I mean, it would likely be more than that if they ever added inflation to subscriptions lol. Mmo sub pricing hasn't changed in at least 20 years.
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Just get a glamour log, you bind items to your log and that's it. No longer need to hoard items and you free up inventory space. I'm baffled they haven't done this yet. It's actually mind boggling especially when they keep going on about the struggles of increasing inventory space.
Technical debt is a thing....If they can't get it to work then they can't get it to work. It has nothing to do with being lazy because they would likely have to redo a lot of the coding/engine to make it work. I'd rather they spent that time on real content instead of a dress up system because people can't help but horde items in their dresser.
As for your retainer problem....that's a you problem. I've been playing since launch and have never needed more than the two retainers given to us.
The thing with technical debt is you have to address it eventually or your software becomes unworkable. That's why it's called "debt." You're gonna pay for it one way or another, usually with interest because it messes with everything else until you get around to fixing it.
As far as "real content" goes (whatever that means), there probably isn't a single greater thing they could do to revitalize old content in the game. That's not a guess, it's a fact. Every other game that implemented a glamour log style system saw a huge resurgence in old content because it becomes something people can go collect. It also objectively keeps people subscribed for the same reason. Much longer than one new dungeon every patch or a raid tier that's over in less than a month.
Who cares about old content?
It is not static because you can dye it. The dye-part is dynamic. So you need:
Character -> CharacterItems -> Item -> ItemColors -> Color mapping in your database. Because items can have many colors and colors can be applied on many items, an m:n connection is needed between items and colors. Which is realized with an additional table in the database.
In WoW you only need Account -> AccountItems -> Item mapping because each item is exactly the same. WoW does not support dyeing.
And yes, it would be possible to make a system equal to WoW even with dyes. But it would require a partial database migration and some work in the game logic. I guess, they fear it because it means tons of work.
Cheers
Square Enix, new players, and people who want glamour. So like 99% of the playerbase.
All data relevant to dyes and color map, etc. are stored clientside. The only thing the server cares about is some column that signifies which dye is in use on an item. People make this mistake a lot, but a server on any game literally doesn't care about anything graphical. Only data that represents it. Graphics are tied to an itemid, which is all stored clientside. This includes stuff like dye maps.
I'm not buying this even for a second. WoW touted said technical issues for years before finally relenting and giving in. It took them 7 years to add something even resembling a glamour system (transmog/void storage), and 4-5 years later for the actual log (appearance tab). Just because something is hard or even some semblance of a challenge, doesn't mean it's impossible.