Quote Originally Posted by Goji1639 View Post
I don't think it would make that big of a difference. World of Warcraft was first and it will likely be the powerhouse paid MMO for as long as it's still around. Nothing else in this specific space is going to dethrone it or compete with it financially.

FFXIV is simply the less successful option, and since it makes less money the community gets less for more. Them trying to match World of Warcrafts monetization strategy would end up hurting the game, because World of Warcraft has structured it's monetization around a much larger community.

That's not to say it's impossible for FFXIV to overextend and drive people away, but comparing this game to WoW isn't fair. I personally don't find this games cash shop to be problematic.
I don't think you necessarily need to have WoW amount of subscribers to make a WoW quality game. I'm pretty sure WoW is making much less money right now compared to when it was in its prime (2008) yet it doesn't seem like the game is decreasing in quality.

I think there's a limit to how many (quality) developers you can throw at a game and how much budget it will require cause it seems to me you can get in a too many cooks in the kitchen situation and become a mess organization wise.

Just look at ESO, I'm not sure on the exact numbers but it seems to me that ESO required much larger budget than WoW, considering for example how literally every single (side) quest is voice acted, yet they still probably make (or have made) much less money than WoW. (Correct me if I'm wrong, this is purely an assumption).

Not all profit goes into increasing the game's quality since there's a limit to how much you can realistically increase it. It's also clear Blizzard and SE use money from their MMOs to fund other projects (as they should, only makes sense) and it's true you can argue that for SE, FFXIV may need a certain amount of profit to justify its live updates, and perhaps that amount isn't enough for them with subscription alone right now.

However I still believe that more profit could have ensued long term if they had decided to limit the Cash Shop and attract more players.