This is just appalling

[Kaurie]

It's not the only item being sold for EUR 13.50 on Mog Station. Clearly a good amount of people are buying them. And if something is selling well, why should they stop adding more items with the same price? You can't ask people to stop buying them because they can afford it, they don't have an excuse not to.

The answer is loyalty. While they are currently reaping the benefits of higher revenue, they are alienated some of their playerbase. They're creating an environment where some of their loyal subscribers are annoyed/frustrated at them. When a competitor comes along that offers something similar, but doesn't have a cash shop, it will be much easier for those ex-loyal fans to jump ship. Right now, FFXIV is pretty safe, as the MMORPG scene is arguably pretty weak. However, there are a lot of upcoming games (i.e. Pantheon, Bless, Project Gorgon, Crowfall, Ashes of Creation, Chronicles of Elyria, Camelot Unchained, etc.) that are showing promise.

This act of alienating their customers may come back and bite them in the butt.

Below is an example of another person who has been pushed past their limit of acceptance of the cash shop. My personal limit was passed along time ago, and others will pass theirs in future additions. The point, though, is that they are slowly losing the loyalty of their subscriber base.

Actually, I'm beginning to agree. Usually I'd just tell you they can do what they want and get over it, but I'm beginning to get a bit annoyed that they can add a new emote to the shop every month or so, but not to the game to earn from playing it. Earlier on in my experience with FFXIV, finding and unlocking new emotes was pretty cool and I always wondered where I'd find the next one. Now it seems to be that the answer is always just to look in the shop. I'm totally OK with it if they put every limited time emote in the shop after the event associated with it ends or if they made some particularly intricate emote that really sort of demanded, but it really shouldn't be a thing that an emote a month is heading directly to the shop. I understand that the sub only model for MMOs died a long time ago, but it'd be nice if they at least balanced micro transactions and in-game content out like Blizzard learned to do.