Quote Originally Posted by Ava View Post
I vote for a hybrid model. Free to play but subscribers have everything unlocked as long as they continue to pay the monthly fee. For free players, features are unlocked one by one via "cash shop", such as retainers, character slots, advanced jobs (if applicable), certain quests, holiday events, etc. This way people can still play for free, and people who want to pay can pay and have everything unlocked from the start.

Microtransactions are incredibly profitable. I hate F2P games but it would only be logical for them to include some kind of microtransaction model. If it was flat out F2P without a subscription option, I probably wouldn't continue playing because I feel flat out F2P is bad.
The problem with that is that model is what games that are dieing off switch to, this game hasn't lived yet so I would hate for it to go that route unless absolutely necessary to keep server population up.