I was going to post my thoughts about number 2 (and still might do it) since it has a lot of impact on our gameplay. It’s truly a pay-to-win if paid items cannot be used by users who didn’t buy them. I spent quite a big (and embarrassing) amount of money in the Bazaar and didn’t miss a single BP. If I join a PvP or PvE-C server and just equip paid items there’s no use for most people to kill me. Yes, winning is not all about earning resources and equipment but weakening your opponent, but it’s still pay-to-win if the opponent wins half the prize by dismantling my stuff.
Aside from this, which includes every paid item, there’s also what the OP pointed out: some of these items have buffed stats that make this pay-to-win even worse. Here’s where I say, in response to your comment @Oduda, that a lack of QA must NOT impact the community this much. The funny thing is that we’re talking about paid items, it’s not like they can’t hire people for that… I assume.
I actually feel very sad about that since QA is something that I really like and have wanted to work as a QA tester for quite a long time, but as I’m still a student and only have a certificate from a short course on Game Testing, plus experience is always asked for, I still didn’t get an opportunity yet. So yeah, there’s probably a lot of people who would like to work as a QA Tester here, and we’re talking about something that generates quite a big amount of money I believe, so hiring people shouldn’t be a problem for Funcom.
[EDIT] I hope this was clear and easy to understand, English is my second language and I’m still studying it
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