Playing devil's advocate for a minute.

Yoshi-P's job as producer is to go in front of a board of investors and convince them to invest money in FFXIV.

In order for an investor to commit money to a project, they must be assured of a return on their investment.

The more profitable FFXIV is to the investor, the more money Yoshi-P is able to secure in the future, for larger expansions, data center upgrades, etc.

Yoshi-P has very publicly stated that in the future, he wants to have all the regional datacenters combined. If you're NA, you'll be able to visit every NA realm, not just the ones on your datacenter. If you're on a EU or JP datacenter, same deal. That would necessitate a hefty upgrade to server architecture and hardware. It's going to cost money, lots of it.

It's not just about FFXIV's continual existence--it's about how much money is invested back into the game so that it can be continuously upgraded and improved. This goes beyond keeping the servers running and the employees paid, and a new expansion down the line. It goes into the very real costs of updating technology, improving performance, and adding the many quality of life features that have seen FFXIV shoot way out to the front of the pack as the best MMORPG in the world.

Cash shops are divisive and in some ways problematic, but the investors who make FFXIV possible are the ones who are wanting to see larger and larger stacks of cash back on their investments. A game without a cash shop is not going to be attractive to them. That's just the way things are.