Seriously SE???

[Gilthas]

I'd like to see the download edition be cheaper than the disc edition (why are downloads just as expensive when no physical product needs to be manufactured, stored, or shipped?)

Physical and digital games often cost the same because otherwise brick and mortar stores would refuse to stock them.

EDIT: Now that I've caught up on the discussion, holy ****, the amount of whiny that I skipped.

Only two things to say:

1. The obvious: assuming that monthly fees have been pure profit for SE is at the very least asinine. No one knows how much money SE is making, though given that SE's finances have been getting better I think we can assume a nice profit. For now at least.

2. The most important part: I see so many people expecting SE to put all the profits made from FFXIV back into FFXIV. If SE had to do that (hell, if any company had to do that) they would just shut down the game.

[Zumi]

Even if you get the physical edition in the store you won't miss out and people won't pass you up in leveling much. SE will have to take down the servers for a long maintenance when the expansion launches and usually their maintenance end like at 3am pst. Most people will be asleep anyway. Unless you were really going to stay up late in the very early morning to play soon as the servers go up most people will be asleep. Then you can wake up go to the store to pick up your physical copy and play the game only a few hours after people who got the digital version can play.

[Nominous]

You may be right in this particular situation as 40$ is about the proper price tag for such a large Add-on, But Ill explain my picture statement...

Considering the well established "Hey consumer, f**k you!" mindset of gaming in Triple A companies today, there's always a good reason to question something.

But questioning how things are and how they might be better, established or no, is pretty much the backbone of how we progress as a society.

I never took it that far, and there's no reason to analyze it any more than face value. I specifically said in the MMO genre, not the whole gaming industry, and I definitely didn't allude to the idea that nothing should ever be questioned, ever. If you want to go as far into analyzing it as you did, I can match you.

You most certainly should question some things. You should not question things that are mostly decided just to be the 'way things are'. You don't question why the sky is blue and not red. It's decided by how things work- there's an answer to it, but it won't change just because you question it. The same works here.

Services or products offered require compensation, of which the offering party chooses (can be free, or trade). They probably had some business professional look at market trends and say, "Hey look, all these games make profit with $40 expansions, that's the market price." That's the end of it, really. You aren't going to get anywhere by trying to speak out against something so regulated as market price for video games (or expansions, as they're basically like an entire base product alone), when it's decided by people who are actually educated enough about it to make the decision.