Free or Payed MMORPG, What would you preffer on FXIV?

[Naqaj]

For SE, a cash-shop solution would probably be better, as the examples of DDO and LOTRO have shown. There's little hope XIV will be able to compete with the MMO top dogs, and for niche titles, the free-to-play/cash shop model is just more attractive. It will be up to SE to balance it so you can't simply "pay more to be better", but there are feasible solutions for this.
The hardest thing to overcome will be the stigma of cash shop games. This very thread here is a good example of that.
The Crysta system is already in place, so it seems they anticipated that option. Wouldn't even be that much of a change on their back-end.