Mog Station is overpriced.

[Welsper59]

WoW is by far the largest MMO to ever exist, it'll take longer for it to cannibalize itself than most. FFXIV for all its massive success is much smaller.

All things considered though, WoW has also had the cash shop for a far longer period of time than this game has even existed (including 1.0). There's still no trace of such destruction at the hands of the cash shop in sight yet.

Not gonna deny the possibility of it happening, but when you take into account how long its been standing since it was first introduced, its been multiple MMORPG lifetimes worth of time going. I don't think FFXIV has a whole lot to worry about as far as gating players from meaningful content worthy of being called "P2W" because of cash shops.

The point is that it doesn't always happen. It can, there's no denying that, but no point in fear mongering when there's no real evidence of it yet.

The fact is, when you compare the items available on the Mog Station to comparable items in other F2P and B2P games, they are WAY more expensive - and not even account-wide. It's a poor deal. People can be happy to spend their money on them if they want, but I don't think it's fair to ignore the reality that they could be getting a much better deal out of the business exchange.

Now that is a sensible argument on the matter. +1

[Jandor]

All things considered though, WoW has also had the cash shop for a far longer period of time than this game has even existed (including 1.0). There's still no trace of such destruction at the hands of the cash shop in sight yet.

Not gonna deny the possibility of it happening, but when you take into account how long its been standing since it was first introduced, its been multiple MMORPG lifetimes worth of time going. I don't think FFXIV has a whole lot to worry about as far as gating players from meaningful content worthy of being called "P2W" because of cash shops.

The point is that it doesn't always happen. It can, there's no denying that, but no point in fear mongering when there's no real evidence of it yet.

For the sake of argument, lets say I'm wrong, let's say it doesn't happen to all of them. It is undeniable that it happens to most, why take the risk?
FFXI hasn't got a cash shop as far as I'm aware, and it still exists, and it's older than WoW. It still even receives updates. Basically living proof that FF MMO's without cash shops can last pretty much indefinitely.

We know most MMOs with cash shops turn to rubbish eventually.
We know a FF MMO can exist without a cash shop for over a decade.
We know that this particular game turns a big profit even before cash shop is considered.
What exactly is the reason supposed to be for accepting it in this game?

[Welsper59]

For the sake of argument, lets say I'm wrong, let's say it doesn't happen to all of them. It is undeniable that it happens to most, why take the risk?
FFXI hasn't got a cash shop as far as I'm aware, and it still exists, and it's older than WoW. It still even receives updates. Basically living proof that FF MMO's without cash shops can last pretty much indefinitely.

XI is a bit of an anomally, not in the cash shop sense, but in the fact that SE decided to keep it sub based. I'd imagine the amount of sub profits far outweighs upkeep since the time subs started severely dropping many years ago. Archaic game tech probably doesn't demand much money to be thrown at it. Probably don't see a point to a cash shop in a game with a low sub base when they don't spend much on new content and upkeep.

I think the point to argue is what examples are there for your "most" statement? As far as sub games go, most, if not all sub games that fell to their cash shop did so after they went F2P, which was also a result of lower subs. SWTOR and Aion are examples of that. Rift too, I think.

[Zojha]

Archaic game tech probably doesn't demand much money to be thrown at it.

The upkeep and maintenance is actually fairly cheap in general - that's what allows Freemium games to have millions of freeloaders and still remain very profitable and even the distribution of "actual" free games that are kept alive on donations alone. That said, XI is kept alive by the fact that it's still profitable - just less than it used to be. I wager as a result, update frequency and volume has gone down - companies tend to disinvest when a cash cow slowly transits to a poor dog and search for new stars, because that's what the BCG matrix the decisionmakers got taught in their studies or some workshop tells them to do.

FFXIV would also still be profitable with less players and that's without the cash shop considered - in fact, SE never expected ARR to become as popular as it did. As such, it's a far stretch to assume the cash shop serves to cover any costs - it's there to make bonus profit off whales (Who, often, don't even care whether something is overpriced - they don't need to think twice about such petty sums), which you can then either invest in other projects, re-invest into running project or give to your shareholders. Of those options, re-investment is good for the people buying from the shop, investment in other projects is good for the people that want the new games and distribution makes it more lucrative for investors. From the company point of view, it is good for as long as it turns a net profit, which means losses from lost sub caused by cash shop needs to be lower than profit through the cash shop.

/DevilsAdvocate
And technically, even a pay-to-win cash shop isn't bad as long as it turns a net profit
/DevilsAdvocateoff

If you boycott it, SE would disinvest in it, meaning: They'd create less items for it. That's natural - if nobody bought the stuff you develop for it, there's no point in developing more for it. It also means they have less overall budget to spend on their projects or investors. So EU servers would still not exist, Stormblood would only get the HW budget again and Yoshi would lose 5 more hours of sleep a week. Basically.