And I thought WildStar has bad doom gloomers and naysayers… xD Tree of Savior has it worse! /cry
Oh, how is it P2W? A friend of mine REALLY wants me to play it!
I stole this from MMORPG.com because he said it better than I could, but it really depends on how you define P2W as most players can’t agree on anything when it comes to that matter.
“Firstly, cash shop items have a direct impact on gear progression, which is frankly quite complex. Put simply, equipment can be improved via improvement, enchanting (slotting them), forging them, etc. These involve a fairly large amount of RNG. Like in all MMORPGs, the strength of your character varies directly with the strength of your equipment.
Improvement: Improving the item can fail, and if it succeeds the degree of improvement is variable. Improving the item to max level is gated by an item which is such an extremely rare drop from dungeons that is also sold through the cash shop. Thus, there are 3 levels of RNG here which can all be improved through the cash shop
Slotting: A maximum of 4 gems can be slotted in the item. Gems can be forged (i.e. mixed) with each other to make them stronger). I’m not too familiar with this system, but the item required for forging can be bought through the cash shop
Secondly, the game sports a stat customisation system like blade and soul’s bopae system. 13 character gems (bound) can be slotted to your toon. Weeklies give a maximum of 2, 3 gems can be combined into a higher level gem, with a maximum of 7 levels. More can be bought via the cash shop
Thirdly, each character can learn a certain number of special skills, which are obviously stronger than normal skills. Roughly half of them are obtainable via the cash shop. Skills can be improved, and the quests required for the later improvement levels can be quite obscenely difficult without high level equipment, which is obtainable via the above processes…
Fourthly, there are different currencies in this game. The basic currency can be exchanged with another type of currency from other players, which is required to buy certain items (including best-in-slot items), and thus is influenced by the player economy and market forces. Think of it like gold-to-cash conversion like in Guild Wars 2, but the “cash” is used to buy in-game items. If I’m not wrong, this alternative currency can be directly converted from cash as well.
Fifthly, being a member allows you to circumvent daily/weekly quest limitations. Lastly, the fashion wars in this game is quite real. The nicer wings must be bought via the cash shop, can be forged together to form even nicer wings, which also come with a certain degree of stat improvements (like costumes in dragon nest). Dyes can be bought via the cash shop, and each equipment has 10+ dye slots (3 in gw2)
To conclude, RO’s business model is the same as all other Chinese games. Whether it is P2W or not depends largely on how you define P2W, which differs from person to person and from generation to generation. I think what must be understood is that the Chinese publishers are just responding to the demands of the Chinese players, who are happy to be spending cash to obtain a certain degree of in-game benefits. This is the business model that appeals to customers within the Great Wall. The question is, how (or indeed whether) it will be customised to fit the tastes of western gamers.
To be honest, I didn’t notice a difference between myself and players who spend a lot of cash until I started approaching endgame. The game really is quite fun if you ignore gear/skill progression and the desire to be competitive. However, this can be quite hard to do considering that the open world PK system effectively merges PvE and PvP. Unless of course, you are a masochist who enjoys being slaughtered by cash shop players going on a mindless rampage for no apparent reason at quest hubs. The only novel thing about the game is that the publisher has taken the best aspects of the best MMORPGs on the market (even cinematic actions and borderlands-style character intros) and amalgamated them into an Wuxia-themed MMO, and this has actually worked out surprisingly well.
To reiterate, the game is fairly complex because it amalgamates many different facets of the most popular MMOs on the market, and I have not played the game to the extent of being competitive.”
Edit: With that said; they may or may not change things when it comes to an Internation or Westernized Server.
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I was thinking of doing a jaunt on that… but that sounds a little nasty.
That sounds totally P2W… What a turn off. 
Thanks for the info.
And sorry for the tangent in topic, lol 
Lol Again, not trying to be a doomsayer. It may very well be changed for the Western Market. Sometimes topics need to be changeed, this one had no real purpose anyways. 
Good point, haha. Eh, from what I’ve seen before with other games the changes to the western market aren’t that big. Though it’s gonna be on my.com so I expect it’ll be similar to Skyforge which isn’t really P2W!
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