Should PoE have been pay to play?

I think making poe an upfront cost would have killed most of the playerbase. GGG gets forgiven for a lot of things because of the f2p aspect of the game.

Foe example the server desync from launch era till like harvest. It was bad, I didn't experience it, but have seen clips.

The company makes money from micro transactions that will not affect your game. A very nice model to have. Making the game free does help get more people to try the game.

Let's be honest - Path of Exile started as small, niche, indie game. It has grew bigger now, but it's still pretty niche. So I think it just would not survive with a 'pay to play' model financially. After all it's not a Diablo that will sell millions of copies only because of its name.

So what is left then? Basically to add MTX like it is now, and I believe the outrage would be insane if they would add MTX in addition to a pay to play game.

So the current model is pretty beneficial both for GGG and for players. After spending some entry cost for tabs to play more comfortably you don't have to spend anything else, you can't get any real advantage with cash, while GGG is getting constant flow of cash from players who can afford and care for MTX.

Lets say they charged $60 for 1.0 (NO WAY I would have paid for 1.0 I played it and it wasn't much) and then $20/expansion x 32 expansions = $700 USD
hell cut it in half even at $350...gonna go out on a limb and say POE would not have ANY WHERE near the player base or revenues under that system.