Asian companies have begun to get smarter with F 2 P P 2 W games . You can ' t draw the line of P 2 W for everyone because it only matters to each individual person on whether or not they want to play a game that is P 2 W or not . See all the other P 2 W games from before there are at least some people who believe that a game you think is P 2 W is not P 2 W for their own reasons , whether or not they partake in it . What these companies are doing is that they know this . They are widening the gray area that makes the limit of P 2 W even more obscure to lure players in who want to play but don ' t want to play P 2 W games . See the extra daily dungeon caps . Clearly P 2 W , IMO . But to many people ' s definition you have to convert $$$ directly to character power . Having extra dungeons may be totally useless if you can ' t play that much to make use of it . Not only that , but you still have to do work to get anything out of that aspect . The same goes with XP bonuses . To me , it ' s P 2 W for sure simply because time in an MMO is the most valuable currency to use , but many people , especially here , do not see XP bonuses as P 2 W , merely convenience bag slots are one and time saver for those that can ' t play that much . But where do you draw the line ? At some point , the concepts are the same but the labeling is different . See this exampleOnly founders pack GOLD members can access the Cave Dungeon where they can obtain higher levels , loot , and gear ! Scummy right ? But that ' s basically the same as a game releasing an expansion or a DLC . Whether or not the content was already there doesn ' t matter . They didn ' t have to tell you or anyone it existed , released it at a later date , and call it new content . No one will really catch on to this , but I think it ' s better to use 2 different P 2 W definitions because , to be honest , some of them are bearableNoncombat advantages like more XP , not damagedefense would put the game in a soft P 2 W . If the game has been out for a while the XP bonus isn ' t going to do jack shit since you will NEVER catch up to those that have been playing since the beginning . These bonuses , even bag slots , are all linked to a TIME advantage . Anything that makes regular gameplay unfair and unfun is basically P 2 W . We ' re talking buying gear , RNG rolls , cash shop costumes with stats , etc . In all honesty , the real problem is not so much the cash shop but the way the game was designed . You can put a cash shop P 2 W advantage on ANY game but many games weren ' t designed around requiring someone to dip into a cash shop . GW 2 is a great example because it has all the P 2 W features literally buying gear with $$ but its far from P 2 W since getting good , viable gear doesn ' t take forever , it remains viable even after future patchesexpansions , and the max level has remained the max level . Change one of these , and the game sudden becomes P 2 W without even changing the cash shop .