The pull factor of Pay to Play

[Delily]

Cosmetic vanity items are a part of the game. Once upon a time, these things would have been quest rewards, or rare drops. Now? They shoved it into the cash shop because people like you are so valiantly whiteknighting it.

So, whiteknighting is now defending a business practice that has proven to be successful?

[Sholah]

So, whiteknighting is now defending a business practice that has proven to be successful?

Being successful doesn't make it good, or right. Neither does the fact that WoW does it.

[Delily]

Being successful doesn't make it good, or right. Neither does the fact that WoW does it.

So, now you're the arbiter of what is good and right?

[Sholah]

So, now you're the arbiter of what is good and right?

Are you going to refute my point or just call names and try and paint me as the bad guy?

[Nalien]

Being successful doesn't make it good, or right. Neither does the fact that WoW does it.

This, a million times, this.

Homeopathy is a successful "business", but that doesn't change the fact that it is utter bullcrap that exists for no other reason but to take advantage of lesser educated minds. Cash shops in a pay to play MMO are pretty much exactly the same (we even have the same pathetic justification of the placebo effect; I'm sure that extra money is being put back into the game... Extra Retainers have been around for a while, and look at all the extra improvements we've seen because of that little pay to win piece of content! Why, I hardly ever 90k in Frontlines since they added that!). Sheeple will buy it up and make it successful, and other sheeple will be too shortsighted to see the implications of letting a company get away with such utter ridiculousness. Stupidity and shortsightedness seem to be the target markets for a lot in the games industry these days. Sad to see SE is no different, more so after this relaunch was so promising; "Another failure like that would ruin us!", "We need to rebuild our fans faith in the series!", glad to see they took those lessons to heart... Sigh...

I'm looking forward to 4.0; Final Fantasy XIV: All the Bravest. Anyone with some photoshop skills feel like making that, actually? It'd make a great signature, the splash art behind the logo could just be a dollar sign or something.