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Is It Pay to Win?

Is It Pay to Win?: Legendary Game of Heroes

October 13, 2020October 14, 2020

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, such as pay for advantage, pay for convenience, and cosmetics.

Legendary: Game of Heroes marketed as a free to play, match-3, card collecting, RPG for Android and iOS. Right away, you’ll probably notice some of those details indicate purchases. Mobile games are notoriously heavy-handed with their cash shops and card collection games are essentially pay to win by default in that, since their physical ancestors such as Magic: The Gathering, you spend cash to buy packs of cards. LGOH is no exception.

Scoring:

Pay for Power: 5/5
Pay for Advantage: 5/5
Pay for Convenience: 4/5
Pay for Cosmetics: 3/5
Pay to Win: 4.6/5*

Keep reading to see a rough game description and our basis for these scores.

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Is It Pay to Win?

Is It Pay to Win?: Defined

September 23, 2020September 29, 2020

This one will probably end up being controversial. Some people consider a game pay to win (p2w) if there are any microtransactions built-in whatsoever. Others will argue against a game being p2w unless you’re able to buy a level of in-game power that you cannot earn in game. Of course, there is a whole spectrum in between those two extremes.

For our purposes, we’re going to let the idea of pay to win be incredibly broad, and then we’ll break down what that actually means to the player bit by bit. Buy to play – buying the box/license – is not pay to win because everyone must pay the same amount (ignore sales, etc) and gains no advantage in any scope of the game. Pay to play – such as with a subscription – is not pay to win, because again, everyone is paying and one player cannot necessarily pay more in order to gain advantage. Pay to win elements are present if a player can spend additional money to purchase something in game. However, it shouldn’t be said that the game is inherently pay to win because of this. Having elements of a thing, pieces of a thing, doesn’t mean the whole of the game is that. For example: a game could allow duels (PVP) and not be considered a PVP game, despite having a piece that is.

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News/Updates

What’s Incoming for this Blog

August 29, 2020August 29, 2020

I guess it’s time I talk a little about where this blog is going. This is both for you and for me – for you to know what I intend and for me to, perhaps, get some feedback on that direction.

This one shouldn’t be incredibly long, but I’ll talk a little about what this blog has been doing, what I’m going to do with it, and how you can influence that if you have such a mind.

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Mobile Tap Titans 2

Tap Titans 2: A Review

August 9, 2020August 10, 2020

First – yes, we also cover mobile games here. All things gaming and all. You do have phones, right? I wouldn’t expect a huge swath of mobile content, though, as mobile games (at least in my limited experience) tend to be much simpler endeavors and maybe don’t have as much to cover. However, like many of you, I’m also fairly attached to my little screen and usually have a game or 4 than I’m idling, tapping, matching or otherwise. For this post, we’ll be breaking down Tap Titans 2, an free to play idle clicker game, with it’s game play, it’s ups, it’s downs, and it’s monetization. Gallery of in game images at the end.

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Ashes of Creation

Ashes of Creation: First Thoughts

July 27, 2020July 27, 2020

When I first learned about this game, it seemed alright. I put it on a list of upcoming games to watch and kinda moved on. Then, I heard some odd things about their battle royal mode that they kept messing with when everyone was wanting more information on the MMO and felt like maybe it was going in a weird direction. Add it to the list of probably dead on arrival games (or dead before arrival, in some cases). However, I saw this video (embedded above), a video that many, many people apparently have watched and enjoyed, including Asmongold and Summit1g. And after I saw that video, well, it’s back on the top of my interest list for future game releases. This in development MMORPG has such broad focus including: PVE, PVP, crafting, politics, religion, exploration, world building (literally). I’m going to discuss some of the things that really set this apart for me after the break.

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