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Well I started the monthly paying debate in the other thread, but by gripe isn't with the monthly payment at all, in fact I think for that sort of server resource intensive game a subscription makes perfect sense. My gripe is with the large upfront cost.
Comparing an online only game with a single player game is apples and oranges.
SP or Lan games... you pay your $50 bucks and ever after you can play that game, anytime, anywhere. There IS risk that the game will sink, but the up front cost is the only way for the developer to recoup their costs, they HAVE to charge you at that point... and you HAVE to accept that risk.
MMO have access to a longer term and potentially FAR more profitable revenue stream, subscriptions. They don't NEED to charge 50 bucks up front, a good MMO will make far more money than a good SP game... because they can keep people on the hook... month after month. As long as the value proposition is there, the people will pay.
Essentially good MMO's don't need to charge you A CENT for the client, and the MMO that distributes it's client for free is saying "OUR GAME ROCKS!, in fact it's so AWESOME that we know you'll be hooked by it after playing once... so WE'LL take the risk, we'll let you have our client and in return you'll pay 15 bucks a month to connect that client to our servers"
The rest of the MMO world is saying "We're not really sure how good our game is, but look at how much money we've spent developing it. We're going to charge you $50 bucks up front just on the off chance that our game sucks. We're going to force you to take on some of our risk because we don't trust our product."
Simple economics, risk transference. If you're comfortable accepting that risk than the current business model for MMO's is fine for you, personally I'm waiting for an MMO that's so good that the developer is willing to stand by that product and sink or swim on subscriptions alone.
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