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Originally Posted by kyp275
Such a noble purchase, one that players like you are just jumping at the chance to... sit back and let other people handle.
And I'm sure you don't have the maths to back that up. The reason why many sub games went F2P is not because they needed significant subscriber base due to the $15 fee, it was because they overspent themselves out of a reasonable time frame to recoup the cost during development. Do not confuse piss-poor project management with the viability of subscription model. Hell, EVE online started with a subscriber base that barely reached 5 digits.
Besides, this line of reasoning is more against F2P, where you need a far larger playerbase because the vast majority of them won't be paying a single cent.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive...e#cite_note-40
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The cost of developing a competitive commercial MMORPG title often exceeded $10 million by 2003.[39] These projects require multiple disciplines within game design and development such as 3D modeling, 2D art, animation, user interfaces, client/server engineering, database architecture, and network infrastructure.[40]
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Another example could be
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/38_Studios Kingdom of Alumar, which had to scale to single player after not enough funding to finish @ a whopping bond of 75 million.
There are also costs such as just maintenance, IT, bug fix that also go upward of millions a month.
You think your $15 at average of a few hundred thousands of users is going to cover all that?
Graphic artists, engineer people, and IT equipment don't grow on trees.