Really? They put Shadowkeeper on the Mog Station?

[jameseoakes]

You missed the semi-conductor crisis and SE not being able to secure servers in time even when offering to pay a premium (they weren't the only ones). I'm pretty SE would also have preferred Materia, a full Dynamis and the unnamed EU DC to have been up before Endwalker.

I wasn't making a point on the timing, those things don't change that apparently we need a overpriced cash shop to provide basic game features even after a massive spike in players

[LianaThorne]

I wasn't making a point on the timing, those things don't change that apparently we need a overpriced cash shop to provide basic game features even after a massive spike in players

To be fair, the WoW Exodus came out of nowhere. I don't think anyone expected Blizzard to screw themselves into the hole they did/still are in and the subsequent leaving in droves to 14. From the quick look I did, the shortage started in 2020 and the lawsuit first emerged in July (?) of 2021 (with Endwalker launching in December). Therefore, it probably would have been a challenge regardless to accommodate the flood of new players in those conditions.

As far as basic game features though, I can't disagree with you but I'm also in the camp of people believing that the cash shop money doesn't go back into the game...or at least not all of it.

[jameseoakes]

To be fair, the WoW Exodus came out of nowhere. I don't think anyone expected Blizzard to screw themselves into the hole they did/still are in and the subsequent leaving in droves to 14. From the quick look I did, the shortage started in 2020 and the lawsuit first emerged in 2021. Therefore, it probably would have been a challenge regardless to accommodate the flood of new players in those conditions.

Still no explanation of why we *needed* the cash shop to provide game features to them, people are saying the only reason the player numbers were accomadated and basic game features such as housing opened to them was the cash shop and not the sub money they paid

[LianaThorne]

Still no explanation of why we *needed* the cash shop to provide game features to them, people are saying the only reason the player numbers were accomadated and basic game features such as housing opened to them was the cash shop and not the sub money they paid

I mean, there probably isn't an explanation that would make sense imo. Cash shops exist to generate more profit than subs could/generate extra income in general. If one person buys a Shadowkeeper mount they're effectively paying the sub cost of 2-3 people. If the money all goes back into the game (which I doubt but I'll humor it) then we'd be able to have more things added into the game than just subs alone could fund. When housing was first opened and the game was a lot smaller, I can see the logic behind opening it then to help push out more things that subs couldn't cover. I'm only speculating here but perhaps the sub costs were enough to keep the game going but adding servers for housing was a bit out of reach (considering Square's mentality on funding things, I wouldn't be shocked). However now, I heavily think that some is funneled back into other projects at SE + the devs have picked some hills to die on (such as being dead set on ward housing being exclusive no matter what, so some things we want we just never will get period).

In a nutshell, we have cash shop so Square can squeeze more money out of us for unknown things and some basic features that are in other games that we'd expect to see here might not even happen if the devs don't want it to.