Cash Shop: Stifling development.

[Dyvid]

No content access has been restricted to Mog station, unless you count color options for content that's freely available in game.

Let me elaborate then on how I consider content access.

Scions Minion = Not related to one specific piece of a games feature like Hunts, Dungeon, Binding Coil, Crystal Tower, Housing, etc...
Gold/Platnium Plan = Specifically related to enhance a players experience for the Eternal Bonding content.

This is what I mean when I say premium access to a specific piece of content. You get standard access to content but to get the full rewards and experience of the feature it requires cash payment.

[Felessan]

Please list other P2P MMOs other than WoW that has the same sort of cash shop ARR does because I'm curious too.

You should start with list of *successfull* P2P MMO in last five years to understand why this type of cashshop are only in those two games. As there was no other mass-market P2P MMO that can be considered successfull (i.e. that have a big stable population and could cover it's costs) an recent times.

I do believe they are stifling development because as in my original post, everything that comes into the game now seems to go through the marketing team to see what content can be siphoned off for the cash shop.

But we are still getting core content for free, so impact is much lesser than stated. Yes, some options were added on top of free content but the core experience remains unaffected and free.

Do I think it's the developers themselves who want to do this? I doubt it but the higher ups want the extra cash on the bottom line. Personally I would bet that the community divide on this on the forums is something he doesn't want to see. No game developer wants to put his content behind a paywall.

Everyone loves money, and developers are no exception to this.

Scions Minion = Not related to one specific piece of a games feature like Hunts, Dungeon, Binding Coil, Crystal Tower, Housing, etc...
Gold/Platnium Plan = Specifically related to enhance a players experience for the Eternal Bonding content.

It doesn't really enhance experience as you don't get bigger wedding or anything. Paid options are very similar to free ones and if you want to just marry and have a nice ceremony - free one is as good as paid ones.
And the only real difference (besides mount and minion gifts after ceremony ends) is for people who thinks that "cost more money = better"