The whale mount is up on Mogstation

[Alleo]

Last I checked, the vast majority of F2P MMO's were seeking to squeeze as much money as possible out of their players through business practices more nefarious than those that FFXIV embraces.

What does FF14 have next to sub:

-RL items with ingame rewards to make more people buy it
- A app with most of its useful features behind a monthly paywall and on top of that will start to use coins that you can buy for rl too.
- A cash shop that was once just there to give people a chance to get old event items and that gets more and more exclusive stuff in it
- monthly retainer fees and no new retainer for a while, in a game with huge amount of glamour and crafting mats
- jump potions to reach certain levels

Honestly I dont feel much difference to this than games like Black desert. In Black desert you only have to pay once to buy the game and are at least not forced to buy anything from that. You get advantages if you do but honestly this is a F2P game if you bought it once so they at least need to have some kind of way to earn money. FF14 has a sub, yet still sells us quite some stuff as a cash shop and puts inventory space behind retainers and now even an app. In Black desert one could also buy parts of an outfit which made it cheaper.

Then lets compare FF14 to another sub MMO: Wow did have the cash shop for more years, yet way less items in it then FF14. Some parts might be more expensive on it but lets not forget that you can buy this ingame too if you have enough money in the game so if you are good at farming this you might not even need to pay one dollar of rl money to sub. And like others have stated, the app they have or had was much bigger and still completely free.

So in my view it does not look good for SEs cash shop.

[JohnSpawnVFX]

That WoW token someone can buy with in-game gold? Someone had to buy it from Blizzard with rl money to be able to sell it to you.

So the whole "See, you can get everything in WoW with gold" isn't true because at some point, someone else has to spend rl money in order for it to happen. It's basically how they fought RMT.

[K1tt]

Bought the whale as my pay day treat to myself, now I can finally give people lifts in eureka, no way in hell was I buying the moggle one its not my style

[Aster_E]

What does FF14 have next to sub:

-RL items with ingame rewards to make more people buy it
- A app with most of its useful features behind a monthly paywall and on top of that will start to use coins that you can buy for rl too.
- A cash shop that was once just there to give people a chance to get old event items and that gets more and more exclusive stuff in it
- monthly retainer fees and no new retainer for a while, in a game with huge amount of glamour and crafting mats
- jump potions to reach certain levels

Also, if you want to play on both PS4 and PC, even on the same one account, then you have to buy a separate license for the game plus expansions, for each version. No discounts, or anything, just pay up in full for two versions if you want to go back and forth between two versions for whatever foreseeable reason. By itself this is just lousy. With all else, the greed is apparent.

[Omymy]

WoW nerfed the exp you get when finishing Dungeons and leveling is way more harder now. So, you need days to reach a decent level. Whatsmore, you dont need to follow a MSQ, yeah, you have to repeat the same quests over and over and over again. Oh, and they dont have teleport; have fun eating all those flying times.

Btw, i prefer the MSQ thing than the reputation grinding to advance into the game.

FF XIV isnt perfect, but having all the classes in the same char is just amazing.

PD: You can change your race here for 7 euro. In WoW is just... 25. And barely 50 if you want to change faction too.

[Duskane]

a school of whale mounts in Pagos and soon Pyros

[alimdia]

What people do with their own money doesn't affect you as a consumer. Someone spending $100 in a grocery store on select items that you may think might be too pricey for the brand does not affect you, someone spending $30 on a virtual whale still does not affect you either. It's not your place to judge or butt in.

It's a bit disingenuous to say that you're not affecting the market. This current market trend in games was only solidified because people kept buying into microtransactions for things that were already offered for no additional cost. If they add a lootbox tomorrow and no one buys it that would be the end of it, but if people started buying it then you're gonna see more and more items added to the lootbox, when before the lootbox said items would have been part of the sub price at no additional cost.

[Araxes]

All my achievement certificates collecting dust.

No way to get it in game.

30 freaking bucks (2 months of sub time)

A whale for the whales indeed. Stop your Greed Square Enix. . . Stop your Greed.

They are loosing a lot of Subs right now, they have to compensate.

[JohnSpawnVFX]

They are loosing a lot of Subs right now, they have to compensate.

They are? Not even BfA made a dent in active player count. We even got an influx of people coming from WoW...

[Lastelli]

They are? Not even BfA made a dent in active player count. We even got an influx of people coming from WoW...

Only SE knows how many paying active players there are right now. Of course they won't tell us because the number is not so impressive, otherwise they wouldn't resort to PR spins like "14 mln players".
My linkshells and my fc are deserted though...