Three things.
First, the article seems solid. I recommend not focusing on just buying ROS packs with coins though; save your coins for periodic good deals in the online shop. Remember the better your card pool, the better your decks can be and the easier it will be to earn more in game rewards. If they have a good bundle and you get Card X (which is
not Shaymin-EX) that you can put to good use in a deck, then you won't have to trade for Card X and those resources can go towards something else (like
Shaymin-EX). If you have something that is not trade locked and then get a spare copy that is, you can always trade the original for packs (unless there is no demand demand for it XD).
I also recommend checking out the
official PTCGO forums for the "In Game Item Exchange" subforum. Log in information is the same as for the PTCGO (I think if you've got one for the main Pokemon.com site that is also the same). You'll find trading groups that list their asking prices for cards; Public Trade Offers should be less than the trading groups' prices or else it is a bad deal. It also allows you to post trades without the same specifications as in the PTCGO. You still have to go to the PTCGO to make/acccept a Private Trade offer to finish things off, but this way you can ask for offers on a card instead of having to set a specific "Trade X for Y".
An easy way to avoid waiting a week to playtest your deck in the PTCGO: Use TCGOne.
I am guessing that if people are using the PTCGO, it is for a reason. I use it because it is official; I could cut myself some slack when I was still buying the physical cards for the game, as the unofficial programs were just to make it easier to enjoy my cards since it was easier to play online that way than in chat (especially as that usually meant the honor system). Using cards I didn't have to test them out wasn't so bad; I'd just be proxying them if I restricted myself to physical cards and chat. Since I can't (and probably wouldn't if I could) bother with the physical TCG, the PTCGO is me using the intellectual property of the-powers-that-be in an approved capacity (in addition to using actual services they provide).
Other posters have given other reasons, but that is mine.
I haven't played PTCGO in years (stupid firewall), but making Shaymin EX so hard to get is a real scumbag move.
The online
Shaymin-EX are way easier to get than in real life. I've got four
Shaymin-EX (ROS) on the PTCGO. One is a FA version I pulled from a pack, the other three are regular versions obtained by trade. I have no
Shaymin-EX in real life because I can't afford to play the real TCG. I've spent no money on the PTCGO, just learned how to grind and how to trade somewhat decently.
It is more difficult now, but that is just supply and demand. Sometimes a card is less or more rare than in real life, but
Shaymin-EX doesn't seem to be one of them. Now if you mean that it is bad that a card that was so obviously powerful didn't get a tin release or similar way of more easily being obtained, in either real life or the PTCGO, oh hey we agree.
