for me though the evidence of intent is in having $39 and $99 level tiers. There's no way to expect that to ever be "reasonable" for a mobile game. I could go with up to about $20 in IAP. For instance the Settlers of Catan iPad game is rather expensive at $9 up front with expansions at $2 - $3 each that match the paper version of expansions and you can easily sink $20 in to get all the pieces, but you don't NEED all the pieces to play the same game that's in the paper version box. Many other games do a very fine job of using it to unlock new "expansions" as they add extra additional effort to the game every few months. Those ultra expensive tiers are nothing but "click bait" to see if children and/or stupid people will "just pay it".

I did half to laugh that the reviewer clearly never played games like farmville. That worked out really well with it's timers and everybody checking in a few times a day to manage their items. so he's a little overreacting. That said, this new game looked really nice but I won't be buying...and I was already skeptical because it's EA. EA has plugged $50 games with this kind of stuff. I wasn't really holding my breath here. I don't want to play "dungeon-ville" I want to play an RTS.

The problem is that somebody could probably put this together for say $20 without using servers at all. But the App store buyers are so stingy with expensive games, only really established games like Final Fantasy can get away with more than $10. So they have to have some other way to get the $20 or even $10 or they can't make ANY GAME to sell you because they have bosses.