Quote Originally Posted by Krotoan View Post
You pay money monthly to access the game. Servers, game support, included patch updates and events. You seem to be under the impression that if the items weren't on the cash shop we'd have them ingame for free.
We pay a monthly fee for all of this, these things are standard in MMO's now, not just FFXIV but in most sub based ones, SE doesn't even do it well in compared to others. Games used to have unlocks of extra characters, skins, gear, levels, etc via in game, they now are mostly parted out in the way of DLC's, the gaming industry has changed way too much for the worse since even 5-10 years ago.

Let's not go deeper into freemium territory, unless of course they plan on removing subs, at which point the game will be dead right fast. Subs are required to keep the content flowing not just the servers and overhead.