Quote Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor View Post
Regardless, my point is MomomiMomi is looking at past MMOs and comparing them to current ones. You can't look at FFXI, released in 2003 and expect FFXIV to have similar upkeep and development costs when it released in 2013. Even if they release less, the cost of development has increased substantially. And this spans the whole gaming industry. While some companies do exploit, and I have no doubt SE is among them, an exclusive mount every once in a while means very little.
You don't have to look that far back. In this very game, before the cash shop existed, seasonal event items from previous years were available in-game. Then the cash shop came, and they took that away.