Cosmetic Shop is P2W
“Ashes of Creation will not be pay to win, that is our pledge to the community. One of the core principles we set forth with Ashes of Creation is a very strong desire to maintain the game's even playing field.”
“Winning” in an mmo with numerous progression routes, is quite subjective. Except they all have one thing in common, your character. Different from other games, rpgs and especially rpg mmos offer the feature of playing a character you skill, dress, role play, quest, fight, talk, and just experience the game with and through. Those ways of interacting through your character are all equally important parts of the game even if some hold different weight to different people. Regardless, they are all included in your character’s overall experience.
Given your character’s experience is the content of the game, and this game is a community game with other people’s characters affecting yours, character appearance matters and directly affects your quality of gameplay experience.
Character appearance could be interpreted as: your level, your combat gear, your non combat gear, your pets, your mounts, physical appearance, race, titles, and more. Really anything that other characters in the game can see about your character is character’s appearance. These often signify to others, and yourself, you have accomplished something in the game.
If character appearance truly didn’t matter, it would not be the focus of mmos. Level of visualization is nearly all that separates a board game from a video game. Having character visualization and progression is what separates other video games from a role playing game.
Given all of this, cosmetics items would fall into pay to win. Collection of appearances is a game mechanic. Being able to buy any feature of your character that otherwise could be achieved in game through content and game mechanics, is paying to “win” part of the game.
Revised from discussion with:
The most grand looking cosmetics will be from in-game achievment only.[9] – Steven Sharif
This was said to justify a cosmetic store "not being pay to win" because he addresses that the alternative to that is or he wouldn't have ever said this. Except, as we all know, the "best" in terms of appearance and cosmetics is subjective, so the store would be p2w given there are any cosmetics in it.
