First time poster though I read often. Just to get that out of the way before any insults go my way.

I can only think of a few reasons why they chose the prices to be so insanely high that no one but the richest of the rich can afford. a few of them have already been mentioned but here goes.

1: They honestly think people have this kind of money ( I really hope that isn't the case)

2: RMT trap like a few people have said. Could be a possibility

3: Attempt to get very rich people to not be so very rich by paying insane amount of Gil to be the Server "First". I can see this happening. Then reduce the price so everyone else can afford it.

4: It's to prevent everyone and there dog from buying a FC house the first 5 minutes the servers are up. If they were cheap I could see servers dying from database overload no problem. I think this is the real reason they got them so expensive for server start up. They don't want even more mayhem after the servers go up with 2.1