Would you still play F2P if you had a P2P account?

I, along with many other people on Aerie Peak, play the F2P bracket actively and at the same time have a P2P account. The reason I'm creating this post is because I've seen people in say on numerous occasions that if they had a P2P account they wouldn't waste their time with the F2P bracket. So what do you guys think? 


To start, I can totally understand why people would be fed up with the F2P bracket and want to move on to something else if they were given the opportunity. Here is a list of some of the major negatives that I've observed while playing in the bracket. 

• The grind. One of the things I like about the bracket is the ability to easily max out a toon rather quickly, thus allowing you to have more classes. However, although professions don't seem too bad the first time, when you start to roll your third, fourth or fifth toon, the grind feels interminable. 
• Hunters. They are grossly overpowered and although the degree to which they are overpowered doesn't change from the 19 bracket, the hunter population explodes in one level. Out of twenty WSG's I did on a new F2P only three of them had less than five hunters on each side. To some people this discourages them from rolling "non viable" classes and causes more people to join the hunter bandwagon or go 24.  
• Faction imbalance. Although the bracket certainly has moved away from Alliance winning 90% of games (they're more 50-50 now and you'll notice if you play both sides), games are still almost always one sided. I'm not saying that every game is like this, just that the majority are pre-determined by how many hunters and 24s each side has. 
• Queue time imbalance. Alliance queues can range anywhere from eight to twenty minutes while seeing five minute queues on horde would be a rare occasion. This is annoying for those who are very fond of playing Alliance races, but in my opinion its also detrimental to the brackets. The queue time imbalance makes it very hard to synchronize 10 mans across faction, making it almost impossible to have an H AP vs A AP or Vashj premade. Whenever someone from 19s inquires about the F2P bracket, premades are one of the things that come up. Sadly, the queue times prevent a great cause of activity and competition from taking place. 
• 24s. I personally don't mind the 24s in the bracket even though they are becoming more and more prevalent. However, I certainly see how it can discourage people, especially P2P's, from rolling a twenty. An above average twenty four can completely shift the tide of the game and twenty four hunters and rets can one shot the majority of F2P's. 

So those are the disadvantages that immediately came to mind. I'm sure there are others that I haven't thought of or that others might be more sensitive to. Personally, I think they can be easily dealt with, especially when keeping the advantages in mind.

• The community. F2P communities such as Aerie Peak are constantly compared to guilds of other brackets. Although there are some resemblances, I think that, especially when considering today's 19 guilds, the F2P communities are much more. Firstly, guilds are much more divided and exclusive. I can't think of a single guild I've ever been in that has the numbers that Aerie Peak does. No matter what time you log on someone will be on as well. PuGmades are easy, people are less judgmental, active arenas, world events, and a there's busy F2P chat. Guilds just have a completely different feel to them. 
• Easy gearing. This especially applies if you make a twenty on a P2P account but you can have a geared twenty in about a day. 
• Less demanding. When you log on 19s, 29s or whatever else you play, people have expectations. "Scrubs" are not welcome in those brackets and I can't remember the last time I had a midfield or flag room picnic in 19s. RP walking through mid, playing gearless games and BG Chat trolling are just some of the things that you can do in the bracket worry free. 
• When your game time runs out and you don't feel like renewing it immediately or are waiting for a paycheck, you'll still have your F2P account. 

Right now I really don't feel like I've done the F2P bracket justice. Only four bullet points (one of which might not even interest people) can't even begin to describe all the benefits that communities like Aerie Peak have to offer. I'm sure I'll continuously update the arguments for both sides so if you're reading this and there are more bullet points that's why. Also if you haven't noticed the poll on the side of my homepage, go notice it. Really hoping for people to chime in, especially those with P2P's or considering going P2P and I definitely think everyone should take part in the poll. If for no other reason, do it because if there are a lot of Yes's, it will only encourage the non F2P's reading this to try the bracket out. 

P.S. If anyone knows how to include polls in posts please lemme know. It would definitely make my life easier. 

AP and the "botting crusade"

One of my favorite things about free to play accounts are that they're free. They have no ties to your real account and the characters are 100% replaceable. This allows for easy selling of F2P accounts, trading, and letting friends play on your extra toons to test out a class or get the arena composition you're looking for. For the 3s Tourney on Aerie Peak, I was easily able to lend a friend my mage to play. He didn't have to go through the trouble of leveling a toon to twenty just to participate and all it took was a quick account unlock to be able to play MLS. Along with the arena tourney as an example, I'm currently creating a BiS druid (Pre LFH and AGM) in exchange for a server transfer on one of my toons. Here's where botting comes in.


For anyone who doesn't already know about it that may be reading this, when grinding out a level 20 of every spec, a pally on Aerie Peak developed a method of botting that in no way disrupted or interfered with others' game play and it worked particularly well since his accounts were simply trials. By making the characters on separate trial accounts he minimized the risk and maximized the gain. If he were to get banned he would simply start over on a brand new account. With his method, one can attain every single BoA you need working at a pace of about six hours per honor cap. The method involves creating four trial accounts. One will contain the toon that you actually intend on playing and the other three will contain characters of the opposite faction and will be the accounts that you farm. I like to make mages because of their low health but the creator of the method recommends hunters just for the vanity of killing hunters over and over again. Then you level them to five, move them to a graveyard, download a simple key spammer, set up rez and target macros and leave your computer only to come back every six hours with your toon honor capped. 


People have historically been frustrated with BG bots, and understandably so. The 800 health, sometimes even worse, randoms typically make games one sided in the f2p bracket and BG Bots just exacerbate the situation. The people who did partake in such behavior were pretty much shunned by the community on Aerie Peak. I do understand why people wouldn't want to engage in botting. Many don't have the computer capacity to run four WoW windows and still operate normally, some may be taken back by the "complexity" of operating a keyspammer, some may actually enjoy the hard work that goes into the DMF grinds and constant pugs and others may possess a moral foundation that prevents them from "cheating" in WoW. What I don't understand though is why this non-BG method of botting is looked at so unfavorably and why people go out of their way to flame and prevent it. The notorious Vailent has probably followed me to about six different grave yards as my Aerie Peak bots flee from his righteous onslaught against the evils of botting. 


So here it goes, my arguments for botting: 

• You can have almost a fully BiS toon in a couple of days. I'd honestly bot just to make leveling to twenty easier.
• Imagine how much more competitive the average game in this bracket would be. Obviously BoA's wouldn't magically transform new players into glads but it might encourage them to put the effort into finishing their character and it would definitely help them to not die in one shot to the army eye-patch, and these days, non eye-patch wielding hunters. 
• Having to grind, possibly for months, to attain BoA's definitely discourages a lot of people from this bracket. Personally, I think leveling professions and farming for mog sets is enough to keep you occupied with and I know many people who have been discouraged from trying f2p because of this. It would promote activity and with activity would most likely come more competition in both arenas and BGs. 
• Although I mentioned it above, having your BoA's out of the way allows you to use the DMF Tickets for your super cool mount and pet and gives you more time to farm for your Robust/Ivycloth Bracers, Doomspike, or whatever else floats your boat. 

Finally, this isn't me trying to convince everyone to go out and bot. Whether or not you do, doesn't affect me and whether or not I do doesn't affect you. I was really just working out for myself why people may be against it or at least expressing my perplexity regarding the situation along with throwing the method out in the open for those that didn't know about it and also trying to make it easier for people from 19s and other brackets who have been wanting to try out F2P to do so. 

Something to try out

This is just going to be a quick second post before I go to bed. Just wanna put it up real quick before I forget about it in the morning.


Active arenas were probably the main thing that drew me to the F2P bracket and they are probably the main thing keeping me there.I have a subscribed account and $15 dollars a month definitely isn't an issue for me, especially when I enjoy a lot of other aspects of the game. However, no matter how busy I may get at 85 I'll always make time to log onto AP and play some quick arenas with friends - especially after the games I had a few weeks ago.


In the moment, I may have called it the most fun I've ever had playing f2p. While that may have been a bit of an exaggeration its definitely something I'd want to do again. After doing some fun Lock/Shaman mirrors with Salfir, Winn, and Waterworks, Winn had to go and we were stuck without a fourth to get 2s going. However, the one person that did say they were interested happened to be a third shaman. Seeing the potential for fun in the situation (and the opportunity for me to play ele) I got Salf to log on a shaman and we did ele/resto mirrors. Although the games did allow a somewhat high margin for error because of the lack of burst, the power of thunderstorm definitely wasn't something to underestimate and turned almost all of the games into nail-biters - particularly when we found ourselves in Dalaran and Blade's Edge.


The whole point of this is to let people know that obviously f2p is a great place to try out arena in general, but its also ideal for trying out comps or matches that you've always wanted to or that you may not think can work. Give em a shot, who knows how they'll turn out.