They say you can place a frog in a pot of water, place the pot over a flame and the frog will not detect the temperature rising, because the process is gradual, so he'll sit there and happily cook to death.
DLC is the flame, gamers are the frogs and some are happily sitting in the Total War pot.
It began with a few factions, most frogs didn't care, it went on with blood effects and still the frogs sat motionless, oblivious to the implications, then they started witholding content that was already in the game and charging players to unlock it... and still the silly frogs sat there with stupid grins on their faces...
Not all the frogs were silly, some frogs objected and said 'hold on a minute, what's all this? you never used to charge us extra for all this? for £30 we used to get the complete game and a printed manual and a disk all in a nice box.'
But the frogs in the pot ignored the concerns of others, they started to enjoy the warm water they were sitting in. In fact they turned on the concerned frogs and screamed at them to shut up about the flames!
Then the map was divided into 3, an 'Inception' style DLC policy was introduced, DLC's for the DLC, the games began to resemble a jigsaw puzzle, every piece had a price tag
and as the steam began to rise the frogs in the pot sat silent, happily being boiled alive.