After becoming increasingly fed-up with “pay-to-win” microtransactions in MMOs like Lost Ark, Asmongold wants players to band together in a bid to entice developers to stamp it out.
Asmon has been saying that MMOs have had pay-to-win elements for a while now. In his verdict on Lost Ark, he said it was one of the culprits along with World of Warcraft but admitted both games were still fun.
However, his frustration reached new heights after Amazon Games added the Argos Abyss raid in Lost Ark, which many deemed to be pay-to-win. He claimed they’d lose players over it and threatened to expose other pay-to-win concerns if they don’t do something about it.
Now, he’s gone a step further and asked MMO players to band together to stop pay-to-win microtransactions from plaguing games once and for all, claiming they should be treated no different to NFTs.
“I wish the player bases could get together and say they don’t like this and just kind of shut it down,” he said. “I know this is a losing battle. That’s why I don’t really care. I don’t really fixate on it as much anymore.”
“With WoW tokens, it’s pay-to-win. With a bunch of stuff, it’s pay to win. With Lost Ark, they have a million elements to pay to win. People just don’t really give a sh*t about it anymore.”
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However, he thinks that can change.
“I wish gamers treated pay to win the same way they treat NFTs. If that happened, video games, in general, would be a lot better. If they just treated microtransactions the same way they treated NFTs, that would be so much better.”
Pay-to-win microtransactions have become a huge part of the MMO experience. However, if anyone has the power to rally MMO players and encourage developers to make them less of an issue, it would be Asmon.
As a veteran MMO player who also happens to be one of the most popular streamers on Twitch, his sphere of influence is immense. Still, it’s a big task that will require thousands — perhaps even millions — of players to get behind.