What is an advantage tho?
time is also an advantage. poe sells stash tabs. that is huge time advantage as well as utility advantage. poe is p2w. just on the scale of p2w ness most people turn a blind eye, as it is not blatant. anyone saying premium stashes are not an advantage is really disingenous. you do not need to worry about running out of space for a very long time. you save a lot of time organizing. i used to be a proud, strict f2p poe player. i would organize a stash tab by putting “1 unit” of currency into multiple slots as a form of management. that takes up a lot of time. manually counting stacks of my currency to see how much i have, takes time. organizing my maps takes a huge lot of time. theres also a buttload of divination cards that are virtually indistinguishable if you store them in regular tabs.
its still an advantage.
going to the “RMT” point. i would need to bring up what most people consider p2w. which is: CAN you spend REAL money ( in game from legitimate sources allowed by the game developers ) to gain an advantage an advantage over another player who does not spend money.
for poe thats true for stash tabs but nothing else. poe is p2w but on a minor scale.
so what about RMT? usually when people refer to RMT, they refer to EXTERNAL and often ILLEGAL sources. they often do lead to giving players advantages, but I would say that it does not make the game P2W as it is not how the game devs intended the game to be played and certain game companies actually ban accounts for engaging in RMT.
so i will say RMT does not necessarily make a game P2W.
i think a big backlash against djs is he was not verbose/specific enough with his terms. he was saying that if this suggestion was implemented, the game would introduce a P2W element via RMT. hes not saying the game becomes p2w. just that it opens the door to players engaging in RMT to gain advantages.