Allods Online: Pay to Win?
Is Allods Online a pay to win game? Does a free player stand a chance? Watch to learn it all!
Play or Pay to Win is a new show of MMOBomb.com about the Cash Shop of popular free to play online games including some concerns of the Free-to-Play model for MMOs and the pay-to-win stigma.
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1. you can play allods without spending any money but you will struggle.
2. No one is forcing anyone to spend real money its just that there are a few op players with myth earring slot and lv12 runes + that will rape you ingame.
3. No point playing Allods if your not gonna spend cuz you won't be wanted in guilds/Astral.
4.There are a few item shop stuff you can get via grinding allot. But for me i just exchange gpots for gem shards then trade it in at currency guy for gold its quick and easy unless you wanna grind your dick off.
5.Runes is the main problem that is coursing players to become op or quit Allods.
6.New mount well you don't have to get it but your missing out allot, like i said if you can't afford it to dam bad no point playing Allods then.
7.Extra talent points/Rubies Real money otherwise grind you dick off.
8.Once you spend you cant stop trust me 3 years of spending and i'm still going.
9.For New players i recommend playing on the Subscription server Cuz no one is OP everything is Balance and there is No item shop, It's easier to Lv up and grind.
PS.You can get through the entire game up to level 55 with just level 1 runes.People are doing that now.You just need to get rep gear for your level and you'll be good.Less [censored] and moaning more grinding and hoarding!
Its not p2w imo.
I hit 10k-11k in pvp and i havnt bought one thing.
The problem i see with the game is balance.
PAY to WIN ALL THE WAY FK YEAH.
Allods was rated top F2P they came 4th or something. And yes you don't have to spend money if you don't wanted too but player who spend allot on high LV runes will fke up any class thats why its P2W thats why the classes are not balance there op.
like me iv already spent $700 on the game and heres a good tip play something else like AION, RIFT, TERA , Blade & Soul or Lineage 2 i mostly recommend Guild wars 2 currently the top game.
Other F2P are Aika online and Forsaken world so on......
(ps: just so u know they could make ALOT more money when it was actually free2play, cous it would be mad populair)
i play allods eu 8 month alredy...game is not P2W but its more like if you dont pay you actually cant be in top rank players coz making lvl 13 rune in game is more like imposible if you don't pay.
It is true you can get top geer with no spending money but that requires 24/7/365 playing. Most events they give are some items drops then later you need compass to opent maps...and you need at least 50 to get mount. Maby some will say "you dont need top ranking mount" ....well your wrong...to be good in battleground you need mount rank 3/4. From my opint of view you can be good player if you spend aprox 500$ and use it just for runes to get them to lvl 10/10. Sadly my paycheck on job is 300$ so i can only dream of that runes...but i still play and farm KoE every day to get 500g in few h.there is still Battleground to get leggendary items that i farm few month alredy and get draconic relics. still with al those items i got leggy and draconics, some can 1-hit me :D
if i'm told to do something i get up and do.
or get told off yell at/ banned from playing.
but whne it comes to working in the kitchen as chef man im fcken lazy the crap pay and long hours 9.30am til 11.30pm fk that.
cant stay at home and play all day not like those losers out there
Allods definitely pay to win iv spent almost $1000 on crystal chip to make runes, on mounts , currency for gold , and sales/ event.
kinda addicted to this game i spend money a few times a week.
No one, I repeat NO ONE appreciates the obvious "you're gonna wanna buy" comments that permeate your review or blatant overlooking of the fact that as a Gpotato/gala.net game it has 2 common factors which have carried on from flyff and many others that quite frankly annoy the crap outta me to see you overlook
1: upgrading, costs, money. If someone has to buy those chips to make runes, they have to pay to win, NO ONE in their right mind will grind THAT much gold to buy them as they're usually insanely priced, and still someone has to buy them for the "winning" to begin just because YOU don't personally buy them with real currency doesn't mean it hasn't occured
2: their system of experience gain and loss usually is horribly mired down with heavy, HEAVY and I repeat HEAVY losses for death outside of garbage "ress scrolls" or "exp protection scrolls" which translates to "pay us to avoid a sh*tty design aspect of our game or suffer horribly to losses and frustration" and fail to offset that with a strong experience gain system, you're fighting the hardest of the hard in most gala games, barely scraping through if you don't UPGRADE *cough* and if you die due to cheese enemies or horribly imbalanced classes, bugged skills or enemies or latency spikes that are outside of your control etc etc well that's your own fault for not paying isn't it?
Yeah, reclassify it as pay4fun even if you wish, but if you can't stay alive unless you are forcibly upgrading through a broken player market which is tied into a cash shop inherently then YES you are paying to win, although oddly enough it even seems more like paying to not die horribly at each chance and get stuck at a level plateau and never progressing, to some reaching the last level would be considered "winning" and from my experience with this developers games, that is one thing you won't get to do without nigh insane levels of grind that would cost you more in medical bills from damaging yourself and being committed by your loved ones to an institution than anything
my experience was from flyff, which has just released it's mass reskin (ahahahaha x infinity) as flyff gold, more akin to a legal maneuver company name change than a real "update" and from the first glance they've still not correct the bugs that had plagued the game when I got sick of it and left, and yes, I paid to avoid the frustration of things and tried out their gambling erm... "upgrade" system, which btw folkarino's is just as sickening as the chips and runes of allods
the knight class which could with cheap items tank masses of enemies and allow for some bypassing of the garbage enemy cheese damage output with a little support was left bugged for some time missing it's passive damage x2 proc and it's no wonder why either, ridiculously overpowered billposter hybrid classes could stunlock the mini bosses and farm the heck outta them and were considered the alpha class of the game IF you of course spent a ridiculous amount of money on them, and again said class could with a specific build guarantee one shot people in pvp due to the abuse of certain items which again would be gained through scrolls of awakening (cash shop item kerchiiiing!!) and could offer negative stats entirely ruining a drop (which was probably garbage anyways)
if you see Gpotato on a game, or gala.net AVOID their tired BS tactics, their let down failure games that are just localised cutesy gambling scams dressed up as BAD MMO's
and don't let this company make another dime
for the sake of 60 Euro you can within the next week or so own guild wars 2, which won't gouge you for far more money via P2Win scams like these guys will and enjoy a much more polished and relevant game
In a one on one fight between a free player and a pay to win player, the fight will be no contest; the free player will be dead in 1,2 or 3 shots. If you don't care about pvp that's fine, but raiding guilds will expect your runes to be at certain levels to progress in content. Your damage wont be competitive otherwise.
It's true that many of the players have mentioned that you can buy these things on the AH with in game gold. And you can, the prices are just out of reach to free to play players.
Thankyou,
Ovidicus
Allods is in fact a Pay-to-win game. Truly, this is one of the more superior free games out there, but it is pay-to-win.
Whether it be PVE or PVP, runes matter all the time. Roaming the various astrals with only level one runes is a sure fire way to get you killed by a player from the opposing faction. Runes affect weapons, armor, and skills. You are going to have a freeking hard time if you reach the PVP maps with only lvl 1 runes.
So what do I do? I need lvl 2 and lvl 3, and yes... you can grab these upgrades via the auction house, but damn is it expensive. 80-100-120 gold pieces for ten crystal chips, that you use all at once to upgrade only ONE rune. Great...
To top it all off, you'll even have to buy even more crystal chips to upgrade a lvl 2 rune to lvl 3...
:P It'll take you months on end to grind the money to get at least lvl four runes. Even then, you're still no match for guys with lvl 12 runes.
:) I do appreciate your opinion though. I thought it was pretty play-to-win myself, and gPotato is doing a great job of trying to keep things in check and play-able.
I will however stand by my statement, that this game is indeed Pay-to-win.
Anyways , could you do a p2w video of DC Universe Online?:)
P.S. Hey, Magicman. Any chance that you'll cover World of Tanks in one of the next "Pay to Win?" shows? Here in Russia it is considered one of the most fair (to non-paying members) games. So I'm curious what people think about it on the other side of Earth.
example- on first PvP map guy with lvl 10 and 11 runes come and WIPE entire camp,players and NPC,and he was lvl 28. We tried to kill him but he kill about 7 players (plus all npc) For runes lvl 11 you need to grind about year or more playing. Then you must made new char,lvl-up to lvl 25 for first PvP map. That guy got his runes from cash shop (cc craft). He pay,he win in only 3 weeks of playing,rest of us need year to do so if we don't pay...Not to mention things you get from mobs and only can be used with cash items...So,this is P2Win...Period! (sry about my bad english)
So at that point the game will indeed be seriously advantaged to the payers, since you can expect they aren't something you get with in-game, sure maybe they will be for sell for points which can be bought in-game, but let us be realistic, those mounts will be out of pretty much all players hands which are not payers because even if in theory you can buy in a way points for the store with gold, it is very very costy and those kind of mounts are going to go for a ungodly price which would be virtually impossible for non payers to get, sure you can say its not a true P2W because in theory all the players can get them, but you should take the practical in consideration, if something cost 3k store points, its like 6-12k gold ingame at least I think... I heard that at best you get a conversion of 500 points for 1k gold... but it tend to go for more unless you have the right connections. The very fact that at first only payers will be able to get them 99% of the time and than maybe after a year out it will be more like 95% of the people which have it are payers, it still will break the game badly in the payers advantage for a very long time.
You should consider adapting your definition about P2W on a on the spot basis, if within the first month its out less than 5% of the non-payers players can get it, it mean its game breaking toward the payers, you should seek to make a more balance definition which take in consideration both the theoretical and the practical, that something is "available" to non-payers doesn't mean its really available to non-payers practically, if you have to grind at the highest level for over a month, 20+ hours a week to afford something it shouldn't be considered truly available.
Furthermore, the "be grateful that you are playing it for free" argument is invalid and close minded. F2P model wasn't given birth by the kindness of developers. F2P is a payment model tailored by the current consumer mentality. Nothing really changed in the fairness department, the scale of fairness wasn't tipped in any one direction. Good games still make money. Good marketing calls still make even more money.
And slap me around with a banana and call me orange if i'm going to play a game just because i can. Not to mention give money into a game to make it less boring.
... I went of the main subject... What i am trying to say is that i can neither disagree nor agree with MagicMans categorization because i don't think it is that black and white
some examples ill give u mounts u dont need them theres so much running around that u do its not worth the money u would poor into them best thing to do is wait till an event and get a mount then or not get one at all. sec the biggest concern is runes the best thing to do is spend money on one toon and get him like lvl 4-5 offense to 4-5 defence runes then from there just grind gold for the money exchanger and slowly over time upgrade ur runes to lvl 7s or 8 no higher than lvl 7 anything higher is just not worth the time or even the money.
also another thing most ppl in this game have done the spend money on runes get them to lvl 4 and after that just upgraded them to lvl 5 6 8 10s 11s it has took them a long time and alot of gold but that is what most ppl have done. and to be frank if u really want a f2p game dont play any game that says f2p on it either A) go for games that have a one time buying fee or B) go for games like league of legends that game is totally free and alot cheaper than allods. or C) play pay to play games simple as that.
Game is not a grindfest,u can get to end-game wiith almost no grinding at all(proof of that,you where in a lvl 16/18 at lvl 20)
And the game is definetly pay to win.Besides runes that someone already pointed out(i managed to make mid runes with game gold 7 off 6 def) you have strongboxes.
Strongboxes are boxes that have a small chance to give you something really good and game changing and to get that you might be very lucky and get in your 1st 10/20 boxes but most of the time you end up buying 100+ to get it.And you get permanent items that make a huge diference in game experience to both people that have them and does who dont.I would have to grind for a year to get them when thers ppl spending 100$ in a day buying those.And they are avayable for a short period of time,its not like you can slowly buy them over time with game gold.
Also a lot of items descriptions you gave when you opened cash shop are wrong and misleading
I hate the fact that it's normal for mmos to not be fun until you reach endgame. Presumption that only single player games can be fun through the entire playthrough and that repetitive quests is the only way to populate an mmo with "content"
I hate Allods online. I hate everything that it represents and i would never spend money in it or any other mmo that literally did EVERYTHING by the mold.
With that said, MagickMan, i think that you should either expand a little on your definitions of Play2Win and Pay2Win or at least add another category- Pay2HaveFun
Pay to win, for Magicman, is as he said, that the free player does not have access to, but in my view, and many other people too, it's that and something more, some games have premium items and things no free player can ever get, other games, like Allods, have those items and allow free players to have them, but only if he buys for another player (or buys with real money, which is not in question here), which is in fact not cheap, and can take endless grinding and hours of gameplay to obtain what a payer player buys with some dollars, that's why I also think Allods is Pay to Win, or in a middle term, which has no name yet, but that payers get in a day what free players spent an year to acquire.
Play to Win games are games that, in a straight line between Free to Play and Pay to win, it's like 25% or less close to Free to Play than to Pay to win, Allods for example I would say it's 75% close to Pay to Win, also Play to Win games may have a cash shop, every game has, but only with like 10% plus exp for example, nothing beyond, and that in-game currency could buy too, not that it wouldn't be wise to pay in those games, but that it would need at least a month to get what payers get in a week, not like Allods.
Also Magicman, I thought you would say Allods is Pay to Win, or at least in a middle term, I was very sad when I heard your opinion, just make sure you don't sell yourself to those companies, Magicman, there aren't so much game commentators that tell the truth, but we all gotta impose ourselves, we don't live to play on a trial version of games disguised with signs as "Free to Play forever", come on, hope you understand.
You are in fact Bias.
If you want to continue to rate games as Play to win you need to play them as someone who purchases nothing.. try and reach the end game.. see how easy it is without spending a dime.
Try and PVP see if you get killed in 2 hits, Even Attempt to raid and run dungeons.
Its annoying to see someone saying the game is not play to win as they talk up there upgrading mount and justify their purchase, to be honest it seems like you where hired by Allods to do a biased review and thats just outright immoral.
My definition of Play 2 win is that you cant thoroughly enjoy the game without spending money..