Quote Originally Posted by Ikeda View Post
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You and everyone else seeming to make these claims are speculative at best. Just because the inclusion of a cash shop into a game doesn't necessarily mean anything to its "failure" (or eventual death). There's many MMO's out there nobody has mentioned that a CS literally saved it from dying. These are shops implementing things correctly (DDO, Tera, LoTR to name a few)

A cash shop should never be a replacement for a subscription to enjoy the game, nor should it be a means to advance your character. A steady income via subscriptions is still a viable stance to have with MMO gaming since servers and various other developing costs are a factor. However that being said, the inclusion of a CS should be flavor, not requirement. There's people out there that WANT to spend more money, maybe YOU don't, but there's others who have this spare money to spend, let them spend it as they see fit in a cash shop with items, etc that don't alter the outcome of a successful in game life. Who are you to say what they can and cannot do with their money? I believe things like retainers, Fantasia, weapon skins, armor skins, etc are suitable things that don't take away from actual game play.

This is how a CS should be done, and the ones that don't follow suit are the ones that do suffer/get cancelled.

Just remember that the MMO market has steadily increased since 1995, it IS saturated now, only a few games stand out and the reasons they fail are typically because of the stagnation in the market. You tell me how many games since WoW's peak success have just looked like WoW? We want innovation but even the innovative games get cancelled. So what do we want? As an avid MMO gamer that answer is not so cut/paste. Really think about what you are typing when you take such a strong stance against item shops.