In the old system you'd need to spend a chunk to get all of the pets, all of the new islands, all of the new clothes and if you didn't buy it you would experience none of it at all. They'd likely need to split the userbase and the worlds.
In this one you can spend money to get things you specifically want. If you want just a monkey and not the cat go for it. But because islands and quests are free you aren't split from your friends if you don't want to pay for anything.
Do you seriously think the first system is automatically better solely because of microtransactions? Imagine sailing with your friends to a new island and suddenly half your crew disappear because they didn't buy the new expansion.
And if you hated DLC that much you could simply play it for the first three month where there isn't any.
You can choose what you want to buy paying an exorbitant mark up and buying a la carte. Character and ship customization are touted to be a huge portion of the game and your interaction. If I were the kind of person who were interested in shutting myself off from a major gameplay feature, maybe the value proposition of microtransactions would be a minor improvement over more robust content updates. But as a whole, just throwing microtransactions into the old $60 model isn't actually giving players more milage out of their money. ---
