I personally like the subscription model, but I know there are those out there who refuse to play a game with a subscription due to time limitations on their end. For them, paying to play the game when they might have one or two days a month to play wouldn't be good. So I've always wondered if there was a better solution, and I've seen that Dragon Quest did something like that, to where if you weren't subbed, you could play for X amount of time per week etc.

I think something like that might work for those users, but this is a tough issue to really tackle without hard numbers. Now, the following idea has the potential to be riddled with holes, but what if SE offered everyone 24 hours (or some other number) of game time per week for free. You still would need to buy the game, and you should still sub to have that restriction lifted at any point in time. To take this to a ridiculous place, say that time could be bottled up and sold, or bought from other players using in game money. So if you're away for a while you would have game time that's yours that you can sell on the markets, or buy more time on the markets from other players. Players who have the sub, should also fine a way to benefit from this.

Again, there would have to be stipulations in place because there might be all kinds of issues, but with over 2 million registered users, I would find no fault if they were able to jump in and play every now and then.

Just a random and crazy thought.