“Pay-to-win” aka P2W is a term used by online gamers for any game system or mechanic that allows a player to acquire advantages over other players using real-world money.
pay to win
Vitae Aeternum: The uncomfortable truth of New World’s lax monetization
I have a pretty laid back approach to monetization in online games. Bar mandatory subscriptions and a few egregious outliers, I am generally fine...
First impressions of Marvel Snap, an addictive mobile card game by Hearthstone’s former director
Feeling the effects of the "superhero movie fatigue syndrome" that's going around these days, I wasn't overly eager to check out Marvel Snap when...
Temtem defends its battle pass, plans adjustments to pass XP and inclusion of pass items to its store
The fact that Temtem has a battle pass isn't anything exactly new, as developer Crema Games announced its intention in a February 2020 roadmap...
Massively Overthinking: Who’s really paying for MMOs?
Two years ago, we did a piece on dark patterns in MMO design, and in the comments, a reader named Shadex De'Marr penned a...
Guild Wars 2 celebrates a decade online with 16M players, Steam launch, and birthday gifts
Guild Wars 2's anniversary hoopla and Steam rollout are underway today as planned, and it's got plenty of gifts in store.
We checked out the...
Grimdark MMO Mad World confirms 2022 launch as ‘permanent open beta,’ aims for a primary male audience
Jandisoft's Mad World is looking more and more like a candidate for a 2022 release: Not only did we spot a new "winter 2022"...
Legends of Aria’s new blockchain owners are trying to sell $70 random P2W characters
The hits keep coming for Legends of Aria, and we don't mean the greatest hits compilation kind.
We regret to remind you that Aria, which...
Somebody paid-to-win so hard in Diablo Immortal that it wrapped around to pay-to-lose
The industry was generating so many "internet guy spends a fortune on Diablo Immortal" stories there for a while that we stopped even covering...
Fight or Kite: King of Crabs is just what you need to start your summer right
It’s summertime, and being the king ain’t easy… the king of crabs, that is! King of Crabs is an easy-breezy PvP MMO that apparently...
Lost Ark explains the June patch’s delay, removes P2W statted cosmetics from update
Though Amazon has delayed Lost Ark's summer patch - to the very last day of June - that hasn't put a damper on the...
Vague Patch Notes: You are not immune to predatory monetization in MMOs
This week, I want to expand on something I mentioned in last week's Vague Patch Notes as an offhand thing that bears further examination....
Not So Massively: First impressions of Diablo Immortal on PC
There was a time when the release of a new Diablo game might have been a big deal for me. But I've never been...
The Daily Grind: What level of pay-to-win are you willing to tolerate in MMORPGs?
Friend-of-MOP Clowd over at RIFT blog The Ghar Station penned a provocative piece this week proposing for the MMORPG genre a five-tiered system for...
Massively on the GO: Talking MMOARGs with Orna’s lead dev
We've talked a bit about Orna: The GPS RPG a few times here in the Massively on the Go column, as this indie game helps...
Desert Oasis: Black Desert Mobile has a little something for every playstyle
It's amazing how fast two years flies by. It didn't seem that long ago that I was doing my first impressions piece of Black...
Lawful Neutral: How is an NFT MMO even supposed to work?
Recently, MassivelyOP hit a milestone: We received our quadrabajillionth email announcing that Scammy-scammers-now-with-NFTs-and-also-metaverse-because-reasons Inc. was a proven market leader with a new scamming game...
EVE Online players are fuming over the new pay-to-win mining barge
Pearl Abyss-owned CCP Games has once again dropped a hive of live bees into the lap of the already-irritated EVE Online community, this time...
Massively Overthinking: Is free-to-play as bad as we thought it’d be a decade ago?
It's 2022 and we're about to talk about free-to-play like it's 2012! Back then, the conversation was all about which MMORPG would fall to free-to-play...
Vague Patch Notes: The MMO term ‘pay-to-win’ is a red herring
It probably hasn't escaped anyone who has been reading my writing over the past several years that I have something of a vendetta against...
Fractured Online’s CEO addresses Gamigo publishing deal, promising unchanged design and monetization
Yesterday, when we covered the news that Gamigo was taking over the publishing of Kickstarted MMORPG sandbox Fractured, we noted that the Fractured team...
