As the title states, why should I continue buying crown store items if I can't use them when I need/want them?

While I understand that complete cross-platform support would bring up many issues (duplicate account and character names, differing quality of input hardware, mods), the Crown Store is completely housed within the game and is tied to your account. While there are differences on timing for items released and removed from the stores (mainly due to the delayed content releases for consoles), they are all formatted the same and relate back to the account used for purchase. Even though they say they are account wide, this apparently doesn't apply when an account goes across servers (according to this discussion at least: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/297860/crown-purchases-unavailable-on-a-different-server#latest)

Accounts are also gated by platform, so enjoying the game on another platform means losing not only your in-game progress, which is somewhat understandable (though other games have accomplished cross-platform play-ability) but also all of your other expensive, time-gated items have to be given up.

Why prevent those who want to play your game from seamlessly enjoying across all platforms offered? As seamlessly as possible, at least. It seems like less of a true tech issue and more of neglect of a worrisome issue with a potential cash grab from those willing to try to buy what little they can recover.

ZoS is by no means required to do something like this and it would certainly need some sort of resources devoted to it. But the current system does nothing to save face for ZoS and Bethesda. Having an account check/update of true/false values of a registry of unlocked content in the crown store (not consumables even; just unlockable permanents) seems simple enough. Maybe not. With the prices of these items they really should be more permanent than one server on a single platform.

It's understandable if it is a paid transaction to merge accounts--it does require technical support after all--but not even giving the option outside of repurchasing the available items in the Crown Store is a sad state of affairs. If true cross-platform capability is indeed never coming to ESO, the least that could come is a more welcoming system for moving from one to the other. The solution lies in making purchases have staying power, following accounts (which really should go across platform) as far as they can go.

This echoes a problematic trend in the game's fiscal design that is evidenced not only by the intentional restrictions placed on Crown Store items, but by the more sinister marketing ploys used like the aforementioned time-gating of items, redundant bundling of items, and the already frequently mocked crown crates that allow players to gamble for items not readily made available in the Crown Store but still part of the game and receiving items they may or may not want.

ZoS, why not just post your wares? You make pretty good things, and myself and others I know buy them. We buy based on our taste as well as the quality of the items. Systems like the "gambling crates" can send a message that you may not be confident in the products you're making, and therefore have to use such a system to get players to buy things they don't want in order to get what they actually want. You have to at least be confident that they want something in that case. Then again this may not be the case, but the fact still stands that people aren't being allowed to simply buy what they want in your game, your are forcing other products on them that they may not want.

It's been a fun game to play with my friends. ZoS, you'll do what you want, I get that. I just hope you don't kill this game in the process.