Yes that’s exactly what I’m talking about. It’s always been a thing in MMORPGs, but prior to MMO companies selling in-game currency themselves it was a lot less common and carried a stigma because those buying carries often bought illicit currency to do so because carries are expensive.

Now that there’s no friction on the path between a player’s wallet and those offering carry services, carry purchases have exploded in popularity.

That's super weird. It really recontextualizes the term pay to win. Traditionally it's meant "pay to get an unfair advantage", but now it's quite literally pay to become a winner of a non competitive experience. What mental gymnastics are required to make this seem rewarding? Would it be perceived differently if you were unable to pay other players but could pay NPCs to accommodate the same task; in which case it is a direct 1:1 exchange with the game company? Or if you could pay to just auto complete it, sans the experience of being carried? Bizarre.

It's at least partly because in WoW you oftentimes can't get into a raid unless you've already beat the raid. People can lookup your achievements online and/or ask you to link them before allowing you in. So for some it might simply be "pay (more) to play" rather than pay to win.

At least in WoW, I think a big part of it is that there are tons of spammers blasting out ads to escort you through dungeons and raids. It’s hard to find actual groups of normal people with all the noise

Particularly if you’re just one guy applying to random groups, the last few slots get applications from tons of insanely-powerful characters. You can sit there trying to join a group as a new player for hours and not get anywhere unless you apply to mostly-empty groups or start your own with a friend or two

If you don’t know that, it’s easy to think you’ll need to pay for achievements and loot in order to have a shot at getting a group

Hey, so long as I’m mentioning WoW here: That game is still taking in 200 million dollars a year or more, but it’s only getting a small fraction of that reinvested. I think the market is ripe for an actual WoW-killer. Gather a team, make a polished AAA version of WoW, and rake in the dough