Hi there. In the previous post, part 1, we’ve talked about how playing for free doesn’t exist, how players are paying with other things than money, and how the server staff doesn’t always gets paid in money either. We’ve then concluded that pay 2 win is just fine. If you’ve missed it, I suggest you go read it nao.
In part 2, we’re going to look into different ways in which servers can be monetized, role of non-donating players on P2W servers, and finish with relationship between fun and in-game wealth. Go go!
Monetizing Servers
First option is to do nothing: no cash shop, only voluntary donations with no tangible rewards in return. Maybe we’ll give you a “donator” tag on Discord or something, but you probably don’t want that either since you’ve donated because you’re a good person, and this is basically our business model. We enjoy not making money in exchange for our work.
Second option is a shop that only offers vanity items like pets, mounts, and toys. This gives players a concrete reason to donate while not affecting the gameplay at all, or at least not in a relevant way. You could, however, already start making the case that this is a form of P2W since hey, some players are into collecting mounts and pets, and offering an option to donate for all of it ruins their game. I’ve honestly never seen anyone claim that, but it could be done in theory, lol.
Third way is to combine the above vanity shop with some additional services that don’t affect the endgame, but allow players to skip or reduce the grind required to get there. An early example of that is Dalaran WoW with an option to donate for a level 70 on their 1x server. Sunwell allows its players to donate for a 4x XP boost. Kronos will let you buy characters that were played by other people, and Feenix, back in the day, would sell instant level 60 with a set of D1 gear as well.
This has been criticized as P2W in past, and while it doesn’t affect the endgame gameplay, which is the usual response to these critiques, it all depends on what the definition of “winning” is.
For many, winning in the game means raiding and playing arena, and rewards obtained from doing so are what the game is about. Everything else is secondary and ultimately just the grind that one must get over in the least painful way possible. However, most players don’t raid (apart from an occasional pug) and while they might play some BGs, they definitely won’t do arena (because it’s hard, and it sucks to get owned, and it breaks the illusion that you’re a good player). This has always been the case on every WoW server, retail of private.
(For instance, if every player were a raider on a WotLK server with ~3.000 average peaks, that would mean 100 raiding guilds to accommodate all those players, assuming 30 players per guild. In reality, the amount of guilds is far, far lower. This is something WoW players understand intuitively.)
For everyone who doesn’t raid nor play arena, the majority, “winning” means something different. It can be hitting max level, buying all the emblem & honor gear, or leveling professions, so for many of them, selling XP boosts alone might already mean paying to win. On the other hand, players that aren’t engaged in the game at the highest level, raiding and arena, are less likely to care whether their goals are made easier to reach by donations, especially if those donations help keeping the server online and fr… available without some sort of monetary transactions :^).
They are the silent majority on which servers stand, rise, and fall. They may not be doing anything special as individuals, but as a group, they create an environment in which the raiders and arena players can thrive, in which their rewards have value. They also keep the economy moving and provide a pool of potential future raiders and arena players, but their most important function is providing an audience for the big players, serving as the bottom half of the hierarchy pyramid on which others can then stand and enjoy their rewards.
The Non-Donating Players
On P2W servers, there’s another large group of players that keeps everything moving. Those are players who never, or rarely, donate.
Just like players who neither raid nor play arena, non-donating players create the environment in which donating players, donators, can enjoy their rewards. A donator gets a Shadowmourne and proceeds to wreck ungeared noobs, or perhaps they can now increase their arena rating by 100.
Non-donating players give meaning to donated items. If the donated for Shadowmourne were renamed to “DONATOR AXE XD”, everyone would know the weapon was obtained by donating, which doesn’t require any in-game skill, effort, or time investment. Without donating, getting a Shadowmourne requires several months of raiding in a good guild, and compared to that, the donated for Shadowmourne feels like it’s “free”.
Of course, it’s not really free because the donator, in our example, paid a good amount of money for it, and they had to earn that money somehow IRL. But real life has no (relevant) relation to the in-game world, and the only legitimate in-game currency are time, effort, and skill. Everything a player can earn inside the game comes from some combination of these three elements. Since most players are not donators, earning items in that way is the standard and, as a result, most respected. (Non-donators will use the “mommy’s credit card” meme against donators to say that the donated for gear took no effort to obtain whatsoever.)
On a server where every single player donated for all their items, resulting items would be meaningless. Everyone would know everyone else donated for everything, and there would be nothing left to respect. The only way to earn respect would be proving how the money was made, that it was earned fairly and not through “mommy’s credit card”, but that’s far beyond the scope of what WoW, a video game, is. What are players on such servers supposed to do, upload 10 hour streams of their workdays to earn prestige points?
If only a minority donates, players can never be sure if the item was donated for or not, and so the item itself keeps the prestige, the status. But even if the item has clearly been donated for, as long as it exists in an environment where most rewards are earned by playing the game, it will retain a sort of an “emotional echo”, for the lack of better term, of the original, played for item. As long as 4 Shadowmournes were obtained by playing the game, the 2 Shadowmournes everyone knows were donated for still look kinda cool. If the entire warrior, DK, and paladin population of Molten donated for it, it would be far less special.
Donating for items, apart from increasing your status, also allows you to enjoy the gameplay more than before. Playing with bad gear isn’t fun since you do no damage/healing and are easy to kill, but getting great gear opens new options and feels like playing a new, far more entertaining, game. You can now join a good guild and enter all the raids, or you can be Vurtne and 1v3 your enemies. Everyone enjoys fun gameplay, but the majority of players care most about respect from their peers: their status, their gear.
Playing for Fun
Most players don’t play for fun — at least not primarily. They play to be respected by their peers. They’ll spend weeks and months replaying the same content over and over again in order to improve their characters’ gear, which will then result in them being superior to other players, giving them a sense of accomplishment, a sense of status. Even if respect is not given directly, it’s a fact of the game: geared players are successful. They are near the top of the server’s hierarchy. No one would look at a character in full ICC 25 HC gear and say, “this guy sux” except if they said, “this guy has no life lol”, but again, real life has no (relevant) relation to the in-game world.
(Connection between real life and WoW is something almost no one cares about. A person may have a shitty RL, but that doesn’t change the fact that their in-game character is powerful. The only time where RL-WoW relation seems to matter is when people attempt to use the game as a dating app, hoping that they’ll be among the lucky few who’ve met their significant other in the game. They won’t. If you want a girlfriend, log off WoW.)
Fun does play a role for every type of player, and it has to be present in at least some amount. Yes, maybe you’ve been farming ICC 25 for months, but you enjoy the social aspect of your guild, competing on the DPS meters, inside jokes, hanging out with your friends. However, if ICC 25 stopped dropping gear, you’d never do it again in your life. Ever. If having ICC 25 gear suddenly became shameful (for some highly theoretical reason), something people would laugh at, you’d deny ever having entered the place.
The only type of player that cares about fun and nothing else is the “true casual”: someone who plays a few hours a week, if that, and doesn’t care so much about playing the game, but instead plays with the game. It’s a fun toy that can be discarded at any time, for any reason.
There’s no right way to play WoW. We all decide what our values and goals are, and no outside authority has the right to tell us otherwise. But hey, it sure is fun to pop the hood and look at why and how we do all those things.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this post, and I’d love to hear what you think about it.
Do you play for fun? Do you ever play without expecting any rewards?
Are you a casual player that’s ok with P2W, or are you a committed player who just wants a proper, 1x, no cash shop blizzlike experience?
See you next Sunday with a shitpost about imaginary “capitalist server” versus a “communist server” *Venezuela intensifies*!
Amberpine Lodge 