Extra retainers put a greater load on the server since it now has to store more data, so it makes sense to charge players for them. Of course allowing alts to be more easily used as "mules" would be the better option, but that's a different discussion.

Your entire argument about the expansion boiled down to "it's actually worth the price". You don't even know what the price is yet, so how can you judge that? For that matter, we don't know what the cost is for the gold wedding. Would you say that it's "actually worth the price" if it was $1? We don't even have total confirmation on what is in the paid plan. Like I said, I disagree with that bait-and-switch that SE pulled, but I suspect that the higher-ups gave Yoshi an order on the matter sometime in the last month or so. Yoshi has been shown to genuinely care about the game, but he doesn't run the company. What I'd like to see from SE is more transparency, rather than pointlessly bashing a business for wanting to make money.