Stop Making Should-Be Achievement Gear.."Optional Gear"

[Paladinleeds]

Sure, we can take out the cash shop, but your sub fee goes up to $100 a month. Would you STILL keep playing if the sub fee was $100 a month? I know I wouldn't. At least with optional items I can dip in when I have a bit of extra change to spare for my gaming, but if it was $100 a month sub fee I couldn't justify that. £8.99 a month is very reasonable plus a cash shop allowing me to dip into items. If they charged for access to dungeons or savage raids, etc, sure, I'd be OK with that, I buy access to the dungeons I want. No big deal. To me the £8.99 a month covers server access only. Anything else given by it is a bonus.

[Zojha]

Sure, we can take out the cash shop, but your sub fee goes up to $100 a month.

Even with 2% inflation over the last 50 years, with a base subscription of 15 dollar you'd end up at 38 dollar.
If we go for more realistic 10 years (because MMOs weren't a thing 50 years ago), the base subscription would go from 15 to 18 dollar.

Meanwhile, the technological progress constantly reduces the price per performance unit, whether that's storage, connection or processing speed.

You aren't paying for the product there, you're paying for the executives new cars.