Originally Posted by
Edge-
What about it? TERA is a game that doesn't take itself too seriously, and hasn't for a while. It's been pretty absurd from the early days, and they've more or less run with it with their cosmetics. And a lot of the fans love it because of it. Plenty hate the immersion breaking stuff, sure, but clearly enough like it and buy those things that they decide to keep making them. Personally, I love all that shit, and En Masse can make some hilarious trailers to sell that shit.
The issue you run into with monetizing content is what content to monetize and how to monetize it. Monetize too much, and you've got a potentially hyper-segmented playerbase who often don't have access to the same content, while providing a larger and larger barrier of entry for newer players (both in costs and confusion) unless you're also constantly dropping the price of content significantly or folding it into bundles, potentially pissing off regular players who feel "ripped off" that the content they pay full for regularly gets discounted.
Because remember, the developer needs a constant flow of revenue, they need something they can count on, so they'd need to have a very, very fast content delivery schedule. That would either mean they're putting out content even faster than Rift was during chocolate, but selling each content patch individually, that would require a huge team constantly working on the game. Alternatively, release it in smaller slices, but run the risk of players feeling like content is overpriced for how much it delivers.
That's why MMO's take multiple approaches nowadays, often times selling content (expansions or DLC), having optional (or mandatory) subscriptions, and having cash shops that sell costmetics, convenience items, and account services. Because for the majority of bigger MMO's, it's simply not enough to monetize a single avenue, they need to utilize multiple avenues.