Over the years of doing my Twitch show I've talked about MMORPG monetization including microtransactions (MTX).
Many game companies use a box price plus mandatory subscription and an additional cash shop to fund the game. While that is perfectly acceptable to do, since if consumers voted with their wallets, it wouldn't be an issue, is this really what the MMORPG genre has come to?
It was very refreshing to hear Josh Caba, Creative Director on Eternal Tombs speak about why he thinks microtransactions do not belong in MMORPGs. Some game companies with MMORPGs in development are eager to say they are only planning on selling cosmetics, but they won't give a hard definitive answer that it is the only thing they are going sell. Instead when pressed they will say statements like "No P2W" but they won't commit to saying "no quality of life items" which is then absolutely where the wiggle room comes in.
Josh on the other hand 100% absolutely committed to the idea that @triunestudio is building Eternal Tombs to be microtransaction free.
Even more refreshing was that the Triune Studio team has stated in their FAQ that "Eternal Tombs is privately funded 100% to completion. There is no kickstarter or crowd funding for the game." https://www.eternaltombs.com/Home/FAQ#
Many game studios that are developing MMORPGS have gone the Crowdfunding/Kickstarter route and they've transferred the risk from them to the community, which is a brilliant business move because why accept the risk if the gamers are going to accept it for you? It was quite refreshing to see a studio say we are fully funded and we are actually self funding and not trying to get gamers to pay for our passion project.