Quote Originally Posted by silentwindfr View Post
you have tons of free to play out, why make one of the few last mmorpg subs go down this way?
All WoW clones go down this route, no exceptions. It's by design, initial high volume sales and accounts created thanks to the hype and brand if it's an existing IP, then the inevitable dip in subscription retention rates because the original they copied still does a lot of things much better, and the clone while better in some aspects still doesn't hold a candle. The less subs, the less monthly income and the more extra resources they need to cover updates and operations.

Cash shops are the easiest and fastest way to achieve this emergency plan to obtain more resources, as long as you build one people will sadly come, the companies are counting on them to make up for the lost subs. Though they are SE so I wouldn't put it past them to seriously think they can pull a WoW and hold both a sub and a cash shop, that has never ever worked at all except for WoW, all other themepark MMOs that have tried this eventually just went F2P and even less went B2P. Considering they had the idea they could compete with WoW since the 1.0 days, and it was one of the main reasons they so badly rushed the game, it's no surprise they're doing all this.