Come to think of it, it’s not the Item Shop itself, but
rather the atmosphere around the latest updates in Russian OBT which
causes so much disappointment among the players there.
The perception of “being milked for money” is really very strong there.
Here’s a small account of the events during the last month:


DEVS: Hey guys, sup? We have this new cool patch for ya all. You will now be able to buy RUBIES from the ITEM SHOP! \o/
PLAYERS: NOOOOOOOOO!!!
DEVS: Hm. Ok, we’ve reconsidered about the Rubies… But now all messages to the Zone Chat are for RL cash!!!
PLAYERS: o_O You must be kidding.
DEVS: Not at all. This is done “to prevent senseless spam”, we are acting in your best interest!
PLAYERS: Yeah, sure…

*1 week passes*
PLAYERS: Everywhere’s silent! It feels like singleplayer! How are we supposed to find a party for minibosses FFS!!??
DEVS: Oh, don’t whine. We’re increasing the radius of regular talk
(white) from 20m to 100m {a mage can typically shoot to 40m, if
anyone’s interested}
PLAYERS: …
DEVS: … also, you can now buy Ancient Chests from the ITEM SHOP, in which you can find RUBIES!!! \o/ \o/ \o/
PLAYERS: F***….

*somewhat later*
DEVS: We have a New Year’s Eve content patch for you, including 2
lame quests, several imbalanced items and a couple of stupid minigames.
PLAYERS: Did you, by any chance, happen to fix the xxx and yyy critical bugs?
DEVS: Um… no. But! We have the new cool ‘Fear of Death’ feature. Now
when you die, not only you have to wait in the Purgatory, but you will
also recieve a debuff, which will make you completely useless for up to
52 minutes!!! Of course, you can always get rid of it by pouring more
cash into our ITEM SHOP!!!
PLAYERS: Yeah….. *haha, idiots! Using astral sphere teleporters removes the debuff free of charge*

*one day later*
DEVS: We have an extra urgent, super-important mega-hotfix!
PLAYERS: \o/ Bugs xxx and yyy fixed?
DEVS: No! But the Fear of Death will no longer be removed by using the
astral sphere teleporters! A-a-and it will persist between logouts, so
that not a second of your precious Fear of Death is now wasted if you
log off for an hour. Allow us to remind you, that you can use our great
ITEM SHOP to be not afraid of Death for a whole 1/2 hour for a meager
$0.15!
PLAYERS: We hate you.
DEVS: Also, now you can only have one treasure chest per day, unless you visit our ITEM SHOP.

To summarise. Take every whine from Russian OBT players with a grain
of salt. They are very angry at the company’s pricing methods atm.