Is the next expac pay 2 win, cause I'm spent

You could also try changing what you write, considering what she wrote is how a lot of us see your posts.

I'll let you guess which one I think it is

Thank you for your personal attention even if I don't feel much about it.

And now going back to the expac and my ideas and if it P2W or not.
EQ2 is not a free game, so people already pay to play it. Some people pay more some people pay less. There's a still a possibility to play for free, but this possibility is limited and as I see it, the limits get higher every year.

My main question is, what exactly is considered a "win" in MMO like EQ2?
For instance you can win a gold medal in championship or a nice prize in lottery.
But is considered a "win" in MMO? Seeing yourself in a top 5 of best players with the most damage per strike?
Seeing yourself in a top 5 guilds based on a number of successfully completed top raid zones per week?

It's whatever you want it to be, Hoss.

You are actually trolling now aren't you? I'll entertain it though.

Clearly we're talking about using RL cash to give an advantage of killing mobs more quickly or killing mobs that you were unable to without the cash upgrade,

The GM version of Ascension spells is a complete world away from the apprentice version. I guess being a lvl 82 means you've not had any experience of this though.

Hmmm. But no matter what, you can't do raid zone alone, right? So, spending a lot of money on character improvement does not seem like a 100% solution, there's still a ton of bosses that this particular player cannot kill. It cannot be considered a "win", can it?

I don't raid but just consider the difference between the DPS from a group of people with apprentice Ascension to a group with GM version of Ascension spells.

Now, extrapolate those results to a raid of 24 people.

Changes to DPS that significant through cash transactions is not in the spirit of the game in my opinion. It is definitely a pay to win model!

*Drops mic* I'm done here!

Was is a typo?

It was indeed! I've corrected it now. Ta for letting me know!

To me, parse measuring is the same as epeen measuring. arguing about ascension spells being p2w? sigh. ive not had the money to pump into ascension spells, meaning ive not spent 1 dollar doing so, plus i'm a tank, and not expected to lead the parse on dps, yet id venture to say i could hold my own, or even blow away an average or casual player on a parse. I've seen the evidence all xpac long.

Yes, one could parse better if they choose to pay for their ascension upgrades. No, they don't have to pay in order to kill most mobs. One could pick their most important spell or 2 and research it for free all xpac long like i have done, 1 spell is gm,another is almost gm, absolutely free.

If i check a parse, and i did 640 mill dps, a dps class did 3 billion, someone else did 20 mill, another 140, another 60, etc, i can only think of 1 question. Did the mobs die, without group dying excessively, and did we have fun? Odds are yes. The numbers don't matter to me.

Showing off your shiney dps parse and measuring it against another player is the same as wearing the expensive, trendy clothes in high school to get people to like you and think you are "cool". It's shallow and judgemental, and when i look at my numbers it's about self improvement, setting the bar for myself, meeting my own standards because i choose these goals for myself. If another player or even another tank groups with me and blows me away in stats, good for them. It's not gonna make me curl up in a ball and cry and wonder if they paid for better stuff with cash. I'm sure not gonna quit the game cuz someone can pay to outshine me. I'm not gonna quit life because someone can pay to have nicer, shinier things, either.

For me there is a big difference between pay options to speed up progress vs pay options that are the only viable solution during the lifecycle of an xpac. Players should be reasonably able to achieve an xpac's goal by investing game time. This was the previous research model: you can research or play with a reasonable chance to obtain the spell upgrade through gaming. This does not seem to be the case with the ascension system and that alone is a mistake - whether you need the upgrades etc.

My 2 CP's worth, since the direction of the topic went this way:
Raid: not as much fun as it was back in the days of KoS and a lot of work but satisfying when that pita of a boss goes down after multiple times of wiping the raid force.
Heroics: always enjoyable when you put together a PU group of server players. Going to Gen and LFM is something I will always enjoy because you get to know the server community.

I'm not saying the ascension drops aren't a joke, they are, and things are clearly geared towards encouraging people to pay with cash for spell upgrades. 11 super rare drops from expert zones per adept and master is some kind of sick slap in the face. What i am saying is, you can enjoy the game without these upgrades, one could forget about upgrading, research the most important ones, get the occasional super rare journeyman drop, etc. The ascension spells don't make or break the game for me. If i had money to burn and throw away, i am sure i'd happily throw it away for at least a couple of my favorite spells, if it means keeping the game going. Let's not forget that video game companies produce games for us to make a profit, not out of the kindness of their hearts. Eq2 is one of the most generous, content filled, multi-faceted and amazing games out there, even and especially for those on the f2p model. Go roll a toon on wow and find your experience stop at level 20. Go try rift, or a number of other games. No thanks, i will stay here. We all have different ideas on what we'd like to see, but we honestly have plenty of choices and ways to enjoy this game, no matter the level of investment an individual may have. Play how you want to play, but don't pretend you have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to enjoy this game. It's what you make of it.

Life isn't binary. We can criticize bad game design and still enjoy the residual joy presented by the current state of the game. In any case, the recent messages from Kander seem to indicate that they acknowledge some of the problems introduced by the latest xpac.

Critic is welcome as long as it is constructive non-abusive and helpful. I think I have seen a couple of two examples on this forum just about half-year ago!

I raid three times a week. I am very fanatic and love to be at the top, yet I did not spend 1 dollar on ascension upgrades, I spent 2 dollars on them! (just kidding, nothing). Still, I am relevant on the parse. I bought all journeyman and expert upgrades to my damaging abilities and researched the adepts, spending monthly dbc on it as well as waiting for ages.
The drop rate is very, very crappy, on ALL ascension upgrades and is clearly evident to showing the obvious pay to win model (which I was complaining about right after the expansion got released but people told me to stop crying because nobody realized it apparently, also with the 5 bonus infuser for 30 bucks uncapped transactions deal). I am already considering quitting for realz again and a massive mistake like more pay to win next expansion could easily convince me to say goodbye to this amazing game which is becoming worse and worse every patch. I am glad to see that so many people agree here on this thread, it most certainly is a rare occurrence!

And also, it shouldn't matter whether you raid or not. You pay for the content, you get what you earn while playing the content, you don't pay extra to "earn" what you want.

True.

EQ2 hasn't ever been pay to win, in order to be pay to win there has to be some contest you can win, objectives etc.

people buying ascension spells for real cash is just buying them faster upgrades, we can all get to GM eventually for free or you can use your time in EQ2 to get plat and buy those upgrades with plat.

the same is true for the familiars you can ether buy them or you can grind for them.

EQ2 is 'pay to advance faster' which is much more reasonable then 'pay to win' considering you can play the game for free with no upfront purchase.

as for things silver or gold members have that you don't that's 'pay for advantage' the only real things that put the screws to free members is broker usage and mail. (TBH ftp should be able to buy off broker, like silver can)\\

no matter whether you spend money or don't you can eventually get whatever items gold or silver member can get from running zones.

every time someone tries to claim that EQ2 is pay to win makes me think they have a gripe with it and calling it pay to win is a convenient misinterpretation of the game in order to make the game look bad to others.

EQ2 offers tons and years of content for free, not only that but pretty much with every expansion the devs unlock one of the very few old expansions so FTP can play them.

let's not forget that a FTP player who at the very laest buys the latest expac and supports the game that way can farm plat and buy kronos in order to play the game as a gold member without spending any real money (aside from expansions).

i have not spent a dime on ascensions, i've spent plat to speed things up but not rl money, is someone that has paid rl cash for their ascensions better then me just because they bought them? no, if someone is worse then me but putting up larger numbers because they bought ascensions it doesn't automatically make them better then me, it only makes them appear better.

You can make this about "if you want the gear, you have to work for it" all day long. It doesn't change the fact that Ascension was "listed on the box" not as a raid feature but an everyone feature. Ascension level 10 was REQUIRED to do the Epic 2.0, which has both a group and raid version of the quest and weapon. So once again your logic that Ascension is a "raid only" thing doesn't work.