versus environment (PVE) there is questing, grinding, group and solo dungeons, and it will have raids.
Power gains come in a pretty big variety of ways. First, unlike many MMORPGs, there is not a max level. Leveling becomes progressively slower, but will continue to be a means of gaining power. There is gear, which can be enchanted and socketed with runes. These runs must be upgraded for maximum power potential. Leveling gives skill points, but so do runes and other sources which both changes and strengthens abilities. Finally, there is luminous a passive buff to stats and skill points. There are 54 combinations of luminous which give different stat bonuses, damage increases/reductions and other combat benefits. Each of these also have 5 ranks which increases those bonuses.
Monetization: Elyon has a purchase cost ($30 USD) standard. At the time of preordering, they have additional packages valued at $30 and $40 additional for a total possible pre-order cost of $100. This gives a variety of bonuses, most of which can be purchased on their cash shop later, but also a 3 day head start – we’ll get into why that matters later. The cash shop includes costumes (along with the ability to change appearance), mounts, accessories, luminous, pets, extra inventory space, xp boosts, drop rate increases, a portable storage unit and other things.
Scoring: Here we break down the scores.
Pay for Power: 2/5. The main and most obvious source of pay for power is the luminous system. Each luminous costs $5. To get a max rank 5 luminous, while guaranteeing each upgrade, it takes a total of 81 rank 1 luminous. As far as we can tell, you can earn one per day in game, so, you’re either looking at 3 months of grinding or dropping ~$400. We’ve heard the Korean version had a system to buy up to 3 per day for gold, but the system there had many more RNG mechanics.
This is a direct pay for power system. However, you can only equip one luminous at a time and their bonuses are significant, but not overwhelming, being around 5-10% power above someone who has no luminous or a very low one. What also counts for this game is that there’s no way to trade between players other than the auction house and none of the cash shop items are tradeable. The luminous system is the only direct pay for power gains, and the difference between a non-spender and a whale will even out as you gain luminous through game play.
Pay for Advantage: 3/5. The Stars Blessing gives increase experience gains, item drop rates, and luminous energy. Experience gains, for a game where grinding is very important and there isn’t a max level, is a direct advantage towards gaining power. Drop rates are obviously an advantage, if only a small one. Another pay for advantage system is the luminous system, yet again. Luminous can go auto battle for you. These battles can reward additional loot, experience, and gold. Being able to buy luminous AND extend the energy available to them is a meaningful advantage towards getting gold, xp, loot and therefore power.
The resurrection scroll is arguably an advantage as well. In a game where farming efficiency is key, being able to revive in place and NOT lose experience is an advantage when leveling (which is always). Next, while pet’s are mostly going in the pay for convenience slot, some of their bonuses might affect the score here as well (see below). The pre-order bonus is going firmly here as well. While it won’t apply after the launch of the game, a 3 day headstart on leveling will be a significant advantage to anyone trying to compete in the open world.
Finally, while there’s no direct way to spend cash to get in game gold, unfortunately, many cash shop items can be gifted to friends (including friends just added) which means there would be a way to use real life money to give things to players in game, possibly in exchange for carries or boosts, possibly to gain gold through auction house manipulation. For example, a player could offer another player an expensive mount in exchange for a carry through a high end dungeon, raid, or pvp encounter. There may be limitations to this, though, limiting the scope of the potential issue.
Pay for Convenience: 5/5. Elyon has an extensive amount of convenience options. The Star’s Blessing includes other convenience perks. You can buy additional character slots, inventory space, storage space, pet slots, luminous slots, a portable storage device and general goods vendor, as well as a very large material bag.
Pets are also a significant source of pay for convenience, almost to the point of going in the above category. Their main function is being able to auto loot for you, making collecting your drops while questing/grinding much more efficient (advantageous?). Then, each pet randomly gets some other perks that expand and increase as they level (see, very expensive). These perks can include auto harvesting, increased loot drop (another questionably advantageous perk), vendor discounts, increased stamina, gathering xp bonuses, and more.
Mounts, while are mostly a cosmetic item, are slightly faster (significant faster turning) if you get the store ones than most of the in game options.
Pay for Cosmetics: 5/5. As would be expected, Elyon has a plethora of cosmetic options. Mounts, outfits, accessories, foot prints and emotes in their store. Additionally, being able to change gear appearances is somewhat of a premium function as there are costs associated with “transmog” that aren’t readily available in game. For this reason they sell appearance change tickets (1 hour of appearance changing), a craftworks chest (30 days), and decoration tokens (1 color for one item). Keeping your avatar looking current and cool could be quite expensive.
Summary and Verdict:
One of the interesting things about this series is discovering how different systems affect how pay to win a game is. In the case of Elyon, having no max level means that experience boosts or other leveling assistance DOES affect pay to win in a way that it doesn’t in a game like World of Warcraft, where leveling is capped and xp gains are only mild conveniences.
The luminous system is a direct pay for power system, but it is only one piece of a complicated character sheet. The bonuses are significant but not over powering AND they can be earned in game.
While there are many pieces of pay for advantage here, none of them are massive by themselves. The experience gains from luminous battles can be small, the star blessing xp boost is only 10%, and using the cash shop to buy services may be a ToS violation so it’s hard to weigh it too hard, since we don’t count other ToS breaking behaviors such as using cash to buy carries directly or letting other people use your accounts. As a result, the score isn’t terribly high.
The conveniences, however are massive if you throw down some cash. Extra inventory, xp boosts, auto gathering, auto battles, a summonable storage and vendor, faster mounts and more lend to a maximum score for this area. And with cosmetics, there are plenty of cool appearances in game, but putting currency gates on swapping those appearances, along with the scope of very unique items in the store, lends to a maximum cosmetic score.
All this combined leads to a weighty, but surprisingly lower than expected score. If you are opposed to pay for power on principle, this game may hit some sour notes for you, but for the most part, the things others can buy shouldn’t negatively impact your ability to participate and compete in most areas of the game. At an overall 3.14/5, we rate the MMORPG Elyon: 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 08/26/2021