It was stated why it's not sync'd and Yoshida even asked if we would want it sync'd even though it can produce lag of some kind (he didn't elaborate) as he had a fix for that ready to go since last year. However given that the game uses a serverside interface and bad servers, it wouldn't be surprising if it caused problems for the game.

Keeping it free won't really help the game nor would shutting it down till 2.0, especially after stating playing through 1.0 will give you bonuses in 2.0 as a thank you basically.