Quote Originally Posted by Ry0uSh1n View Post
it makes me wonder does SE truly want my money?
A while back the unofficial census estimated Sleipnir alone brought in nearly $700,000 USD in just under a year. Not to sound callous, but your individual sub means nothing to them when people spend to the tune of millions on overall mogstation purchases.

The reality is, micro-transactions are a response to substantially growing production costs. Companies do not want to eat the sudden millions of dollars lost, thus they try offsetting those costs onto the customer. Were it not for cash shops, DLC and etc, game prices would skyrocket. Capcom's CEO flatout said he feels games shouldn't be cheaper than $150 and EA more eloquently agreed, citing the aforementioned cost of development being too high nowadays. What wound up being the compromise are micro-transactions, which I am okay with, personally. Why? Instead of being charged a significantly higher flat rate on a game I may not even like, I can opt into entirely optional content once I'm happy with the product. Does it suck we won't be able to obtain everything without opening our wallets? Yes, but it will not change. And it isn't unique to FFXIV. In fact, you'll have more trouble finding a game that doesn't have some form of add on.