And there was a perfectly legitimate alternative solution for them: unlinking the MSQ from progression to the next expansion. They went the cash-grabby route instead.
There is a precedent they are setting here: problems will be solved with cash shop items; increasingly more cosmetics will go straight to the shop instead of being added to the game. It started with simply old holiday items, and then expanded to a few novelty cosmetics, then RENTING storage space (honestly more low-brow than even the crappiest f2p mmo), then the NPC outfits and hairstyles, now unique emotes with no connection to holiday events that SHOULD have been in the game from the start (/playdead, for example)... It's only going to expand from there. That isn't doomsaying, that is literally watching the same thing happen over and over again from MMO to MMO and calling it like it is. And it is crap.