Remember when certain people would argue that World of Tanks is not pay-to-win? That gold ammo can’t aim for you and gold tanks aren’t even that great and blablabla? They look a bit silly now that the company behind the game just admitted they had a P2W game. Woops.
Being right aside, I’m happy about this. Not because I care about WoT itself, but because I’d much rather see the Riot/LoL model of selling quality fluff win over selling power. LoL doing it and being the most popular game out right now was big for that, and now Wargaming saying they are following suit further drives the point home.
Not that this will help so many of the fledgling F2P MMOs, because the key to selling fluff and making money off it is it has to be quality. If most of the LoL skins looked like the typical garbage you see in F2P MMO shops, Riot would be doing as well as Turbine or EAWare, rather than dominating the industry.
Hardcore Casual 
So LoL just sells fluff now, no more boosts? Or are boosts part of fluff in SynCaine’s world?
They don’t sell in-game boosts.
IP boosts are a math tax, and fast-forwarding through the tutorial has zero impact on the real game.
And SEP boosts? Just for the tutorial as well?
What boosts?
Boosts for Summoner Experience Points. Are those a thing? I saw it mentioned on the LoL Store Wiki.
Like I said, skipping the tutorial (pre-30).
“Quality fluff”?
The quality of the skins, especially the legendary skins. It seems silly to spend almost $20 on something like that, yet I consider buying Spaceman Teemo money well spent. I can say the same for the other $300 or so of skins I own.
Compare that to what Atlantica Online offers for fluff in their shop (the best F2P MMO out IMO). I’ve not spent a dime on it, and was never tempted to.
If you can’t reach Riot-level fluff quality, you bite the bullet and sell power.
Not sure I totally agree with you.
I play WoT and just spent gold on tank slots. I have fun and I win some and lose some. At most I would say, based on personal experience, that a gold ammo tank will kill me in less shots than a regular tank. Provided that it hits me. So I would say that, if any, they provide a marginal advantage. Also, gold tanks will allow to farm faster. So at the end of day what you get is slightly stronger ammo and the ability to repair more often.
If I was a bit more competitive in-game I would totally spend money on this to make up for the fact that since I am an old geezer (in game years that is) I longer get to sit and play all day long.
I honestly think that this will be more of a marketing gimmick than a real move.
And yes, I know I sound a bit Toboldish on this post. I’ll go flog myself in a minute.
See, I have a feeling, that less people used ‘gold’ ammo when it was only available for gold.
Thus with it being available for silver, it is now less fun to play tanks that rely on their armor. See, for example, their upcoming nerf to gold ammo.
Not to mention all the reason they’ll have now to make stock tanks even more horrible for the purposes of making more people pay to convert experience or gold ammo.
So no, I’ve never seen this change as a positive one — and since I don’t believe you’ve ever played WoT seriously, I’ll take my own opinion of how much impact gold ammo had/has on the game over your own “it’s horrible, it’s p2w” one.
That’s a frequency issue, not whether WoT was P2W or not. It was, but in your experience just not that often.
I’ll take p2w game that plays better in practice (within, say, 15 euro / month spending limit) over the one that is technically not p2w but plays worse.
Wouldn’t you?
That is not to say that I like p2w. I don’t. Actually I won’t play the game that is p2w in the ‘Chinese’ style. But if you have to spend e.g. 15$ / month to be “on the level” — then it’s just another form of sub.
To reiterate: you need to realize that for a segment of people WoT was actually *better* before the f2w change — and this includes people like me who I don’t think ever spent money on gold ammo when it couldn’t be bought for in-game money.
So no, going from ‘technically p2w’ to ‘technically f2w’ (good luck with all the money ‘grinding’ you’ll have to do if you want to play higher tiers without sub) is not necessarily good.
Oh I fully agree on the grind part. WoT before and after this change still more or less forces you to pay just to play all of the tanks. It’s model is still nothing close to LoL in terms of F2P.
If I’m going to play a P2W game (playing one right now on the iPhone, LoC), I want it full pay-2-win, in that the devs don’t try to pretend free players are on the same level. WoT tries, and in a way I find that insulting.