Why pay a subscription?

[Rikudou-Sennin]

FF XI had in the ~500k subs. (mmodata.net)

So they were pulling in only $6.4 mil a month on subs at $12.99/mo. I just stood up a new data center and it's very small, the base cost without going into the building/rent and cooling/power was half a million just for software and hardware. That's not covering on going costs or bandwidth either. An operation like WoW would need several OC lines (optical carrier) and those cost big. That's not even covering the salaries of the IT people involved. I make good money...

[Reslin]

So they were pulling in only $6.4 mil a month on subs at $12.99/mo.

Note that the base cost is manageable in that they already have an income based on other games. Their datacenter is nowhere near the size of WoW's. It doesn't have to be because their player base is much smaller. (500,000 as opposed to over 10,000,000.) Note that many mmo companies outright state there goal is to have 150,000-250,000 people. How are all these mmo's staying afloat? Why is there goal so low for something that, according to you, would be impossible to maintain? Most mmo's don't even breach the 250,000 mark let alone the 300,000 mark. Most mmo's lower than 500k subs ARE FREE TO PLAY even. Everquest before WoW was considered the biggest mmo in the world at 500,000. DAOC, Ultima Online, etc also had subs but much less players than EQ. How did they survive?