Enter the whales, who will pour thousands of dollars into this, just because you know, they can, and cue the "-I spent $1000 dollars buying every possible booster etc. in Metal Gear Survive!" Youtube videos.
Company shill bending over backwards trying not to actually use words and terms like 'micro-transactions' and 'monetising the players' etc, while at the same pleasing the shareholders...
Actually it's quite possible to create this elusive single-player/mmo hybrid that makes you a ton of money at the same time, I'm talking ofc about a Little game called Guild Wars 2, one of those titles that's never mentioned or reviewed on this site, yet they've just recently released their second major expansion "Path of Fire" which is very good (albeit a bit short storywise), introducing the fantastic riding mounts among other things, and just yesterday the fourth "living season" was released (don't even know what that is, quite new to this title, just recently jumped into it and having a blast with the multitude of single player content, plus some PvP (which I'm crap at, but it's fun).
Now as far as microtransactions go, it does have them, in the shape of the infamous "Lion's Arch chests", that you open with "keys" that you in turn buy with "gems" for real Money etc, but they are only a small part of the game and you do get free keys from time to time, so there's no real need to spend any extra money once you've bought the game and it's one or two expansions.
So how about it Gamespot, when you gonna review, or at least take a look at "Guild Wars 2: Path of Fire", eh?
"a "cinematic gaming experience" based on EA and DICE's first-person shooter"...read through that carefully a few times, and then think long and hard about pre-ordering this "cinematic experience"...
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