Quote Originally Posted by Zojha View Post
You know what's even more hilarious? Double standards.

Consider expansions.
Apples and oranges. No sensible person believes we should get all the stuff we get in an expansion for free ("free" in this case meaning for no more than our subscription fees). All that work requires a LOT of extra development effort, far beyond what our subscription pays for, and the one-time purchasing fee for the expansion does a lot to defray that cost. By the same token, I'd guess the percentage of players who would prefer not to ever see new expansions is very, very low. The vast majority of players want to see the new content that an expansion provides, whereas only a very niche market exists for mogstation glamour items.

Arguing that cash shop vs expansions is a double standard is akin to arguing that cash shop vs subscription fees are a double standard. After all, a player who pays subscription fees has a HUGE gameplay advantage over a player who does not. That's pay-to-win, right?

It is true, however, that this game handles expansions (at least the first one) badly. What you say is true: A player that doesn't buy the expansion might as well not play. They can't level beyond 60, and there are NO current endgame activities that they can participate in. FFXI handled that much better: even when they added expansions to raise the level cap, they added methods for players without those expansions to keep leveling, and even deliberately placed some endgame activities in older zones (Voidwatch, for example) - endgame activities with meaningful rewards. In FFXI, buying an expansion was a choice (albeit a choice that the vast majority of players chose); in this game, it is all but a requirement to continue enjoying the game.