Today I caught a Massively article from yesterday about leveling via crafting in Guild Wars 2. One of the devs, Linsey Murdock, had posted an explanation of how leveling by crafting works in GW2, basically leveling a trade skill from 1-400 grants 10 levels of XP so leveling all 8 trade skills grants 80 levels. While that’s interesting in and of itself what really intrigued me was the forum thread that prompted that explanation.
One player had started a thread in the crafting forums titled “Cooking = Buy to Win.” The poster stated that he or she had sold gems for gold and then used that gold to power level trade skills and gained 15 levels in the process. In his or her eyes this was a pay t0 win scenario: money was paid to accelerate leveling and apparently leveling is winning.
I may be in a minority here but to me, that’s paying to lose. It’s one thing if you enjoy doing nothing but crafting, have at it and take advantage of the ability to skip things you don’t want to do (grind gold and/or mats) to do the things you want to do (craft). But paying money to grind, just to make a little number go up isn’t winning anything. It’s doing something you don’t want to do just so that you can skip the bulk of the game, and paying for the privilege; in effect it’s paying to not play. If that isn’t the raw end of a deal, I don’t know what is.
The Altoholic 
June 14th, 2012 at 5:39 am
Haha, very true! It’s totally your own decision if you’re going doing that and skipping content. And guess what? It works in real life too! It’s called economy, hehe. I love your “pay to loose” translation.
Not to be confused with Pay to Win of course, that’s the real evil! 😉
June 14th, 2012 at 7:38 am
Totally agree. There is no point to get to lvl 80 without spending any time to actually play the game.. Btw, your weapon based skills would still be basic, wouldn’t they?
June 14th, 2012 at 7:44 am
And still i would say: whatever floats his boat. If leveling to 80 in a hurry by spending money is fun for him, then that’s probably what he should do.
June 14th, 2012 at 9:15 am
@ Vagabond: Weapon skills are easy to unlock so that’s not much of an issue, the bigger concern would be lack of skill points from not doing any those challenges.
@Sylow: If that’s what floats his boat then that’s great for him and definitely what he should do. That’s not paying to win though, that’s paying to play how you want, or for “convenience.” If you’re doing that not because you enjoy it but because you think you’re winning some one-sided race then that’s where you’re paying to lose.