What it means is that in the
short-term:
1) The whales who obviously have already been playing for several days. as they would have bought the Deluxe Edition, have already gotten what advantages that could be had, likely already have a vault of crystals in their pockets that they can still spend, and/or stocked up this afternoon since EA let the "influencers" know hours before it was shut down, who then tweeted a bunch of "HOLY #*&@" stuff, and everyone had pretty much figured what was going on before it did. The people that were going to spend $100's or more already have.
2) While they seem to have halted physical card sales online and probably have the power to pull them off of shelves now at physical retailers, there were already plenty in the wild (some people started receiving them last week) which means they have just created a scalpers market for physical crystal cards. I don't even wanna look at eBay to see...too depressing, because now the cash is just going to scalpers, instead of EA who actually is the one who would be adding future content to the game (see "long term" below).
3) The average folks who would have just spent $5 or $10 bucks to make their grind a little easier for the start of the game so they didn't start with nothing are now SOL.
4) Because of the massive publicity and awareness this has gotten, and now the articles/sources will all update by the morning (actual release day) to say "Microtransactions gone!" it's pretty likely that even more casual people who weren't even really aware of the game yet will be buying this weekend, especially to support the "hero" EA for doing "the right thing". Not to mention all the people (some reading this thread, I am sure) who are rushing to get their preorders back in (if they really cancelled to begin with) tonight.
So net in the short term - EA looks like responsive heroes to the public (even if the "game community" still isn't thrilled with them), the "Whales" already have spent their money, and those that haven't are now going to give their money to scalpers instead of the company that makes the game, and the launch is likely going to be even more successful than it would have been to begin with.
What it means is that in the
long-term:
They already said they will be returning, after "changes", and depending on those changes, either:
A) It's just going to be reworked and the level of "advantages" that were already there are just going to pop up in a different (or worse) form, but it will be too late for anyone to really care, or
B) They come back, and it's all about cosmetics now - which won't net them continuing money, and after the already announced aggressive slate of Last Jedi content is released, we will not see anywhere near the previously planned future content that was to be bi-weekly over the next few years and financed by the whales, and they end up just doing Battlefront 3 and we start all over again.
No matter what happens, EA doesn't lose. The ones that really lose are the players who just were going to spend their $60 and get a crap load of future content included, or they have just delayed whatever "P2W" fears they had for a couple of months. And the casual players who would have just spent a few bucks here and there just to save some time are just screwed.
Personally, I feel like people should have just left well enough alone, and we all are going to lose out now, one way, or another.
Oh, and it still costs $300-400 to unlock a new toon in Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, so if anyone thinks Disney had any problem with the microtransaction schemes other than the publicity this time, they would be mistaken.
