Pay to Win?

[Elazul]

I see the "In App Purchases" tag on the store page. Is GW2 pay to win? Does it have any pay to win elements? What is monetized exactly?

[LordDarak]

only expansion and fashion

[GilgaMelchi]

Does it have any pay to win elements?

None.
Except if you count "looking fancy" as winning.

[Baderas]

You can buy only fashion and qol items but nothing that make you better and you can use your gold (IG money) to convert into gems (store money) 😉

[Jebro]

No pay to win friend!

[Densiz]

not p2w but you need some store items like bag slot or salvage items. So you will be converting your golds for it. At least gold will be useless after crafting your asscanded gear (endgame gear)

[Kawazu Biscotti]

GW2 is not a P2W game, You can farm gold and buy gems and never spend money but you can also spend money. Everything to buy some QoL or fashion items. But no stuff. The stuff is not even farmed, is the same since years. No gear grind here (that's what made me flee from New Word and some other games)

[Esquire Dragonstone]

I have been playing Guild Wars 2 since 2012. The game is not pay 2 win. There are some convenience item in the store like extra bag space that you might want, but you earn gold in the game and use that gold to trade it for gems which are used to purchase store items. In comparision to other MM0RPG Games the best gear that you can get today is around the same level that you could get years ago. They way you do improve your character at level 80 is by finding better builds....collecting mastery points.... (mastery points are account based by the way). Gear is part of the game but only a part of it.

[mysaga]

You can buy:
- Living World sesons, baiscally content DLCs
- "QoL" including bank and inventory space, character slots and some "endless" tools that save you from restocking at npc vendors. Also level boosts, but you get to max level so fast you probably don't need it.
- Cosmetics for your character, your mounts and skiff.
- Keys for special lootboxes. These keys can be farmed ingame and the lootboxes only contain other items on this list + "minis" (aka pets)
- Some services regarding your character cusomization, offering exclusive options.

You can also convert gems, the premium currency to gold and vice versa. So apart from the expansion, you can technically buy everything without spending money. The RL money -> gold conversion does not enable you to be stronger than everyone else, as there is horizontal progression and best in slot items from 2012 / 2013 are still valid.

[Tyrian Mollusk]

Convenience, inventory space, and cosmetics are all heavily monetized. Character slots also, since even after buying an expansion to get the upgrade to a non-free account, you have only five character slots for the nine classes to play. Prices are pretty hefty and while there are sales, they never cut too deeply.

$10 per character slot
$5 per bag slot added to a character (upgrade permanently tied to that character, bag slots provide inventory space depending on how big the bag you slot is, with 15 slot bags being reasonably inexpensive)
$7.50 per 30 spaces of communal inventory stash
$8.75 per SINGLE space of special shared inventory, visible across all character inventories
$15-$25 typical mount skin
$30 for a set of unlimited use gathering tools, so you don't have to keep buying consumable tools
$25 boost one character to the level cap, plus get a full set of exotic-tier generalist gear
$1.50 key to open one loot box ($1ea when buying 25)

Converting cash to in-game currency lets you buy various gear and earned resources from other players via the trading post, including he top-tier prestige gear, legendaries. Legendaries don't have better stats than ascended gear, but they do offer a lot of convenience (eg, you can equip a single legendary weapon on all your characters at the same time, with different stats and skins on each, with free stat swapping and skin changing whenever you want). Ascended gear is only a little better than exotic gear. For a basic power build (all DPS and just hit damage, without damage over time effects), a set of exotic gear can be bought from the trading post quite cheaply, and that's probably the best way to get it. Other useful builds will probably be more expensive. Exotic gear is "bound" to the first character you equip it on, so you need a new set for every character.

You can convert in-game currency to premium currency too, but that pretty much takes vast amounts of hours to invest in currency grinding, and you'll have a lot of things to spend that in-game currency on already, since the game nickels and dimes you all over the place (just using a waypoint to travel costs currency, and even the story deliberately and pointlessly sends you back and forth over large areas).

[super retadr]

Depends how you define p2w
• there are 0 things you can buy for straight power advantages
• if you want full convenience you will spend multiple hundred dollars for both account upgrades (bank slots, shared storage) and character upgrades (bag space, build and equipment presets), similarly to PoE if you've ever played that
• endgame is fashion and most good skins come from the cash shop ( there is 1 (one) mount skin available ingame, the rest is all cash shop)
• you can legally RMT directly from the shop, and since every goal in the game is tied to gold you can buy almost anything for real money

so for me it's actually p2w, after 4k hours to reach any of my goals it's faster and more efficient if I work IRL and buy ingame currency, rather than farming

[MechaBear]

Very important thing. Like, what is pay to win?

People can buy gems and then excange them for gold and then buy legendary weapons from the Trading Post. Legendary weapons are the top tier weapons you can have in the game and it takes ages to craft them, but once crafted, you can either use them or sell them on Trading Post 2, 3 or 5k gold.

You have PVP. In PVP it does NOT matter what you have in PvE, you can have full legendary armor and weapons, but in PvP everyone is equal, builds are seperated from PvE, so it is all based on skill and team work.

In WvW it doesn't matter again, because its huge amounts of people who are fighting huge amounts of people.

As for PvE and world of Tyria, nobody can attack you in open world nor you can attack anybody, so even if someone cashed out 1000 euros to buy that one legendary weapon, it doesn't affect you at all.

So no, the game is not Pay to Win.

[ᚾᚪᛋᚠᛖᚱᚪ²]

No the game is not pay to win, its pay to look good. 😎

[Soolcheg]

No.

[Drake]

About buying gems to get gold. It's important to note that it's works like real trading. If people buy gems to get gold, the rate of gold to gems will lower and people will be able to convert gold into gems at a lower rate.

If you play the trading post right you can get very rich and get cash shop upgrades without spending a penny.

[Chronos]

Depends on what you consider "win", you can pay to get whatever you want, and be as strong as you can get, but that won't necessarily mean you will win, gear doesn't mean as much as it means on other mmos, but yeah, you can max out everything easily if you have a crap ton of money to burn...