Math time:

Assuming there are 50,000 players playing the game as of now (Im not using the units sold number because lets face it, its not an accurate number anymore) if only 1/4th of the population would be willing to play the game under a full price subscription that is $12.99 x 12,500 = $162,375.00 a month from December 2011 until October (last billing date before 2month trial begins) 2012 for a grand total of $1,786,125.00 (assuming no one quits or rejoins the game in that time period).

Okay so 1.8mil give or take for full subscriptions assuming only 1/4th of the current population will continue to actually play. Now for the other side, say we only pay half of the bill for those 11 months, it seems that there are more people willing to pay this half amount of $6.49 so would it not be safe to assume that optimistically 3/4 of the population will continue to play and pessimistically 1/2 of the population will continue to play (either way there would logically be an increase in the number of subscriptions) Now for the math, let's do the 1/2 first.

So with 25,000 players paying $6.49: 25,000 x $6.49 = $162,250.00 (ut-oh you might already see a problem with this but let's continue) times that by the 11 months of paid service you get a grand total of: $1,784,750.00 compared to the numbers above Square-Enix (a business) loses out on ~$2,000.00 give or take a few hundred, while that may seem like nothing at this point we will continue with more math on why it really matters later.

For the optimistic viewer: we now have 37,500 players that are paying $6.49 for 11 months for a total of: $2,677,125.00 (Whoa! look at that number!) Compared to the full price you have made just about 1 million dollars more! (that is if that many people are REALLY willing to pay this price, honestly SE should do a mandatory poll on the issue, log into FFXIV > poll appears asking: What you would you pay to play this game in December until ver2.0? A) 12.99 B) 6.49 C) nothing, I'd quit > submit then play XIV, its that simple, but I digress...

back to the more "realistic" numbers I suppose of 50% and 25% populations let's look at the number of employees working on this project, recently it was revealed to be 250 people, the average game designer makes ~40,000 a year or 3,333.33 a month this billing cycle a single employee will make 36,666.66 on average, assuming there are the directors and lead designers we could realistically say that out of the 250 employees, 230 will get that pay listed meaning their collective pay is 8,433,333.33 I won't do the last 20 employees because we've already broke our budge, but I will say they make anywhere from ~50,000-90,000 a year...So basically the final numbers we have are:

Total payroll number for 250 game designers: $8,400,000.00
Total amount for 1/4 pop. @12.99: $1,786,125.00
Total amount for 2/4 pop. @6.49: $1,784,750.00
Total amount for 3/4 pop. @6.49: $2,677,125.00
Total amount for 4/4 pop. @6.49: $3,569,500.00

So there is the math right in front of everyone (give or take some but the principle is the same), SE should release the poll when you log into XIV, and from that gauge whether or not to charge full or half price, because if less than half of the population says they will quit if they get charged anything then it is going to be best for them to just make the resolute pay full.

Also to note, they aren't charging us because they think we are suckers, they are literally charging us to keep everything afloat, because just look at those numbers and remember they already have paid these people a year's worth of work for free basically. They are hemorrhaging money on this project, so honestly I will pay, because I want to see ver2.0 and I would love to witness the events that lead up to it.

My 2 math skills. (sorry for the long post)