I guess Im just a smooth brain. I feel like if the cash shop is the heavy hitter its supposedly is, then more engaging content would mean more players.. meaning more people would access the cash shop. But Im sure actiblizz has big brained all of this.
With Actiblizz (and honestly, most developers or publishers that answer to investors), they only see money - they think that, if they can find a way to monetize the game and get away with it, while making the same amount of money with less players, that it means it's a **GOOD** thing for the game. Less people for the same revenue and people spending more money means that growth could continue at a steady pace - and their bet is, if player counts increase over time and they aren't hemorrhaging players, that more people will eventually play and they will make profits better than when they had those numbers before, because 'spending that money' is the norm for those players.
Game design doesn't even come into question except for how to monetize their players and 'not piss them off enough'. They want to appeal to the most common player that spends money, and push the envelope on what they can get away with in monetization until it becomes the norm for the remaining playerbase, after which they can have a slow 'regrowth' with high revenue.
This is actually a losing strategy long-term, but most investors will just cash out after they have their gains, leaving the company in financial ruin and having to perform layoffs to get cheaper labor while management gets pay raises. Actiblizz cannot actually be a long-term viable strategy even from a financial standpoint; they have no tech they produce outside of video games and their platform is based on their held IPs. If their IPs nosedive in quality, they have no way to get the growth back that they want. But it's a risk, and I'm not a financial advisor, but I can tell you as a human being that more people will wake up to this shit if it continues.
Analytics plays a huge part in this setup; if you see people buying a durable, you make more of those durables and up the price on them. For example, these 'digital deluxe collectors editions' with ingame items.
They are printing money and people are none the wiser, because it's something they feel comfortable purchasing as it gives them a status symbol. Except it's different than the physical items WoW launched with, because the editions themselves are not tradeable to other human beings and are associated with your account only. They're effectively DLC that you pay for on top of the expansion you're already buying as it 'looks like a good deal' to you. Example, "I could just buy Shadowlands and get a level 50 to start SL with, I am going to just do that instead of pay $60 for just that boost because it's only $40 more on the purchase price!", except the concept of boosting characters is kind of 'anti-RPG' in a sense and always has been. Your character has no personal sense of progression, you have no emotional or dedicated attachment to it, its sole purpose is to get you into the endgame gear treadmill faster so you don't cancel your account trying to 'catch up to your friends'.
Beyond that, they can see the numbers easily when you make those purchases. They will see which ones work, and which ones don't. It's A/B testing to gain profit.
There's all sorts of that shit going on globally. Like making 3 different versions of Warcraft Facebook ads, and if the one with the cool looking picture of Garrosh gains more impressions than the one with Sylvanas for attracting customers, they'll run that one instead.
A lot of that predatory analytics-based monetization is explained in this video below. You're effectively getting tricked into playing a slot machine, not a game.
www.warcraftlogs.com
