To be fair, PVP doesn't care about Subscription, or anything you do in PVE in general.
Neither Equipment or your weapon does anything in PVP Arena, Every Class has the same stat / HP as everyone else of the same class.
Increased exp and gold gain aren't deal breakers to be honest, but when you have cash shop only mats that lead to game breaking stuff and stats on costumes that you can only get in cash shop or ridiculous auction prices, that's when things get messy.
I don't know how BnS is going to be, but watch for that (and always be wary of founder packages).
All the mats you can get in the shop can be farmed with ease.
- Some other items, of the shop, need to be crafted, this can take some time, since it is time based. (Instant repair hammers and resurrection charms)
EXP doesn't matter that much, its only like 20% form monsters, not much.
Gold is more important since you don't get gold from monsters or drops.
- If you go into dungeons, you get money from item bets, since this game doesn't have a dice roll system, though. So if you can push other players up during loots and earn money this way.
Costumes don't have stats. Never have, never will.
Arena PVP, as I said, doesn't use items overall, so, in Mirror Maches, both have equal opportunity. NCsoft can also "balance" PVP this way more easy.
Crafting, with a subscription you gain more experience for each crafted item.
- Subscription, how ever, doesn't reduce the time it takes to craft something.
-- Early Craftitems need 30 minutes to craft, high level items take 20 hours.
played Chinese version for a long while
got ruined by p2w shenanigans
glhf NCSoft!
Chinese Version was horrible in that case. You basically had to buy subscription to do anything for more than 2 hours of gameplay a day.
In the west, many people wouldn't have got the game, if the system was similar to china. EU and NA are very close to what was in Korea.
I typically find those games with boosts or premium user packs lend themselves to the oldskool Korean levels of grind.
I was able to max level within 1 1/2 days with the small bonus you get from Subscription.
Server: EU Windrest
Main: Hineko (Lyn Blade Master)
Second: Dorakyura (Destroyer or Force Master, maybe Warlock if they release it)