Final Fantasy XIV a serious WoW rival, says Wada | Game Development | News by Develop

“The basic model hasn't changed,” he said. “It's a monthly flat rate service with additional charges for items that users want to buy.

“For FFXI we didn't initially set up the item transaction model that well – although the demand for it was high. We thought that it would be a benefit for users, but that we wouldn't be able to charge.

“We soon learnt that there are a lot of people who want that kind of model, so we would like to introduce more pay-as-you-use items into the game. But there were too few items in FFXI – however we don't want to take it to the other extreme entirely for FFXIV.
I'm not sure if anything else has been said on the matter and I couldn't find a thread about it here. I sincerely hope that if they are going ahead with pay-as-you-use items that they are not advantage-giving items but merely aesthetic or something like that. Because otherwise I can see this game suddenly moving towards my "do not want" list.