I want an official response.

[Felessan]

It seems like you decided to completely ignore the feedback you've been receiving about the cash shop. Even more so because not only are the Eternal Bond items listed, but some new ones as well, like the Wind-Up Urianger.

There is as much of argument defending or at least acknowledge of cashshop as people attacking it. So it's not really clear what devs should listen to.

then people against this sort of stuff have become.... well the minority, even if technically is not true

You do have numbers supporting your claim, do you?
Actually cashshop usually a very popular across the wide casual crowd and that usually don't care about "collecting every single minion" or being gated by paywall for fluffy items. WoW makes around 1/4 of its revenue on such items that clearly shows that they are popular and in demand.

When it relates to the game that they're paying monthly to play, yes, it is mandatory.

This is called extra and extra are not mandatory to be included in basic package. And you subscription only gives you entitlement to basic package.

What are the devs going to say? "lol sorry we don't care?" or *insert generic PR response here*

Probably "Sorry guys, this feature are so popular that we decided to ignore your opinion".

[Felessan]

Minions are content, they were before the cash shop so why would the suddenly cease to be content after the cash shop launches?

Fancy items (glamour, minions and mounts) always was treated as content not serious enough to be a part of "no P2W" clause and as such often was put behind paywall, straight from 1.0 release
Pay extra and get a special reward in form of collector editions, veteran rewards, various bonuses existed way before cash shop was introduced. And it's the same "pay2obtain" as in cashshop, just a bit less direct.

[silentwindfr]

You do have numbers supporting your claim, do you?
Actually cashshop usually a very popular across the wide casual crowd and that usually don't care about "collecting every single minion" or being gated by paywall for fluffy items. WoW makes around 1/4 of its revenue on such items that clearly shows that they are popular and in demand.

no they are not popular, i did post on another thread an interesting subject about the % of people buying stuff in the Free 2 play model, showing that only 2-3% of the whole playerbase really purchase stuff. but still this model survive, even if it's the biggest scam of the time. since the name it's a lie, the game is never free.

even if on the 2.000.000 subs, only 20.000 people buy sleipnir, they will still earn a lot of cash... since it's about 480.000USD, and it's only for 1% of the player base... it cost them almost nothing and bring them a loooot of cash... then if this 20.000 people continue to buy every month new content added to the cash shop, it's more and more free cash earned... and it's still 1% of the player base.
the point is, we can complain all we want, even with 20.000 people buying the cash shop is only benefit.

and about the fact that the pro cash shop did become more vocal, it's more about the fact that a lot of the pro cash shop that was heard since the start of the eternal bonding stuff have very very very low count of post on the forum. they rarely go over 100 post some have even less than 50 post count, meaning this people that are fast to answer are only there for defend the cash shop.

indeed the count don't make them thought about the situation less important, but it's strange to see a loot of pro cash shop appear suddenly. *shrugs*