Has Blade and Soul gone pay2win?

Welcome everyone. So has Blade and Soul gone pay2win? Today we're going to find out. First, what exactly is pay2win? Pay2win is when your able to acquire powerful items from the cash shop that cannot be obtained anywhere else in the game, and these items give you a significant advantage over other players who haven't or simply refuse to fork over cash, either because they don't have the money or simply because they just don't want to be a pay2win player.

For example, say tomorrow NCWest decided to release legendary weapons, accessories, and soul shields in the cash shop only and these items were not obtainable anywhere in the game. And let's say they made these items usable in 1v1 and 3v3 arena. To me that would be considered pay2win because these items give you a significant advantage over other players and basically make it so you win not because of skill but because you forked over some cash to get these overpowered items. Now that is pay2win.

However, I don't think Blade and Soul players know what they are talking about when they label for example the treasure trove event as pay2win because that's simply not true. The treasure trove which basically was an RNG Box, had a chance to drop all kinds of goodies like sparkling hexagonal gems, soulstones, costumes, and hongmoon skill books to name a few. We all know that.

But NONE of these items in the treasure trove box give you any kind of distinct advantage over other players, because even if a player got lucky and maybe got a few hexagonal gems, maybe a stack of soulstones or even a hongmoon skill book, you can't use these items against other players except only in the new 6v6 battleground which isn't really that popular right now.

Yes these items in the treasure  trove box can be used to upgrade a players gear and weapon and make them stronger but what exactly is pay2win about that? The person who is forking over cash for these treasure boxes isn't really paying2win. They are paying2progress faster or even paying2skip ahead but definitely not paying to win.

Now I don't know about you all, but if my clan had a few of these supposed pay2win players i'd be pretty damn excited. I'd go out of my way to be their best friend so I could clear some of the harder dungeons faster like Asura and Yeti. These players that are being labled pay2win are probably people who don't have a lot of time to devote to blade and soul and they see these RNG boxes as a way to catch up.

 That's it. Just because an item requires you to hand over cash in order to obtain it doesn't make it pay2win. Alot of these items can all be obtained in the game, but unlike players who hand over cash to get them, players like myself and others have to actually grind hours and hours on end to obtain them.

We're still able to get the same items as players who pay for them but for the rest of us who don't want to pay cash for them, it's just going to take longer. So does that mean all of these rng box events that NCWest has been releasing are pay2win. In my opinion, no.

Because again, none of these items give you any kind of advantage over another player in a competitive pvp environment and no I don't count the new 6v6 battleground as competitive pvp because that place is a ghost town. So is blade and soul pay2win? The answer is no.