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[Taliph]

I could care less about the cash shop as long as SE stops putting hyped content in it...

SE hyped eternal bonding for the past year to draw in subs, now we have to pay above and beyond to get the items they hyped. If they are going to hype new game systems, they should at least disclaim that said game systems will partially be gated by cash. Otherwise they are misleading people intentionally.

Edit to add:

I don't think they necessarily decided what would or wouldn't involve the cash shop at that point; otherwise, they'd have to put a disclaimer on every single feature in development, like "it's possible you may have to pay extra to access some additional optional cosmetic functionality". So far, the main point of contention seems to be the draught chocobo, but if they made that available for free via Eternal Bond, it would undercut the "invite-a-friend" feature, where someone has to pay 90-days subscription for another person to earn it. So I don't think putting it in the game for free at this point can work, even if they didn't know in the past that would happen. All the other "promised" aspects of Eternal Bond seem to be part of the Standard (no-extra-charge) plan.

Actually the wedding chocobo is a different model and colors from the draught chocobo. So, no it would not conflict with the invite-a-friend program at all.