Is it pay to win?

[Auri]

I keep seeing posts saying that it isnt put I see that you can buy gold form gems that you buy with irl money. Can you buy in game items that make your character stronger or is it only for cosmetics? Thanks for the help in advance.

[gameshogun]

Short answer: No.

Long answer:

It is true that you can use in-game gold and real money to buy "Gems". You use Gems to buy stuff in the Gem Store.

However, there is nothing in the Gem Store that gives any advantage to players.

a. Majority of items in the Gem Store are skins for items and mounts, it is why Guild Wars is also called "Fashion Wars".
b. Minipets
c. Resource gathering tools -- some with very minor bonuses; very negligible
d. Many, if not all, of the items available in the Gem Store can also be acquired by other means. Usually in the Black Lion Trading Company (BLTC), you can earn the currency used for BLTC by just playing the game. Or, in random "loot boxes". Usually in rotation (actually, what's available in the Gem Store are also in rotation), or available in some regular annual events (still in rotation), or some other ways.

Lastly, even if-and that's a big if-they one day offer a non-skin item or piece of armour, it still wouldn't make any difference. I don't have "Legendary" items, and I don't have the best "upgrades", but I can still play with players who spends gazillion hours and days on the game; and can kill them in WvW and PvP arenas.

Gears usually is only important when in dungeons and other similar limited-number-of-players part of the game, and those are PvE and by choice. I, myself, don't join those, I just don't have the time to do so.

That's the long answer. ^_^

You'll be fine on this game. In fact, you can get to Level 80 in less than 5 days. When you visit lo level zones, your level is adjusted accordingly, a Level 80 in Level 1-10 zones can actually die a lot if they get overconfident. :p

[Firedancer]

Technically you can, but the items are either easily obtainable (exotics) or not much better than the easily obtainable ones (ascended).

On top of that you get the pvp gear for free.
PvE is cooperative And even stats that aren't optimal are more than enough to do everything in PvE. I have done pretty much everything PvE on Soldier stat equipment. A full set of level 80 soldier equipment is about 5,5 gold (better stats are around 35-60 gold). From logging in and doing three daily quests (which is maybe 30 minutes of effort) you get 2 gold. A full day spent in the Silverwastes is probably ~100 gold.
WvW is the only competetive environment where your owned gear even matters (and there you either play as a roamer and avoid fighting because it is a waste of time or you are in a big blob of people).

So yeah, better stats are better, but you don't really *need* them.

And when you play the game you want to exchange your gold for gems, not the other way round.

[Sychon]

You will never lose a fight because somebody else decided to spend more money on the game than you. Similarly, throw however much cash at the game, you won't die less frequently, even in open world.

I think that's the only metric that should be factored into deciding whether a game is pay-to-win or not.

[Hefutoxin]

Originally posted by Auri:

I keep seeing posts saying that it isnt put I see that you can buy gold form gems that you buy with irl money. Can you buy in game items that make your character stronger or is it only for cosmetics? Thanks for the help in advance.

In other MMOs, the point is to get better gear.

GW2 has a power cap that is easily hit. The point is horizontal progression.

It would be really stupid to buy gear with real money. Anyone who did would be endlessly mocked.

[Rozit]

It's not PtW, you can get legendaries without any DLCs or Spending real money, and you get so much free content to explore that the DLCs are really not nessecary for having fun.

[Auri]

Originally posted by Hefutoxin:

Originally posted by Auri:

I keep seeing posts saying that it isnt put I see that you can buy gold form gems that you buy with irl money. Can you buy in game items that make your character stronger or is it only for cosmetics? Thanks for the help in advance.

In other MMOs, the point is to get better gear.

GW2 has a power cap that is easily hit. The point is horizontal progression.

It would be really stupid to buy gear with real money. Anyone who did would be endlessly mocked.

I see. Thanks that really helps a lot as I was worried about it being p2w since I am having a lot of fun with the game. I was just worried since it seems like mmos now a days only care about the people that spend thousands of dollars on gold *cough* lost ark *cough*

[Auri]

Originally posted by ♾️ 스노 (雪亮 Yuki) 🔏:

Short answer: No.

Long answer:

It is true that you can use in-game gold and real money to buy "Gems". You use Gems to buy stuff in the Gem Store.

However, there is nothing in the Gem Store that gives any advantage to players.

a. Majority of items in the Gem Store are skins for items and mounts, it is why Guild Wars is also called "Fashion Wars".
b. Minipets
c. Resource gathering tools -- some with very minor bonuses; very negligible
d. Many, if not all, of the items available in the Gem Store can also be acquired by other means. Usually in the Black Lion Trading Company (BLTC), you can earn the currency used for BLTC by just playing the game. Or, in random "loot boxes". Usually in rotation (actually, what's available in the Gem Store are also in rotation), or available in some regular annual events (still in rotation), or some other ways.

Lastly, even if-and that's a big if-they one day offer a non-skin item or piece of armour, it still wouldn't make any difference. I don't have "Legendary" items, and I don't have the best "upgrades", but I can still play with players who spends gazillion hours and days on the game; and can kill them in WvW and PvP arenas.

Gears usually is only important when in dungeons and other similar limited-number-of-players part of the game, and those are PvE and by choice. I, myself, don't join those, I just don't have the time to do so.

That's the long answer. ^_^

You'll be fine on this game. In fact, you can get to Level 80 in less than 5 days. When you visit lo level zones, your level is adjusted accordingly, a Level 80 in Level 1-10 zones can actually die a lot if they get overconfident. :p

Thanks for the in depth answer. Its calmed my nerves about the game only being playable for people who spend abhorrents amount of money on the game. Im really looking forward to diving straight in :)

[John Hayabusa]

Yea, dont worry about it. You can criticize the game for putting too much skins and rewards into the gem shop and not enough in the game as rewards in raids/pvp etc but its not pay2win.
When you see someone obliterate mobs in the open world, its because of the elite spec power creep that came with the expansions.

[Neitsuke]

The game is technically pay2win, but it's too minor to give it any concerns. What's more important is the premium currency Gems, are not locked behind real money only. You can exchange your gold for those.

The gem store is filled with pay2belessannoying items though. Once you're far in the game, having a bunch of equipments to salvage is very common, and cluttering your inventory with 25 salvage kits taking one slot is really annoying, but worry not there is an infinite use salvage kit in the gem store, and for the low price of 400 gems you can also increase your inventory !

The one saving grace to this is, ironically the game makes it easy to manage the annoying aspects of the game. There are standard merchants everywhere for salvage kits and harvest tools, and at the click of one button on the Guild tab you can access one at no cost. You're not that pressured to buy those infinite gathering tools and infinite salvage kits. The limited inventory is still kind of a problem if you do not upgrade it though

[xxdovaxx1]

the thing is, a game is just pay to win if u HAVE to pay to get things what u cant reach with grind and farm

and gw2 have one of the best systems of all games - other games who have the same system like gw2 too

[Densiz]

gw2 is not like other games.
It is not p2w
all you need QOL items like bag slots for your main and it is obtainable with ingame farm (even $ cosmetics.. thanks to gem convert system)

[Yvan]

Ok, first of all I don't consider the game p2w. But I undestand why someone could, and I wouldn't completely disagree with them, either. The game sits in a blurry line that separates pay to play from pay to win.

If you consider p2w as "you HAVE to pay for things in the game that give advantages that you can't get in any other way", then no, GW2 is definetly not p2w.
But, if you consider p2w as "you MAY pay for things that give some advantages and you can get those things MUCH FASTER than anyone not paying", then GW2 is mostly not p2w, but maybe it is a little bit .
And let me be clear, PvP is reallly fair in this regard, nothing you buy will have any impact in traditional pvp (it may have a marginal one in WvW).

The traditional p2w idea of "I'll buy this dope megasword making a gazillion DPS" does not exist in Gw2. But a new player that reaches lvl80 could look up a build, pay for a set of exotics and have an advantage (not a great one, and will dissapear with time) over another new player that looks up the same build but doesn't pay, at least in PvE and WvW.

I'm not a veteran of this game and I often feel like veterans comenting in these threads have forgotten how much annoying the things that people call "just quality of life" are and how long it takes for a new player to buy them with gold (it looks more like that the devs decided to put uncessesary annoyances in your way so that you pay for the QoL). And those things do matter, my bank is full, and the inventory is not that big, its also half full. If I jump into a meta train and my inv gets full no one is going to wait for me to sort it out. This is just one example when annoying and disadvantage sit along a blurry line.

[Lagerhaus 23]

90% of shopitems are prestigious to say " here ive money, and blink blink and shine "
you dont need them not really .

[Gronmor]

I see a lot of people pointing out that the gemstore is basically just cosmetics and there's no op-items in there, that you don't need to buy those to be strong. That is true. HOWEVER, I feel like it's worth noting that there are stuff in the Gem Store that are useful, and not just cosmetic. You can buy character slots, so you can make more characters. You can buy more storage for your bank or for your characters. You can buy more build templates. Those are all things that can be useful to have.

Just wanted to give an honest answer! But none of those will make your characters stronger! Most of the advantages you get from the gem store, it's so that you can store more stuff, create more characters, save more build templates, stuff like that. You can survive without it though!

[DarkSlayer197]

Originally posted by Gronmor:

I see a lot of people pointing out that the gemstore is basically just cosmetics and there's no op-items in there, that you don't need to buy those to be strong. That is true. HOWEVER, I feel like it's worth noting that there are stuff in the Gem Store that are useful, and not just cosmetic. You can buy character slots, so you can make more characters. You can buy more storage for your bank or for your characters. You can buy more build templates. Those are all things that can be useful to have.

Just wanted to give an honest answer! But none of those will make your characters stronger! Most of the advantages you get from the gem store, it's so that you can store more stuff, create more characters, save more build templates, stuff like that. You can survive without it though!

The items you listed are QoL (Quality of Life) stuff which were already mentioned above.