The whale mount is up on Mogstation

[Areic]

WoW charges a much higher price for basic services such as name changes and race changes than FFXIV does. You also can't play every class on a single character like you can in FFXIV so if you have multiple characters that you wish to shift over to a different faction/server then you're set back by quite a bit.

Other MMO's launched with a subscription fee initially but then dropped it in favour of being F2P - but typically made it appealing to subscribe to an optional fee in exchange for advantageous in-game bonuses. I believe ESO does that? I haven't played that since launch, admittedly.



It's public by default. Nor is it being a 'condescending jerk' to make an observation.

WoW doesn't make you go through the most mind numbing gate to entry into their game that is the MSQ either. You just hop on a character and level it, which is especially nice when you want to try different race/class combos. For FF14, if you wanna try other race/class combos you have to pay 10 dollars every time, or go through the mind numbing grind that is MSQ all over again, or pay 60 dollars to dodge the grind/get a char up. Not to mention, gearing an alt class very high is nigh impossible on the same character due to weekly restrictions. If you want to gear alts in WoW you just do it, your tank, your healer, your dps can all be around the same item level.

Mind you, not calling WoW better, it's even mildly a dumpster fire right now, but both games have their pros/cons to look at

Other games moved to the F2P model because they know they can't make it on a sub model. Terrible games cannot last on a traditional sub model, which is why so few games attempt it anymore. Whereas a free to play model allows them to milk those few whales willing to spend and get little bits and pieces here from the cheaper players.

Squeenix knows they can milk the players, they won't get it from everyone, but each player who buys this mount is effectively two months of sub per player. Why add interesting content and reward players for playing the game when you can get that kind of dough? Instead, lets focus on pushing out stuff like eureka , possibly one of the most boring, grindy and annoying pieces of content that probably took one of their developers a whole 30 minutes to think up.

( Keep in mind, the MSQ isn't /bad/, but so much of it is obnoxiously dull running halfway across the world over and over to speak to someone for two minutes, just to run back. Rinse and repeat for a huge chunk of ARR It's killed the game for a lot of my friends trying to get up to play with friends )